After an abortion, we should have split up, but I’m not strong enough to leave

My boyfriend’s brother and fiance are expecting their first baby and I question why we’re not in the same position, but I know our relationship is toxic

I have been with my boyfriend for six years. We met at university and have tried living together in his hometown twice. We recently went travelling together and, on returning to the UK, we moved to a city that was between our two hometowns. As a couple, we got on well but neither of us managed to integrate wholeheartedly. I was hurt when he told me he was accepting a job back home without consulting me – he would be commuting three hours each day.

Just after this decision, I found out I was pregnant. It was a shock and his immediate reaction was to “get rid of it”. I felt completely on my own and cut off from my support network, and so, with regret, we came to the unimaginable decision to terminate.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1ImlGu7

Family Nurse Partnership: helping young families or a waste of money?

Research has labelled the scheme as “unjustified”, but those involved say it could have a long-term impact on children’s lives

Izzy Harrison never envisaged getting pregnant at the age of 15. So it was a welcome relief when she was offered the support of the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP). “There was a lot of pressure on me and I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “The fact that I was going to have somebody for two years was really nice – I knew if I needed anything that there was somebody there to help me.”

Harrison, now 17, is the proud mother of 17-month-old Jasmyn. She has gone back to college to study law and health and social care, and wants to train as a teacher. “The FNP helped me to continue my life and I realised that not everything had to stop because I had a baby,” she says.

Related: Tackling neglect is 'everyone's responsibility': how services can safeguard children

Related: One year on, is Staying Put helping young people in foster care?

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1OpmuD3

Women warned to beware pregnancy pitfalls when applying for a mortgage

New affordability rules mean some firms will ask questions about changes in income

New parents who apply for mortgages from some of the biggest lenders are being asked to prove that they are going back to work before their income can be included in affordability checks.

Questions posed by the Observer to the 15 biggest lenders found that those on maternity or shared parental leave are asked to provide evidence that they will go back to work within three months of their application when they take out a mortgage from Skipton building society, Virgin Money and Metro Bank. If they are not returning to work within three months, their “return to work” income may not be included in the checks, and the mortgage may be calculated on their pay during the period of maternity or parental leave.

If a lender makes assumptions that a woman can’t repay a mortgage, she may have a claim

A broker must satisfy themselves you’ll be able to afford your mortgage, and to answer the lender’s questions honestly

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1Nkn2gA

The kindness of strangers: should surrogates get paid?

Jenny, 28, has had six babies – two of them for Natalie. She doesn’t get paid, because commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK. So what motivates British surrogates – and what happens when an agreement goes wrong?

At 15, Natalie Smith discovered that she had no womb: “There you are, growing into a woman, and suddenly you find out that you can’t have children. You’ve never really thought about having children at that point, but what you realise is that it has always been there, that assumption that you will.”

The condition was a result of a birth disorder called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH), and the diagnosis was devastating: “It changed everything. It shifted my values, it exploded my friendships.”

We chatted for seven hours. It was very like meeting my husband, that feeling she was The One

I breastfed my baby there, on a bench in the high court. And then I was told I had to hand her over

There is no sense in my mind in bringing children into the world, and then trying to figure out what to do with them

My son has three friends in his year at school born by surrogates. There’s been a real shift

Related: India bans foreigners from hiring surrogate mothers

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1LrW13b

Studying spurred me on through pregnancy and tragedy at university

When I found out I was pregnant I almost blacked out. But I knew I had to finish my degree and provide my daughter with a future

I was sitting my last exam for the second year of my English and film studies degree when I suddenly started feeling sick.

From one moment to the next, I was too weak to sit in my chair. I felt feverish and nauseous and all I wanted to do was to lie down on the floor right there and then.

I spent ​12 hours a day helplessly watching my children hovering between life and death

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1jaTOm6

Pregnancy, the hardest race of all: 'If miscarriage is so common, why does no one talk about it?'

Getting pregnant gave one runner a licence to relax – then, just before the 12-week scan, she lost the baby. She explains how she coped with her feelings of grief, anger and betrayal, and talks to Olympian Liz Yelling, who went through a similar experience

“There’s no heartbeat,” the nurse said.

Earlier that year, I had finally accepted that my 40th birthday was not going to magically go away. Nature was not to be messed with and time was running out if we wanted to start a family. A couple of months before, chest issues and a health scare forced me to opt out of my big race, a 100km alpine challenge. As a non-running runner, I had developed multiple variations of talking about my health issues – most of which were engineered to make the scare sound like a niggle. I didn’t want to appear weak or fragile and didn’t let the lack of training eat up too much of my mental resolve. However, the night before the race, fear started creeping in as I was staring at my neatly packed race bag: what if my heart gave up in the middle of the night, up in the misty mountains? Was a race a risk worth taking? Through teary eyes, I could also picture a life worth living – one with a cabin in the woods and children running around. With a heavy heart, I resolved to let go of the dream of finishing my first 100km before the adventure of motherhood.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1H8hoM3

Pregnancy at work is a constant struggle against misconceptions

‘The soaring double standards and unrealistic expectations faced by women go turbo when you throw expectant motherhood into the mix’

Last week, I set out to write a piece debunking the common myths about pregnant women and work. Years of hearing background chatter about women “slacking” by attending hospital appointments, or “taking advantage” of maternity packages have left me fiercely defensive, so when I became pregnant, I was determined to be none of those so-called “cliches”. I took on more work than ever before, seeing my impending leave as a glaring deadline, a line by which I had to have achieved everything I possibly could. I continued my life as it was before, no cutting back, no allowances, no apologies. I am still me, I thought fiercely, I don’t need special treatment.

Then something flipped. Staring at my screen, trying to make the article come together and make some vague kind of sense, I realised that I was struggling. I was making no allowances for the fact that my body and mind needed more rest than it did before. The article I was trying to write did raise some important issues about some of the eye rolling and unfair criticism often levelled at pregnant women. I wanted to say that we’re still the same people, with the same skills and talents – don’t assume we’re all struck down with “baby brain”, devoid of ambition and incapable of rational thought. What I had failed to do however, was to acknowledge and silence the voice in my own head, constantly niggling me into chasing the biggest myth of them all: having it all.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1O1qVFY

More babies born to women 35 or older than under 25 for first time

There were 138,592 live births to women under 25 and 144,181 to women 35 and over last year in England and Wales, ONS figures show

More babies have been born to women 35 and over than to those under 25 for the first time.

Newborns to mothers aged 35 or more accounted for 21% of births in England and Wales compared with 20% to those under 25, statistics released on Monday show.

More births in Eng&Wales to women aged 35+ than those aged < 25 for the first time in 2014 https://t.co/5SjEbU15pL http://pic.twitter.com/6v8LNkoEWg

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1WWbhBf

Don't let having kids put you off going to university

Balancing a baby with higher education is a daunting prospect, but support is available and many manage to do both successfully

Over a cup of tea during the latest instalment of The X Factor, my sister announced an idea that I thought she’d long rejected: “I’m thinking about going to university.”

At 31, she missed that post-sixth form stage, where most people decide to embark upon that stressful, yet rewarding path we call higher education. This is because at 18, she chose a different but equally challenging route: becoming a mother.

Related: Student parents: what support should universities be providing?

Once you have a kid and show that you are capable and still focused on education, people stop judging you

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1MpoWqh

Pregnant and hungry? How to eat for two without the stress

Getting sufficient nutrition when pregnant can often be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Amy Westervelt shares her tips

When you’re pregnant, eating becomes complicated. And I’m not even talking about the whole weight gain thing, which is its own boondoggle – apparently, you’re not “eating for two” so much as you’re just having an extra snack a day (about 300 calories). Sigh.

At any rate, there are so many recommendations and rules – enough iron and vitamin A but not too much, some fish are good and some are bad, lunch meat is suddenly dangerous – that it can be hard to keep up. Especially when you’re having a week where all you really want to do is eat jalapenos and cinnamon rolls.

Related: For pregnant women, sleepless nights can kick in long before the baby arrives

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1NF5zOo

Pregnant asylum seekers: Labor says medical advice should trump policy

Concerns are growing over three heavily pregnant women on Nauru and Bill Shorten says they should be brought to Australia if that’s what doctors say

The advice of doctors should be paramount in caring for asylum seekers in offshore detention, Labor leader Bill Shorten has said, as concern over three heavily-pregnant women on Nauru grows.

Related: Doctors plead for pregnant refugee to be sent from Nauru to Australia for birth

Related: Abyan, pregnant refugee on Nauru, will return to Australia for medical treatment

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1PekhgE

The biggest threat to pregnancies: distrust between women and doctors | Kaitlin Bell Barnett

There are many barriers to pregnant women and their doctors being straightforward, but this has to stop – the health of mom and baby depend on it

Open, honest conversation is essential for any doctor-patient relationship. But it is even more essential in prenatal care, when the health of the mother, the health of the pregnancy and the health of the fetus are all at stake, and when decisions about treatment require both doctors and pregnant patients to be well-informed in order to weigh the risks and benefits of various behaviors and treatments.

The fracas last month about an announcement that no amount of drinking is safe during pregnancy – which overlooked evidence that some drinking does not pose substantial risks to the developing fetus and led to accusations that medicine is infantalizing women by assuming they can’t understand the nuances in play – exposes a much larger problem: pregnant patients and their doctors are often less than honest with each other.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1NkZkPJ