Organic milk and prenatal iodine | Letters

Contrary to your article (Organic and UHT milk could put unborn babies at risk, says study, 28 April), our most recent testing of supermarket milk, carried out in January 2015 by an independent third party, has shown that organic milk is not deficient in iodine when compared with conventional milk. In the past year, mineral supplementation of organic cow feed has become routine across the industry and has shown comparable levels of iodine in organic versus non-organic milk.

There is no evidence to show mothers consuming organic milk have lower iodine levels. There are, however, scientifically proven health and environmental benefits to organic milk. Studies show that organic whole and semi-skimmed milk has 68% more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, and higher levels of vitamin E and beta-carotene than non-organic milk. Dutch research has also shown incidence of eczema in infants fed on organic dairy products and whose mothers also consumed organic dairy products are 36% lower than those who consume conventional dairy products. Deficiency in iodine is due to a drop in overall milk consumption, rather than as a consequence of the type of milk being consumed.
Nicholas Saphir
Chairman, Organic Milk Suppliers’ Co-Operative

Milk and dairy products contribute the largest percentage of iodine to the female adult diet in the UK

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Sofia Vergara's ex-fiance: keeping our embryos frozen 'is tantamount to killing them'

Nick Loeb argues that his desire to take on all parental responsibilities is cause to allow his and Vergara’s embryos be brought to term despite actor’s objections

The actress Sofia Vergara’s former fiance has said in a newspaper op-ed column that he sued the Modern Family star to protect their frozen embryos because he longs to become a parent and doesn’t want the “two lives” they created to “be destroyed or sit in a freezer until the end of time”.

Businessman Nick Loeb wrote in the New York Times that as the child of divorced parent he yearned to have the kind of family depicted in artist Norman Rockwell’s iconic paintings.

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Organic and UHT milk could put unborn babies at risk

Other types of milk, perceived as having health benefits, contain less iodine, which is essential for brain development in foetuses

Pregnant women who switch to “healthier” organic milk may be putting the brain development of their unborn babies at risk, experts have claimed. Milk certified as organic contains about a third less iodine than conventionally produced milk, according to a new study. The same was found to be true for “ultra-high temperature” (UHT) processed long-life milk.

Since milk is the primary source of iodine in the UK diet, the discovery is said to have potentially serious health implications. Iodine is known to be important for the healthy brain development of babies, especially in the early stages of pregnancy. Previous research has shown that mothers-to-be who are iodine-deficient during this critical time can give birth to children with reduced IQs.

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Israel begins evacuating babies born to surrogate mothers in Nepal

Plane carrying advance medical team to help earthquake rescue efforts returns to Israel with three newborns, their Israeli parents and their surrogate mothers

Israel began are evacuating surrogate-born babies and their Israeli parents from Nepal, on the return legs of flights sent to provide earthquake relief.

Many Israeli male couples have fathered children with the help of surrogate mothers in Nepal because surrogacy is illegal in Israel for same-sex couples.

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I had an abortion because of extreme morning sickness. Spare others that pain | Anonymous

Hyperemesis gravidarum must be taken seriously. If I’d been supported more by my GP, or had access to better medication, I probably wouldn’t have made the choice I did

During the sixth week of my second pregnancy, I was hit by an extreme form of morning sickness called hyperemesis gravidarum. I was unable to drink anything and have never felt so dehydrated, dizzy and desperate for water. But if I drank, I was immediately sick, then felt much worse. By the tenth week, I had lost nearly two stone, was vomiting up to 30 times a day and was feeling desperate. So much so that, like 1,000 other women each year, I decided the sickness had become unbearable and I had no choice but to terminate my pregnancy. At 10 weeks, I arranged to have a termination in the form of a pill. A few hours after I had taken it, I began to feel normal again. I have never felt such intense relief, at the same time as feeling extremely sad for the child I had aborted.

I had experienced hyperemesis gravidarum during my first pregnancy, but was able to cope with it then – I think mainly because I didn’t know the suffering that lay ahead. My GP at the time was attentive and visited me at home to monitor my urine, while nurses came to take blood. I tried taking the anti-sickness drug cyclizine, but it didn’t seem to do anything, so I stopped.

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Kim and Kanye’s conception drive: uterus cleaning and a fertility chef

Looking for a new career? Five grand a month for dishing up mackerel, tomatoes and eggs to the Kardashian-Wests sounds a cushy gig

Call it a sixth sense, but there are moments when Lost in Showbiz feels the hands of its readers tugging imploringly at its sleeve, their faces upturned, their eyes beseeching, an urgent question forming on their lips. “Lost in Showbiz,” they ask, “for the love of God, what news of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s plans to conceive a second child?” At this, Lost in Showbiz smiles benignly. Rest easy, my importunate friends, there is much news: over in California, preparations are afoot. Why, only the other week, viewers of Keeping Up with the Kardashians were treated to what Lost in Showbiz feels will one day come to be thought of as one of the great moments in the history of factual television, up there with The World at War or Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation: the sight of Kim Kardashian having her uterus cleaned out in front of a documentary crew.

Now, more information has leaked to an eager public. According to the usual phalanx of unnamed insiders, eager to breach the impenetrable wall of secrecy and reserve surrounding a woman who has agreed to have her uterus cleaned out on national television, the Kardashian-Wests have employed “a brigade of baby experts” to help them conceive. These include a Chinese herbal doctor, a cupping therapist, “a new personal trainer who specialises in conception-boosting exercises” – frankly, if Lost in Showbiz was Kanye West, it would be keeping a very close eye indeed on him and his “exercises” – and a “live-in fertility chef”. The latter is apparently employed at the cost of £5,000 a month and ensures Kardashian’s diet is “packed full of fertility-boosting ingredients”. “Her chef says her body needs omega-3 fatty acids for maximum fertility, so she’ll be eating lots of mackerel, grilled tomatoes and poached eggs, for vitamin D. He has also recommended banana smoothies, because B6 is said to help egg production.”

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Experience: I am afraid of pregnancy

‘I was diagnosed with tokophobia, a fear of pregnancy and childbirth. I’d never heard of it but was told it was a very real condition’

I had wanted a family for as long as I could remember. I was introduced to Andrew by his sister, and we married in June 2012, a year later. I was 36 and he was 38, and we were conscious of our age and knew we wanted children, so we started trying immediately. After nine months of disappointment, a home pregnancy test finally revealed I’d got my wish.

I expected to feel elated, but looking at the result I felt fear and terror wash over me. I was convinced that I could not keep the baby. I was so confused and ashamed, I didn’t tell Andrew for a week. When I eventually broke the news, I said, “I’m pregnant, but I can’t go through with it.” He was bewildered and angry, and I was distraught. I just knew that the only way I would feel better would be to terminate the pregnancy I’d wanted for so long.

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German politicians criticise 65-year-old woman pregnant with quadruplets

Annegret Raunigk, who had IVF treatment in Ukraine after being refused in Germany, is deemed ‘a questionable case’ as she becomes a national talking point

Medical experts and politicians have strongly rounded on a 65-year-old German woman who is pregnant with quadruplets, calling her decision “irresponsible” and “inadvisable”, and warned other women against following her example.

“I consider this to be a very questionable case,” Karl Lauterbach, a leading Social Democrat, said of Annegret Raunigk’s multiple pregnancy, which is in its fifth month. “Such a pregnancy cannot be allowed to become an example for anyone to follow,” he told Spiegel.

I’m observing this development with great concern. We can’t just do everything because we’re medically able to do it

Related: Worried when science plays God? It’s only natural | Philip Ball

Related: Have a baby, or your money back

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65-year-old German woman expecting quadruplets defends pregnancy

Annegret Raunigk, who has 13 children, says she is not scared by prospect of caring for young children at the age of 70 and beyond

A 65-year-old German woman who is due to give birth to quadruplets in the summer has defended her decision and says she is looking forward to the challenges ahead.

Annegret Raunigk, who is in her fifth month of pregnancy, said she had decided to get pregnant after her nine-year old daughter, Lelia, told her she would like a baby sister or brother. “She’s a great kid and I wanted to fulfil her wish,” Raunigk told the German television channel RTL.

I don’t interfere in anyone else’s life and I don’t expect them to interfere in mine

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Tasteless jokes about my miscarriage were my way coping when I felt despair | Catherine Mah

After my miscarriage, my body was cruelly convinced I was still pregnant but I knew it was just a coffin for my child. I eventually accepted it wasn’t my fault

My pregnancy didn’t have the most auspicious of starts. Squinting at the two pink lines on the home pregnancy test, a combination of disappointment and relief coursed through me. Not pregnant. While my husband and I hadn’t been planning for a baby, exactly, neither would we have been unhappy about it.

I showed him the results and shrugged.

Related: How my molar pregnancy became a life-changing event

I was hoping against all odds for a miracle, that the tiny heart would spring back to life

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Childbirth expert and campaigner Sheila Kitzinger dies aged 86

Author and advocate for women’s freedom of choice in childbirth campaigned on range of issues including female genital mutilation

The anthropologist and childbirth expert Sheila Kitzinger has died aged 86. Kitzinger was a prolific author of books for parents-to-be and came to be known as the “high priestess of natural childbirth”. She was an early leader of the natural childbirth movement and sought to shift the focus on to the mother during pregnancy and birth.

But her eldest daughter Celia Kitzinger said her mother was “so much more than a ‘natural birth guru’”; she had campaigned on issues including an end to female genital mutilation.

Related: Sheila Kitzinger obituary

I learned from her campaigns that passionate and committed individuals can create social change

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Sheila Kitzinger

Author and pioneer of natural childbirth who led a crusade against its medicalisation

Sheila Kitzinger, the “high priestess of natural childbirth”, has died at the age of 86. She could reasonably be said to have done more than anyone else to change attitudes to childbirth in the past 50 years. It was her belief that childbirth should not be reduced to a pathological event and she waged a relentless crusade against its medicalisation. She felt obstetricians had taken control, pushing aside the hands-on experience of midwives and the personal needs and wishes of mothers.

Kitzinger believed birth should be seen and experienced as a highly personal and social event, one that was even sensual and sexual. She promoted birth practices that were far more women-centred and humanised than those followed in most hospitals in Britain, and other western societies. She suggested that women should draw up their own birth plans and decide for themselves whether, among other things, they might want to move around during labour or even give birth in water. Body awareness, innovative relaxation techniques and special breathing patterns were all elements she promoted. More controversially, she advocated the acceptance of labour pain, seeing it as a side effect of a task willingly undertaken ‑ pain with a purpose.

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Five things we love: from becoming an instant artist to communing with your unborn baby

We share some of the newest, most fun and helpful tech ideas

Joining the swaths of tech that aims to teach children the art of coding is the Codie. This simple looking robot is controlled by an equally simple smartphone app that introduces the very basics. The app is used to link up series of “action blocks” that tell Codie how to walk and talk (well, buzz actually). As the child becomes increasingly familiar with Codie, new features are unlocked allowing more complex actions to be carried out.

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Women in Labour: Miliband promises midwife for every mother giving birth

Labour makes ‘Call the Midwife’ pledge after Conservatives say they will raise spending for NHS by £8bn

Women giving birth would be given one-on-one maternity care under a Labour government to ensure they are not left to cope alone, Ed Miliband will announce on Saturday.

Labour is launching its health manifesto with its Call the Midwife pledge that all women will be given a dedicated midwife during labour and birth, a rule that will be enshrined in the NHS constitution. Miliband said the party’s plans to provide 3,000 extra midwives would make the scheme possible.

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Caesarean sections should only be done out of medical necessity, WHO says

World Health Organisation says procedure carries health risks, but does not improve mortality rates in countries where high numbers are performed

Caesarean sections should only be carried out when medically necessary, according to the World Health Organisation, which says the surgical procedure can put the health of women and their babies at risk.

The WHO reiterates the view of its health experts, who have said since 1985 that the “ideal rate” for caesarean sections is between 10% and 15% of births. Caesareans save lives where women are in obstructed labour or their babies are in distress, but two new studies show that in countries where they account for more than 10% of births, “there is no evidence that mortality rates improve”, the WHO said.

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My mother, the alcoholic: living with foetal alcohol syndrome

Should heavy drinking in pregnancy be a crime? A recent test case in the UK was thrown out, but in the US hundreds of women have been imprisoned. We meet women and children affected by foetal alcohol syndrome

Stella was 19 when she discovered she has foetal alcohol syndrome. “I found out in a horrible way, to be honest,” she says. She had taken her boyfriend to meet her father for the first time. Stella and her father had only limited contact, but her boyfriend hoped that he might help to explain some of Stella’s erratic, unreliable behaviour, and asked him upfront, “What’s wrong with your daughter? Why is she the way she is?”

“That’s when he paused, and he breathed, and he said it,” Stella says, still distressed at the memory of the conversation. “I was shocked. I asked, ‘Why wasn’t I told about it?’ He said he didn’t want me to dwell on something like that.

Women shouldn’t be prosecuted – they should be given alcohol rehabilitation

No woman I have met ever wants to harm her baby. This is an illness, not a choice

There is a witch-hunt to go after the mothers, but I am living with my guilt every day. That’s a real life sentence

I didn’t know the kids' mother was an alcoholic. She loved them, but couldn’t cope. It didn’t put me off adopting them

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A handy guide for pregnant women when dealing with idiots | Zoe Williams

Ever had a stranger manhandle your bump? Did a random person at a party decide to monitor your alcohol intake? Here’s how to cope with such behaviour

“Nowhere on North American TV have we seen a weather reader as gross as you. Your front end looks like the Hindenburg and your rear end looks like a brick s**t-house. We now turn off Global.” This insult was issued to Canadian meteorologist Kristi Gordon. The diss sounds complicated and boxing-inspired – uppercut, side-swipe, kapow! – but, on closer examination, isn’t. “Hindenburg” just means a big thing; brick shit-house also means a big thing.

Why would anyone call someone else fat in such a verbose way? Aha. Gordon happened to be pregnant and dared to wear a dress on television in her condition. If this wasn’t depressing enough, she has said the vitriol wasn’t a surprise since she had experienced similar wrath during her first pregnancy.

Of all the indignities of this reproductive state, the greatest is that you’re not allowed to get angry

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