Some babies are born unable to move one arm properly, because the nerves running from the neck into the shoulder were stretched during birth. Most recover on their own within a few months, but a substantial minority do not, and those children may need scans, nerve surgery and years of therapy. Four…

Congenital diaphragmatic hernia is a birth defect in which a gap in the muscle below the lungs lets organs from the abdomen move up into the chest, leaving the lungs too small to work well at birth. Some babies can be helped by an operation performed before they are born, and whether a family is…

A short cervix found midway through pregnancy is one of the clearest signs that a baby may arrive too early. For twenty years, doctors have been testing whether a small silicone ring called a cervical pessary can hold a pregnancy longer. Three studies published in 2025 and 2026 give three different…

Chorioamnionitis is inflammation of the membranes and placenta that surround a baby before birth. It is one of the commonest reasons babies are born early, and four studies published between 2025 and 2026 found that the diagnosis doctors make during labour often does not match what the placenta…

In a small number of pregnancies, antibodies made by the mother's immune system cross the placenta and damage the part of the baby's heart that sets its rhythm, leaving the heartbeat permanently slow. Four studies published in 2025 and 2026 looked at who is most at risk, what these babies are like…

Some babies grow too slowly before birth because the placenta — the organ that carries oxygen and nourishment from mother to baby — is not working properly. Doctors cannot repair a failing placenta, so the only real decision left is when to deliver. Four studies published in 2025 and 2026 examine…

Sometimes a routine pregnancy scan finds that the baby's heart is beating far too fast — twice the normal rate or more. Doctors can treat this before birth by giving the mother medicine that crosses the placenta and reaches the baby. Three studies published in 2025 and 2026 help answer the…

Group B Streptococcus is a common bacterium that lives harmlessly in about one in five pregnancies but can cause life-threatening infection in a newborn. Antibiotics given during labour prevent much of the early illness, but they do nothing for infections that appear in the weeks after birth, and…

In a small number of pregnancies a mother's immune system makes antibodies against her baby's red blood cells, and those antibodies cross the placenta and destroy them. This is hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn — now rare, at roughly 29 pregnancies per 100,000, thanks to a preventive…

Hypoplastic left heart syndrome means a baby is born with the left side of the heart too small to pump blood around the body. Four recent studies examine the decisions made in the first days of life — whether to open a wall inside the heart before birth, which day to operate, and what to do for the…

When a baby boy's urine cannot leave his bladder before birth, the blockage can usually be removed within days of delivery — but by then his kidneys may already have been harmed. Four studies published in 2025 and 2026 looked at how well doctors can predict that harm, from the late-pregnancy scan…

Sometimes a baby's intestine twists on itself and cuts off its own blood supply — an emergency called a midgut volvulus. It is rare, it usually strikes babies who seemed perfectly healthy, and until recently almost nothing was known about why it happens to one child and not another. Three studies…