This morning, a very reputable women’s website called me and asked me to write an article about a press release they sent me, which read:

(April 1, 2011) For Immediate Release—ACOG ANNOUNCES PLANS TO STOP ELECTIVE C-SECTIONS

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) announced today it is devising a comprehensive plan to lower C-section rates in the United States. C-sections in the U.S. have gone up 700% since they were first measured in 1965, when the C-section rate was only 4.5 percent.

“The nation’s C-section rate has been rising steadily for the last eleven years. It’s now over 31 percent,” said an ACOG spokesperson. “This is a deplorable situation that harms women and their newborns.”

An organization that advocates for quality healthcare for women, ACOG is asking obstetricians to halt elective C-sections.

“C-sections should only be a last resort. They should never be performed for the convenience of the doctor,” the spokesperson said, “or for financial or liability reasons.”

Since the use of electronic fetal monitoring has been shown to increase unnecessary C-section rate without any proven benefit to the mother or infant, ACOG is also calling on American hospitals to stop the routine use of electronic monitoring during labor. ACOG’s new guidelines encourage women to have freedom of movement during labor, labor standing up or squatting, and to eat and drink at will.

“Cesarean can save lives. But doctors and consumers have to remember that this is major surgery that carries major risk,” the spokesperson said, pointing to the example of 29-year-old Abbie Dorn, who suffered severe hemorrhaging and brain damage after her uterus was nicked during a Cesarean section at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (2006), 32-year-old Diane Rizk McCabe, who died following complications from a Caesarean section at Albany Medical Center Hospital (2007), and Karen Vasques, 27, who died during a C-section at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (2008).

Maternal mortality has risen every year in the United States for the past 25 years, while over the same period the rate of C-sections has gone up 33 percent.

“The skyrocketing rate of C-section in America has had devastating consequences,” the spokesperson said. “ACOG, the most highly respected organization of obstetricians and gynecologists in the United States, is leading the fight to stop it.”

When I paid $19.95 to sign up for Match.com where I met my now-husband, I got a free subscription to People magazine. And although I canceled my Match.com subscription a month later, I’ve been renewing People for nine years now -- which is my guilty secret (okay, not so secret) vice.

I read my People magazine cover to cover, and then I read The Economist so I don’t feel like a total dimwit. I don’t have a television, so People is my lifeline to pop culture, and for the most part, it brings me great joy to know who Taylor Swift is writing about in her precious bubble gum pop (which I immediately download to my iPod, along with Miley Cyrus and the Glee soundtracks. Don’t laugh).

But every time I see a “Body After Baby” article showing off how some celebrity is prancing around in a bikini six weeks postpartum, I want to puke.

Two more days, gorgeouses, until What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend leaps off shelves and into our hands (and hearts). In anticipation of the big launch day (Tues, Sept 28), this week we are pleased to publish exclusive excerpts and blogs by our very own Dr. Lissa Rankin. Today's excerpt is all about the F word -- not that one, the other one -- Fertility. So what does an OB/GYN have to say about her own fertility journey? As per usual, maybe not what you'd expect. Read on to find out!

From the time I was young, I cursed my uterus. 

Cramps plagued me when I was trying to do rounds at the hospital, and blood would leak out of my tampons and onto my scrubs in the middle of a surgery. Seeking a way to escape my own womanhood, I discovered that I could take birth control pills daily and never get a period. Why hadn’t anyone ever told me this? After I uncovered this secret, I sent my uterus to a dark recess of some basement closet and didn’t bleed again for a decade. Every now and then, my uterus (I affectionately call it Yoni) would cry out for me, but I pretty much ignored her. I wasn’t a very good friend.

Dr. Lissa Rankin's medical blog is based on her upcoming book What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend, which you can preorder here. If you have a question you'd like Dr. Lissa Rankin to answer in her blog, please join the What's Up Down There posse in our Owning Pink community, or contact us.

I’m 37 years old, and over the past seven months, my periods have stopped. I’m also suffering from mood swings. I’m healthy otherwise and of average weight. My doctor recently ruled out polycystic ovaries, and she said I could just go on the Pill to “regulate” my cycle and my moods. But I’d really like to just get to the root of the problem, especially because I may still want to have a baby. Can you help?