Launch of inquiry follows discovery of 11 more suspected cases of birth abnormalities
France has launched a nationwide investigation into babies born with missing upper limbs after the discovery of nearly a dozen new suspected cases.
The national health agency had initially dismissed claims that a cluster of seven infants born with abnormalities in the Ain area near the Swiss border was abnormally high.
Continue reading...A new policy has been implemented in Australian women’s basketball aimed at breaking down the barriers that pregnancy and childcare had previously presented for players.
A parental and pregnancy care policy was announced by the Australian Basketballers’ Association and the Women’s National Basketball League on Wednesday, providing players in the national league access to the full provision of a qualified carer or player-elected support personnel for all away trips.
Related: Sold-out grand finals sign of WNBL's strength – and a tantalising match-up
Continue reading...Senator to give speech detailing decade-long battle against sexism in politics
Greens branch members attempted to overturn Sarah Hanson-Young’s preselection to the Senate after learning she was pregnant, the South Australian senator says, in a speech detailing her decade-long battle against sexism in politics.
In a speech to be delivered to the Women in Leadership summit in Adelaide on Wednesday, Hanson-Young, who was the youngest person ever elected to an Australian parliament, said her entry into politics in 2007 came with a rude awakening when she simultaneously discovered she was pregnant.
Related: Sarah Hanson-Young 'horrified' after police officer charged over threatening call
Continue reading...Actor speaks out about lack of progress for working mothers in wake of #MeToo movement
The actor Carey Mulligan has spoken out about the limited progress for working mothers in the film industry since the widespread reckoning of the #MeToo movement and has called for on-set childcare to help parents.
She praised the introduction of codes of conducts for on-set behaviour in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal, but argued the lack of childcare was preventing talented people from doing their jobs.
Continue reading...Study of nearly 150,000 pregnancies in Canada finds the safest interval between births is 12 to 18 months
Having babies less than a year apart poses risks for both mother and child, whatever the woman’s age, according to new research.
The authors of a big study of nearly 150,000 pregnancies in Canada say the safest interval between births is 12 to 18 months. They suggest women over the age of 35 who may not want to wait long between one pregnancy and the next should be counselled that waiting 12 to 18 months is safest for both them and their baby.
Related: Premature birth risk could be measured by blood test – study
Continue reading...The new version of Sondheim’s Company suggests that 35 is make or break for women – enough already
I am one of those people who generally dreads going to the theatre, mainly because I like to eat supper after 6pm but before 11pm. But I made an exception last week and went to director Marianne Elliott’s delightful new take on Company, Stephen Sondheim’s musical about single versus marital life. (I am also one of those people who loves Sondheim, and being someone who avoids the theatre but loves Sondheim is like loving to swim but hating the water. Welcome to my pain.)
In the original version, Bobby, a 35-year-old man in New York, frets about his perennially single status, while all his married friends urge him to commit. The first time I saw Company, I was a 33-year-old woman living in New York and as single as it was possible to be without being an actual nun, and, as much as I loved the musical, I left feeling furious. (Loving a musical and also feeling furious about it: truly, my pain never ends.) Was I really supposed to worry about a single 35-year-old man? I should probably mention here that I’d recently gone on a date with a single 35-year-old man who told me he normally only dated twentysomethings, but that for decrepit old me he’d made an exception. So forgive me, Sondheim, if my sympathy was in short supply.
Related: Who picks the fashion ‘classics’? A 6ft woman with time to burn
Continue reading...Women are often expected to carry on without recognition for the time it takes to heal - physically and emotionally
My personal decision to abort was not a straightforward one – I had to consider a whole range of complicated factors. I am decidedly pro-choice, but that stance didn’t make the process itself easier. My abortion was traumatic. A large part of me felt attached to that potential child and I was consumed by grief and crippling depression for months following. There is little to no non-religious space to discuss feeling a sense of loss post-surgery.
Related: Please, doctor, don't call my lost baby a 'product of conception' | Katy Lindemann
I lost my partner, my enthusiasm for life and ultimately a job I cherished
Related: Queensland parliament votes to legalise abortion
Continue reading...Team at London’s University College hospital performed the surgeries to treat spina bifida
Weeks before they even took their first breaths, two babies had their spinal cords delicately repaired by surgeons, in the first operations of their kind in the UK.
The spina bifida surgeries were successfully performed by a team at University College hospital in London this summer on two babies while they were still in the womb.
Continue reading...The comedian posted a photo on Instagram showing the heads of herself and her husband edited onto the bodies of Meghan and Prince Harry
Amy Schumer has announced she is pregnant with her first child.
The actor and comedian posted a photo on Instagram showing the heads of herself and her husband, chef Chris Fischer, edited onto the bodies of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the latter of whom is also expecting a child.
Related: Amy Schumer and Hollywood’s ‘inner-beauty’ problem
Related: Julia Davis: 'I'm worried there's going to be a backlash'
News pic.twitter.com/UBe1ZQq5Yz
Continue reading...The cases concentrate in Loire-Atlantique, Ain and Brittany but no cause has been found
France’s health minister has announced a new investigation into the births of several babies with upper limb defects in various parts of the country in recent years, saying it was “unacceptable” no cause had been found.
Health minister Agnès Buzyn said she and her environment counterpart François de Rugy had decided to look more closely at what caused 14 babies to be born with stunted or missing arms since 2007, two weeks after health authorities said they had failed to find an explanation.
Related: Thalidomide 'caused up to 10,000 miscarriages and infant deaths in UK'
Continue reading...Premature births among Latinas increased from 7.3% to 8.4% according to New York City Health Department research
Latina immigrants in New York City have seen a spike in premature births – an increase that researchers with the city Health Department say may be tied to the shock win by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The study released Wednesday by the Health Department and Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health compared births in the city in the months before Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, from September 2015 through July 2016, with births in the months after he was inaugurated, from January to August 2017.
Related: ‘Every day brings some new trauma’: keeping calm in an anxious world
Continue reading...I agree with your columnist Chitra Ramaswamy that Keira Knightley should not be criticised for being open about how vaginal childbirth can be messy, painful and mutilating (The attacks on Keira Knightley are misogynist, G2, 10 October). The suffering of childbirth is made acceptable by its glorification, in the same way that soldiers are fooled into volunteering to go to war. Now that more women in our country have their babies later, and the babies are getting bigger, the suffering caused by a difficult birth is on the increase.
As a GP doing postnatal checks on my patients, I see fewer having their first baby who haven’t had a major complication such as a prolonged labour, shoulder getting stuck, bad tear, retained placenta, postpartum haemorrhage or post-traumatic stress disorder. An awful lot go through a full labour then still end up with a caesarean section. It would seem sensible if more elective caesarians were carried out, say if the baby’s estimated birth weight was over 4kg for a first baby, but this is unacceptable to the mindset of our current establishment of midwives and obstetricians.
Continue reading...Of course the planned fortification of flour with folic acid will help – where the cause of spina bifida is nutritional deficiency of folic acid (All UK flour to be given folic acid additive, 15 October). However, it can not conceivably prevent the defect where it is due to genetic factors – two defective genes from two parents coming together.
In some parts of the world consanguineous marriages are commoner than in others. An academic paper in the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition (Vol 32, No 2, June 2014) by Nazish Jabeen and Sajid Malik from a university in Pakistan is useful reading. The practice has nothing to do with religion. It is purely “custom and practice”.
Continue reading...Ministers reject food industry objections in major U-turn over compulsory fortification
All flour will be fortified with folic acid after ministers swung behind a plan that medical experts believe will stop hundreds of babies a year from being born with birth defects, the Guardian can reveal.
Ministers will order the introduction of automatic fortification within weeks after being convinced by their own advisers that the policy will reduce the risk of babies developing spina bifida and other conditions that involve severe disability or death.
Continue reading...Manage your expectations, check hospital access routes – and prepare to be a novelty
Find professionals who understand that your disability isn’t the first thing about you – that you’re a pregnant woman first and foremost. Chances are, you’ll be under a consultant’s care – their support is important. A pragmatic, helpful and sensitive midwife is also critical. Find out if the same midwife can be with you during the birth.
Go to the hospital to check access routes if you use a wheelchair. When the time comes, check you can stay on the labour suite, even if you’re not ready to give birth – endless logistical to-ing and fro-ing is energy-sapping. Find out if you can labour and deliver your baby in water; you may find it easier to get into positions for a calmer birth.
Related: The secret to… returning to work after having children
Continue reading...I wanted to thank Katy Lindemann for writing about her painful experience of miscarriage (How dare they call my lost baby a ‘product of conception’, 11 October). After suffering a miscarriage very recently, I have been struck by a number of things, as well as working out how to cope with the pain and anxiety this has brought. The language used in my experience was largely the same as Katy’s; mine was classed as an “unviable” pregnancy, which felt so cold and inhumane, and certainly did not represent how I felt about my pregnancy. As Katy pointed out, your “unviable” pregnancy is everything you have always dreamt of and hoped for. There is so much work to be done around how, as a society, we deal with and talk about early pregnancy, pregnancy loss and infertility, to help women and their families dealing with these issues every single day, often silently.
Rosie Toothill
York
• Thank you, Katy Lindemann, for sharing your experience of early pregnancy loss. Sadly, your story mirrors the experience of my wife and I last year, having suffered two miscarriages in close succession. We too were shocked and upset at the change of language from “baby” to “product” once a heartbeat could no longer be detected. We also found sharing a crowded waiting room with expectant parents all of whom were at different stages of the early pregnancy rollercoaster particularly unhelpful, especially when one mum-to-be began sharing the good news of a positive scan to her nearest and dearest by phone.
Continue reading...Market predicted to be worth $50bn by 2025, despite scandal around app Natural Cycles
Digital contraceptive techniques have been on the receiving end of bad press recently after Swedish company Natural Cycles was described as “misleading” by the UK’s advertising body, and a number of women complained about becoming pregnant while relying on the app.
But that hasn’t stopped the industry from thriving, with the launch of Moody Month, which tracks hormones and menstrual cycles , and Flo Health, an ovulation calculator, being valued at $200m in the same week, suggesting there is still massive demand among women for products which are invariably described as femtech.
Continue reading...Australia-New Zealand agreement to mandate labels that were previously voluntary
Alcohol producers will be forced to label their products with warnings relating to the risks of drinking during pregnancy in an agreement reached by Australian and New Zealand ministers.
The labels will be developed by Food Standards Australia New Zealand in consultation with the alcohol industry, and will include a pictogram and warning statement. Labels have previously only been applied by the industry on a voluntary basis since 2011.
Related: Alcohol industry subverting science to prevent greater regulation, study finds
Related: Australian and UK alcohol industry lobbyists are hijacking policy – study
Continue reading...In some countries more than half of births now involve the procedure, experts say
The use of caesarean sections to deliver babies has reached epidemic proportions, say experts, with the procedure growing in use at an “alarming” rate.
While caesarean sections can be a crucial intervention for the safety of the mother and child, for example if the baby is showing distress or if the mother is bleeding before birth, experts say the procedure would account for about 10-15% of births if only used when medically necessary.
Related: 'A third of people get major surgery to be born': why are C-sections routine in the US?
Related: There is nothing wrong with a C-section – so let’s quit judging other mothers
Continue reading...The grief of losing a pregnancy can be compounded by language. More openness and sensitivity is needed
“There’s your baby’s heartbeat,” said the sonographer, pointing to the screen as we listened to the thump-thump-thump that was the most magical sound I had ever heard. A week later, the next scan showed that this beautiful twinkling heartbeat had gone, and our baby had died. I couldn’t face having to wait to pass the pregnancy sac, so I opted for surgery: a procedure called an ERPC: “evacuation of retained products of conception”.
I remember thinking that “evacuation” sounded like something you’d have done to your bowels. “Products of conception” might be the correct clinical term, but to us, as a grieving couple, that was our dead baby: our much longed-for baby, who was already loved and anticipated as a unique human being, not simply an object to be discarded.
Related: What you should say to somebody who has miscarried – and what you shouldn’t | Janet Murray
Related: I had eight miscarriages – pregnancy can be a scary place
Continue reading...Watchdog investigating claims at least four British doctors are facilitating gender selection
The UK’s fertility regulator has launched an investigation into claims that at least four British doctors are helping couples to choose the sex of their babies.
Hundreds of couples are allegedly paying up to £14,000 for a sex selection service, despite the practice being illegal under UK law for non-medical reasons.
Related: Designer babies: an ethical horror waiting to happen?
Continue reading...Try to understand what’s going on, says Annalisa Barbieri, and take control where you can
I am 35, married, with a five-year-old. I have been trying to get pregnant for three-and-a-half years. In that time, I have had a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, for which I received nonsurgical intervention.
My husband has come around to the fact that it may never happen for us again. He seems to accept we may be a family with just one child, and I want to be able to accept that, too. I know it’s out of my control, but I can’t stop worrying. I feel that trying to get pregnant has made me anxious and controlling, and taken much of the joy out of our sex life. I don’t want to be like this and I’m sure the anxiety isn’t helping when it comes to our chances of getting pregnant.
Related: My friend has had an affair. How can I help her if I think she’s done wrong?
Continue reading...UK-sold Clear & Simple digital pregnancy tests made in July 2017 have returned false positives
Consumers have been urged to check that they do not have one of a batch of faulty pregnancy tests, amid fears that they could incorrectly show a positive result.
The makers of Clear & Simple digital pregnancy tests said there had been a “small number” of false positives, all related to a batch of the kits made in July 2017.
Continue reading...Katie Rice’s documentary sensitively approaches a tough subject while listening to the concerns of midwives and obstetricians
The UK’s high rate of stillbirth – one in 200 pregnancies, among the most elevated in the developed world – is generating a growing number of documentaries aiming to initiate a wider dialogue. Debbie Howard’s film Still Loved (2015) spoke to Midlands parents in the process of grieving or moving on; now director Katie Rice provides three case studies with varying outcomes, released – as was Howard’s film – to coincide with baby loss awareness week.
The films share certain tropes: sobering first-person testimony, a poignant emphasis on artefacts that make such loss palpable (photos, condolence notes, those unworn booties) and understandably brief running times, recognition that this is a tough subject to talk about and a small, precious offering of hope.
Continue reading...