The Daily Telegraph says: “Associate Professor George Condous designed the test, which is about 80 per cent accurate, to reassure women their pregnancy is progressing well.

Professor Condous used data from more than 400 women who visited the early pregnancy unit at Nepean Hospital. Working with a team of Sydney University researchers, Dr Condous used information such as previous caesarean births and miscarriages combined with details from the first ultrasound scan.

He combined them in a mathematical process – comparing variables – to come up with the formula.”

Whatever happened to every woman and every pregnancy is different?

Hmmm. The Babble jury’s out on this – for some reason, it smells fishy to us.

For a start, it’s only 80% accurate – which means it’s 20% inaccurate and none of us would fancy being in that 20% who were told they would most probably be suffering a miscarriage at some time in the next few weeks – only to be told later that, um, sorry – we got it wrong.

Could you bear the grief and trauma of an incorrect conclusion from ‘a mathematical process’? That included the number of caesareans you may already have had? Imagine you were told that all was fine, your baby was developing just as it should and you could start buying bootees tomorrow – and that was wrong! Doesn’t bear thinking about, really.

As if pregnancy – particularly the first trimester – wasn’t fraught enough! So now not only do you have to contend with the worry, the mysterious aches and pains, the abject fear and the horror stories from your well-meaning friends, you might also have this test to fret about, too…

Tell us what you think about the new test. And to read the Tele’s article, click here.

I don't suggest you read it if you are pregnant and about to head into a hospital delivery however.

According to the suit, defendent Scott Pierce, who was filling in for the Catherine Skol's primary OB, was so incensed that she hadn't called him before heading to the hospital (an instruction her main OB had never given her) that he decided she "deserved" pain, refused an epidural, put her in intentionally painful positions, insisted she push before she was sufficiently dilated, kept telling her she was going to hemorrhage, wouldn't give her enough anesthesia before stitching her up and told her husband to "hold her down" instead, and talked loudly and crudely on a cell phone about an abortion in the room. There's more. It's truly astounding, in a nauseating kind of way.

(Confidential to "Linka" who called Skol a wimp for complaining about not getting her pain meds: I'm no fan of routine epidurals and had my kid with none, but I would never claim to know out of context when one was appropriate. And I'd like to see you get stitches for a severe laceration on your vulva without anesthesia, not mention all that other crap.)

As much as I've heard plenty of horror stories about OBs and their attitudes, I have to say that this is a category all its own, and sounds to me like the sort of extremely aggressive behavior that arises when people are on something illegal or are having, shall we say, certain brain chemical imbalances. Not that there aren't people out there who are just that awful, but they don't generally keep a job like doctor very long.

In fact, his behavior bothers me less than the commenters who say that because she and the baby are physically healthy, she should shut up and deal. Aside from being cruel, the behaviour described was dangerous. If it's anything like she described, he should have his license revoked. People sue all the time for doctors failing to prevent problems they couldn't have prevented–that's one of the reasons our c-section rate (and malpractice insurance) is so high. Here's a case where the doctor was actually in the wrong rather than just getting the blame for a tragedy. This is what lawsuits are for.

Photo by Bloomsberries.