'I still feel mutilated': victims of disgraced gynaecologist Emil Gayed speak out

Women treated at hospital in Taree come forward to tell of botched operations, high-handed dismissal of complaints and long-lasting trauma

Rhiannon Tull knew one thing when she was pregnant with her first child. She did not want her gynaecologist to be Dr Emil Shawky Gayed. Gayed (pictured below) had a reputation in the regional town of Taree on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, where he worked as a visiting medical officer, consulting in his private rooms as an obstetrician and gynaecologist, and scheduling women in for surgery at the Manning Rural Referral public hospital.

I felt put down and basically didn’t feel there was anyone I could trust

I realised that meant I had to have been pregnant at the time of my surgery

I thought it was me, that I really didn’t know how to do this pregnancy thing

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Appetite is mysterious: let's learn from pregnant women rather than calling them greedy

New research has hinted at the psychology behind weight gains during pregnancy. Yet public health messages can’t seem to get beyondbeing patronising or punitive

One third of pregnant women “lose control” of their eating, according to a researcher at University College London, and gain an additional 3.7kg, a figure that made me laugh out loud, because if you can count them in single digits and they’re not stones, such weight gains don’t know the meaning of “losing control”. The researcher, Nadia Micali, said something more interesting about her findings than you’ll usually find in the overeating business: “We often imagine that just telling women: ‘Don’t eat for two, don’t eat for two,’ is going to be enough. But loss of control needs to be treated slightly differently in a more psychologically acute way.”

Related: The secret to... rediscovering sex after having a baby

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An abortion at the age of 23 gave me freedom

During the Irish referendum, there was a lot of talk about abortion in extreme cases, but some – like mine – are banal but necessary

When I was 23, my life forked. Until then, it had felt like one of those LA freeways with half a dozen lanes: I had options in terms of which path I took, but they were all going in the same general direction.

I was barely making a living in a job I enjoyed, and living in a dump with friends I adored. Life was wide open. Then one day I took a pregnancy test and suddenly there were two directions for me: have the baby or don’t. I cried on the bathroom floor with my best friend, but the tears were out of embarrassment that I had been so careless. They weren’t out of fear. It was years before I appreciated what a privilege that was.

Related: Help! I think I’m turning into Ben Affleck | Hadley Freeman

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