It used to drive me nuts when women told me their pregnancy horror stories when I was pregnant. I wanted to plug my ears and instead hear the whislting of birds and envision a beautifully serene labor that resulted in my adorable twins popping out in a rainbow of light. Still, it does help to be informed but just not in a freak-out kind of way. Which leads me to preeclampsia.

Nearly 100,000 women die each year from this deadly pregnancy disease, with up to 20 percent of pregnant women getting it. Yet the only cure is to 'terminate' the pregnancy, which means women who are diagnosed early often have to deliver very premature babies.

More needs to be done, and apparently researchers in Australia have made some new discoveries that could lead to better treatment or a cure so moms can have healthy pregnancies that go to term. 

A story broke yesterday that will put a chill into the heart of any expectant mom. But it will likely come as a particularly unwelcome shock to those who are planning for a home birth: A young Australian woman who had been a staunch, outspoken advocate for home birth, died last week following the birth of her second child, whom she delivered at home, attended by midwives.

According to reports, 36-year-old Caroline Lovell was able to hold her newborn daughter in her arms, but was already in cardiac arrest and critical condition when paramedics arrived to transport her to the hospital for care. Lovell died the next day. Her baby, Zahra, survived. Lovell also had a 3-year-old daughter, named Lulu.

It was go, granny, go, as an Ohio woman attempted to rush her daughter, who was in labor, to the hospital. Around 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, Donna Richmond was clocked going 90 miles per hour in her mission to make sure her grandchild was born safely in the hospital as planned.

Only her plan was thwarted, as a police officer stopped her for speeding. “I knew I was going fast, I didn’t know I was going that fast,” Donna Richmond told WBNS-TV. When the officer approached the car, Debbie Richmond called out from the backseat, "I'm in labor!"

Thankfully, the officer let them off with a warning. But it was too late.

Many of us women work at our jobs right up until the moment we deliver our babies. I have plenty of friends who were furiously tapping away at their computers and smart phones and getting some last bits of work out of the way while they were in active labor. But for some women, working until the very last minute of their pregnancy is not so easy: What if your job requires you to stand for hours without sitting down and you've developed a complication that makes that impossible? What if you need to take more frequent bathroom breaks than your company allows?

In both those cases, there does seem to be a pretty easy solution: How about a chair? How about a little bathroom-break flexibility? But in many cases, Dina Bakst, a lawyer who is also the founder of a family-work legal center, writes in a New York Times Op-Ed piece, pregnant women who need these accommodations are simply pushed out of their jobs. And no, they have no legal recourse. Yup. For real.

Did you know the typical male produces 60 million to 100 million sperm in a single ejaculation? It obviously only takes one sperm and one egg to make a baby, but all that biological redundancy is directly tied to the odds of a successful fertilization. For couples dealing with male factor infertility, low sperm counts (anything less than fewer than 20 million sperm per milliliter of semen) can make it difficult or impossible to conceive a child without medical intervention.

However, imagine a situation in which the man produced no sperm whatsoever—and yet he was still able to father a child. At Cleveland Clinic IVF, one couple recently celebrated their daughter's birth, thanks to a groundbreaking technique the thrilled parents are describing as a modern miracle.

Would you ever consider a home birth? If so, you're in growing company: The number of women skipping the hospital and delivering their babies right in the comfort of their own bedroom (or bathroom or kitchen or, for all I know, TV room) has risen sharply in the past few years, according to government data released Thursday. How sharply? Well, between 2004 and 2009, home births here in the United States shot up a full 29%.

Although overall it's still less than one percent of women who opt to give birth at home, that's a pretty dramatic trend. So, seriously, would you do it?

It's a shocking (no pun intended) story with a happy ending. Last summer, Stephanie Alberti of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was three months pregnant, enjoying herself at a stock car race. There she was happily cheering on her husband one minute, and the next she was struck by lightning.

Initially paralyzed by the bolt that shot through her body, she surprisingly didn't lose the baby. Instead, her pregnancy progressed normally, and she recently gave birth to a baby girl, Sophie.

I love being black. I do. I thank God for all of my cultural idiosyncrasies and inherent Africanisms. I’m proud of who I am and the people I come from. It’s an honor to be born into a race of folks whose creativity and intellect and power helped shape the world as we know it.

But that being said, I can’t hop on this bandwagon that homebirth brings black women closer to our African heritage. I’ll immerse myself in a native language, I’ll shell out a few grand to fly to the mother continent and trace my Guinean roots. Heck, I’ve already dedicated thousands of dollars and thousands more hours studying our history for a master’s degree in African-American studies.

But if and when I ever find myself pregnant again, I’ll have my baby in a hospital, thank you very much. If something goes haywire — Lord forbid — I want all the bells and whistles of modern science by my side to save me or my child.