Dr. Jennifer Ashton Archives

Women who get pregnant and women who breastfeed may lower their risk of early menopause, according to a new study.

”This is interesting because it connects what happens in a woman’s early reproductive life to something that goes on later,” ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a board-certified OBGYN, said Thursday on Good Morning America about the study.

Here is more on what women should know about the impact pregnancy and breastfeeding may have on their bodies as they age.

What did the study find?The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study looked at more than 100,000 women ages 25 to 42 years.

It found that women who had one full-term pregnancy had an 8% lower risk of early menopause.

Women who had two full-term pregnancies had a 16% lower risk of early menopause.

Those who had three pregnancies had a 22% lower risk. When it comes to breastfeeding, women who breastfed exclusively for seven to 12 months had a 28% lower risk of early menopause than women who breastfed for less than a month.

Women who breastfed for 25 months or more in total during their pre-menopausal years had a 26% lower risk of early menopause.

The news that a Boston area woman gave birth one hour after discovering she was pregnant isn’t that surprising. Not when you consider that the hospital where she gave birth in, South Shore Hospital in Massachusetts, stated that it happens once or twice a year there.

It’s common for overweight or obese women to miss pains of pregnancy and weight gain, ABC News senior medical contributor Dr. Jennifer Ashton said.

In fact, that was the case here.

New mom Katherine Kropas told reporters that she thought she was just a little bit heaver from holiday indulging.

A 2002 Berlin study discovered that 1 in 475 women did not realize they were pregnant until they are 4 months along in their pregnancy and one in 2,455 didn’t realize it until they went into labor.

Intense back pains brought Kropas to the hospital this past Tuesday, January 7, and an ultrasound solved the mystery.

“They took one look, and they rushed me off into labor,” she told ABC’s Boston station WCVB. “I found out that I was having a baby at 10:15. She was born at 11:06 p.m.”

Amazing and sad because in these situations, the babies lack crucial pre-natal care.

h/t: USA Today.

Dr. Jennifer Ashton

Study: Breastfeeding Reduces Early Menopause Risk

Women giving birth not knowing they were pregnant is common