Medical professionals encourage expectant parents to consider banking baby's cord blood stem cells

To find out if you are pregnant, look for the signs and symptoms of pregnancy. These can be categorized a possible, probable, and positive.

Understanding the transplantation process will help you take steps to protect your family’s future health and will enable you to be better prepared should the need ever arise.

The time has come. After nine months of anticipation you are standing at the door, suitcase at the ready, stopwatch in hand. You’ve timed the contractions at every two to five minutes on the dot, and as the drama of birth opens its curtains before your very eyes, you wonder if all your preparations will have been enough.

Pregnancy and childbirth is the most wondrous experience of a woman’s life. To describe it, one must use a list of contradictions. What other event can be so universal, yet so personal? At what other time does a woman feel more in tune with her feminine side, while yet tapping into her strongest reserve of raw power? What other rite of passage takes her to the very doors of death, only to open them and find new life? There is no other time when a woman can feel so sick while being in perfectly good health. There is no other event quite like it.

During the past 19 years, my apprenticeship with birth has challenged me to redefine my concept of boundaries, trust, fear and responsibility. Today, if I could make one statement about building a birthing community it would be this -- build on what you know and believe is sacred. I say this to women and families, the true architects and builders of all authentic birthing communities. Claim what is sacred to you and insist that your birthing traditions reflect the most intimate and holy desires of the soul.

In Chinese medicine, the time of menstruation is a delicate one. During this time, the body is more susceptible to illness caused by climatic factors (Wind, Damp, Cold, etc.). The Uterus, considered a Special Organ in Oriental medicine, is particularly vulnerable at this time, since it opens to allow the menstrual blood to flow.

Pregnancy is an amazing, miraculous, and sometimes trying period of a woman's life. The sheer delight of having a baby is also accompanied by changes - changes in one's body, changes in how one feels through the nine-month period. There are changes in how others perceive and treat you. One may experience change in their personal (family) relationships, and even changes in how one lives through the day, as the pregnancy term advances.