Prenatal Care is an educational booklet written by Mary Mills West of the US Children’s Bureau and published by the US Government Printing Office in 1913. The Bureau distributed West’s booklets in response to their field studies on infant mortality, which found that lack of access to accurate health and hygiene information put women and infants at greater than normal risk of death or disease. In Prenatal Care, West offers advice on nutrition, exercise, and personal hygiene during pregnancy and describes the processes of labor and birth. Soon after publication, women all over the US requested copies of Prenatal Care. Millions of copies of Prenatal Care were distributed nationally between 1921 and 1928 as part of educational programs funded by the Sheppard-Towner Act, and the infant mortality rate declined during that period.

From 1993 to 1995 researchers led by Robert J. Berry from the US Centers for Disease Control headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and Zhu Li from Beijing Medical University in Beijing, China, conducted a collaborative study in China on the prevention of neural tube defects or NTDs using folic acid supplements. NTDs are birth defects in which openings in the spinal cord or the brain that occur during early development remain after birth. Neural-tube formation occurs in early pregnancy, often before a woman knows she is pregnant and therefore before she has begun taking prenatal vitamins. The researchers presented their findings in the article “Prevention of the Neural Tube Defects with Folic Acid in China” published in 1999 in The New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers from The China-US study found that women who took folic acid in the periconceptional period, or the time before conception through the first twenty-eight days after conception, reduced the occurrence of NTDs.

In 2014, Big Belli, a media and social networking brand, released a documentary called 40 Weeks online. The documentary, directed by Christopher Henze, followed multiple women during their pregnancies. The film predominantly features three women, though it includes the stories of many. Throughout the film, women detail their accounts of the physical and emotional changes that occur during pregnancy. 40 Weeks provides viewers with information about different aspects of pregnancy including the importance of nutrition and hydration, knowledge about safe medications, and the possible complications that can affect a pregnant woman and her fetus.

John Chassar Moir lived in Scotland during the twentieth century and helped develop techniques to improve the health of pregnant women. Moir helped to discover compounds that doctors could administer to women after childbirth to prevent life-threatening blood loss. Those compounds included the ergot alkaloid called ergometrine, also called ergonovine, and d-lysergic acid beta-propanolamide. Moir tested ergometrine in postpartum patients and documented that it helped prevent or manage postpartum hemorrhage in women. Moir also developed methods to treat tears between the bladder and the vagina, called vesico-vaginal fistulas, that occur due to complications of childbirth, and that cause urinary incontinence in women who have them.

In 1998 and 1999, Teraporn Vutyavanich, Theerajana Kraisarin, and Rung-Aroon Ruangsri in Thailand showed that ginger alleviated nausea in pregnant women. Vutyavanich and his colleagues found that the group of pregnant women who took ginger capsules reported significantly fewer nausea symptoms and vomiting episodes than the group who only received the placebo. Vutyavanich and his team’s study at Chiang Mai University in Chiang Mai, Thailand, was one of the earliest to investigate and support the use of ginger as an effective treatment for relieving pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting.

In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers Leon Chesley, John Annitto, and Robert Cosgrove investigated the possible familial factor for the conditions of preeclampsia and eclampsia in pregnant women. Preeclampsia and eclampsia, which are related to high blood pressure, have unknown causes and affect at least five percent of all pregnancies. The researchers, who worked at Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital in Jersey City, New Jersey, used hospital patient records to find and reexamine women who had eclampsia at the hospital, as well as their daughters, sisters, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters. Chesley and colleagues found that the daughters and granddaughters of eclamptic women were more likely than the female offspring of non-eclamptic women to have preeclampsia and eclampsia in their own pregnancies, and especially in their first pregnancies. The study provided evidence that the disorders are inherited, enabling physicians to better monitor pregnancies in women who have a known family history for preeclampsia and eclampsia.

In 1948, Olive Watkins Smith published 'Diethylstilbestrol in the Prevention and Treatment of Complications of Pregnancy' in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In 632 women treated with diethylstilbestrol, Smith demonstrated that the drug stimulated the production of progesterone, a hormone that regulates the uterine condition during pregnancy. On the basis of her article, and several follow up articles authored by Smith and her husband, George Van Siclen Smith, physicians around the world began prescribing DES to women at risk for pregnancy complications like miscarriage and premature delivery. However, in 1953, researchers at found that DES did not prevent pregnancy complications. In 1970, researchers linked fetal exposure to DES to rare and severe cancers later in life. Researchers labeled DES as an endocrine disruptor, a substance that disrupts the hormone system of the body across multiple generations.

In the 1964 article, “Pelvic Scoring for Elective Induction,” obstetrician Edward Bishop describes his method to determine whether a doctor should induce labor, or artificially start the birthing process, in a pregnant woman. Aside from medical emergencies, a woman can elect to induce labor to choose when she gives birth and have a shorter than normal labor. The 1964 publication followed an earlier article by Bishop, also about elective induction. In both articles, Bishop used data gathered from the obstetrics department of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked. In “Pelvic Scoring for Elective Induction,” Bishop introduces a scoring system later known as the Bishop Score, used into the twenty-first century, to determine if a pregnant woman fits the criteria for a safe and successful induction.

In 1986, Vern L. Katz, Deborah J. Dotters, and William Droegemueller published “Perimortem Cesarean Delivery,” an article in which they developed the Four Minute Rule for perimortem cesarean sections. The Four Minute Rule states that if a pregnant woman’s heart stops beating, physicians should begin an operation to deliver the fetus within four minutes and aim to have the fetus delivered within five minutes of cardiac arrest. Although cardiac arrest during pregnancy is uncommon, it can happen when pregnant women experience trauma, blood clots, infection, or have preexisting heart conditions. In the article, the authors emphasize how the Four Minute Rule increased maternal and fetal survival rates and decreased cases of severe fetal brain damage. The article “Perimortem Cesarean Delivery” was the first article to present the Four Minute Rule, which has influenced international guidelines and become the standard for maternal resuscitation and fetal survival in emergency medicine, operating rooms, and many other aspects of medical practice.

In 2015, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) partnered with The Open University to produce the three-part documentary series, Countdown to Life: The Extraordinary Making of You. Michael Mosley, a British television producer and journalist, hosts the documentary. Along with narrating animated scenes of a growing fetus in the womb, Mosley meets with individuals around the world who experienced mutations that can arise in the womb. Introduced over the course of the three episodes, several people share their personal stories of how their bodies did not develop correctly prior to birth. Throughout the documentary, animations of fetal development and individuals’ stories about their own birth defects transition back and forth to show how a fetus develops. Countdown to Life: The Extraordinary Making of You informed the public of what happens to the fetus at the point of conception to the point of birth at forty weeks.