Doctors need to listen to the evidence about bed rest in pregnancy

I was on bed rest for five weeks during my third pregnancy. I did everything I was supposed to. Even though it felt impossible to parent my 4 and 5-year-old boys from the couch, it became even more challenging when I was admitted to bed rest in hospital. Who wants to do the wrong thing and risk endangering their future baby? Bed rest in some pregnancies is so normalised that there is a widespread belief it must be good for something or doctors wouldn’t prescribe it. Right?

Wrong. In the US, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine published the first formal…