How Beyoncé’s Instagram pregnancy makes her a modern fertility goddess

The latest images from eight months of fabulous photo ops show the singer at her ‘push party’ wearing west African wax prints and a tie-dye bikini, with a henna tattoo on her naked belly

Pregnancy, so they say, is a magical time. And, in a world where nothing happens unless it happens on social media, that translates into nine months of unmissable photo ops. See Beyoncé’s Instagram feed, updated this weekend with images of the singer, about eight months pregnant with twins, at her “push party” (the same as a baby shower but with partners admitted).

Not for her the demure tent dress to skim the bump. Beyoncé wears a skirt made from west African wax prints fabric, a tie-dye bikini, head wrap with flowers, cowrie shell necklace, an armful of bangles and a henna tattoo on her naked belly. The posts look closer to a David Bailey portrait than the average mirror selfie.

We would like to share our love and happiness. We have been blessed two times over. We are incredibly grateful that our family will be growing by two, and we thank you for your well wishes. - The Carters

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I can cope with drinking advice, but not bad care | Barbara Ellen

Tinkering with the alcohol advice for pregnant women is just a sideshow when baby units are being closed

In times gone by, a British pregnancy could be a distinctly patriarchal affair. Women were told how to proceed by mainly male medics, had their pubic hair shaved for childbirth and were forced unnaturally on to their backs, with their feet in stirrups.

If things went really wrong, they could look forward to forceps, unnecessary caesareans, infected stitches, double incontinence, even death. If they survived, they could be blamed for not being able to breastfeed or, alternatively, badgered into getting their baby to feed from the bottle. Or they could have their postnatal depression misdiagnosed and end up not receiving the care they needed, even having their children taken away from them.

Related: Is alcohol during pregnancy harmful?

As childbirth is still one of the most dangerous things anyone can do, isn’t there a case for women choosing their battles wisely

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Modern tribes: the pregnant oversharer | Catherine Bennett

We were only just thinking it might be a good time when, bam, the stick goes blue. Here, I’ll show you… no?

I’m ravenous, honestly – why doesn’t anybody tell you that being pregnant makes you permanently starving? Oh dear, I’m not sure there’s anything I can eat: I can’t risk the mayonnaise, well, maybe I should just stick to broccoli – no, you have wine, I’ll have hot water. Can you believe how much we all used to drink? No, you two go ahead, I don’t miss it, same with tea and coffee and, interestingly, cake.

That’s an incredible thing about being pregnant – you finally find out what it’s like to be really, really healthy. I’m never going back to drinking myself stupid, when you think about the fertility risks, I was so lucky to get pregnant the first month. We were only just thinking it might be a good time when, bam, the stick goes blue. Here, I’ll show you… no?

Related: Modern tribes: the staycationer

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Pregnant women don’t need a blanket ban on drinking. They need the facts | Jennie Bristow

Giving mothers-to-be advice with no scientific basis is patronising and coercive. Women have the right to see the evidence and make their own decisions

The past 50 years have brought some huge victories for women’s reproductive choice. Access to contraception and abortion allowed sexually active women to avoid or terminate a pregnancy, enabling them to decide whether and when to have children. But these significant gains are limited by both old and new constraints. Women’s access to abortion is limited by law and remains contingent on the prevailing political mood. And women who continue their pregnancies find themselves subject to increasingly shrill and contradictory guidelines about how that pregnancy should be conducted.

Related: Warning pregnant women over dangers of alcohol goes too far, experts say

These new rules involve bowing to expert advice regardless of your own feelings, knowledge or circumstances

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Warning pregnant women over dangers of alcohol goes too far, experts say

Experts claim some mothers-to-be may even be having have an abortion due to worry about damaging their unborn child by drinking alcohol

Women are being unfairly alarmed by official guidelines that warn them to avoid alcohol completely during pregnancy, experts claim.

Some mothers-to-be may even be having an abortion because they are worried they have damaged their unborn child by drinking too much, it is claimed.

Related: Yes, we must listen to experts, but which ones? | Sonia Sodha

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Scanxiety: why private baby scans are on the rise

Many pregnant women are paying for extra ultrasounds, for reassurance or for ‘souvenir scans’. But does multiple scanning pose a risk to the unborn child?

Anxiety may be the scourge of our times, but it now appears we have “scanxiety”, too. According to a study of 2,000 women, the phenomenon of pregnant women paying for extra private scans is on the rise. Almost a third paid for scans during pregnancy, with 36% citing anxiety as a reason. The NHS offers routine scans at 12 and 20 weeks, although more may be given for medical reasons.

“For the last 20 years, it’s been quite common for women to access private facilities for scans,” says Dr Christoph Lees, a consultant in foetal and maternal medicine and obstetrics and a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. “Sometimes it’s simply for reassurance, or because they don’t feel they’re getting sufficient scans on the NHS. Sometimes they’re accessing a service that isn’t routinely provided, such as 3D and 4D scans. Many are what you might call souvenir scans.”

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Yes, we must listen to experts, but which ones? | Sonia Sodha

Heeding professionals is right, but what do we do when ideologies clash?

Britain has had enough of experts; so said Michael Gove during last summer’s Brexit campaign. It was a preposterous thing to say and I suspect Gove knew it. When it comes to matters of life and death, we crave the reassuring wisdom of experts. Even those of us who are frantic Googlers of symptoms deep down just want to be firmly told what the problem is and advised on the best course of action.

The very nature of what frontline professionals in our public services do – diagnosing us, delivering our babies, teaching our children – means they have enormous power over our lives. But what if they are not quite as expert as we would like to believe? After all, they’re only human. Insights from psychology tell us that we rarely make decisions based on rationally weighing up all the evidence – we simply don’t have the time. Instead, our brains rely on short cuts: gut feeling and instinct drive many of our choices, opening the door to the influence of personal values and irrational bias.

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Women aren't meant to talk about miscarriage. But I've never been able to keep a secret

Because of this silence, people don’t realise how traumatic it is – until it happens to them. I certainly didn’t

Last Friday, on a bright blue day, I took a train to south-west London. If you never go that way, and I generally don’t, I recommend it as a pleasant day trip: all those green spaces and cute patisseries and shops that only sell wraparound cashmere cardigans. I did not have time to linger, though, as I needed to get back to the office. But first I had to pick up a bag of ashes so small I could have put it in my jeans pocket.

Last month I had a miscarriage. I’d gone in for a scan that morning – another bright blue day – excitedly expecting to find out the gender of the baby. “Let’s see what we have,” the technician smiled. Unable to understand what I was looking at on the screen, I instead watched her face and I knew at once, as surely as you know the sound of a door slamming shut.

Related: 'There was no child, I told myself': life and marriage after miscarriage

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Royal Institution's new director Sarah Harper: we must show gold standard for science

Second woman to be appointed in RI’s 218-year history identifies role, in era of fake news, to supply trusted data across many issues from health to climate change and robotics

When Michael Faraday ran the Royal Institution, one of the oldest scientific organisations in the world, the 19th-century chemist took time to pile into public discourse. He ranted about dangerous pollution in the Thames. He debunked the fad of table-turning and blamed the educational system for allowing such nonsense to thrive.

Nearly 200 years later, scientists are still tackling bad thinking and big problems. For Sarah Harper, an Oxford gerontologist who takes the helm proper at the RI on Tuesday, the rise of denialism, fake news and alternative facts, combined with rapid advances in research that raise deep questions for society, mean that a grasp of science, and all its uncertainties, has never seemed more vital.

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