I wonder if my child will ever have the innocence I had two months ago, of not having to think about whether the air will kill you
Sitting, nauseous with morning sickness, on a park bench in the bright heat of an unusually hot spring day my partner and I watch children march past us, striking from school:
“What’s the point of an education if we have no future,” their signs say.
Continue reading...We want to hear from women who were discharged from the military for being pregnant – please share your experience
The first woman to have a child while on active duty was US Air Force Captain Susan Struck, who got pregnant in Vietnam in 1970 while working as a nurse. She fought the a regulation which automatically discharged pregnant women from the Air Force – and won.
However, women have been allowed in the US military since 1948. Between then and 1976, when the entire military ended the policy, thousands more women may have been discharged. We want to hear from them.
We want to understand how many women this affected and how this impacted their lives, and we want to tell their stories. We hope to receive enough responses with contact information to continue reporting on the stories of women impacted by this coercive regulation.
Experts say men have a higher risk of reproduction issues if born below average size
Baby boys born small for their gestational age have a greater chance of infertility as adults than those born at an average weight, research suggests.
About one in seven heterosexual couples in the UK experience infertility, meaning a year or more of trying for a baby without conceiving, figures show.
Continue reading...As a doctors’ and nurses’ strike paralyses Zimbabwe’s health system, one woman has delivered 100 babies in her flat
•Photographs by Cynthia R Matonhodze
Six expectant mothers groan through their labour pains in the lounge of a tiny two-roomed apartment in Mbare, Zimbabwe’s oldest township.
Sweating and visibly in pain, a heavily pregnant woman peeps through the window to catch a breath while others lie on the floor.
Continue reading...More than 2,000 women in this age group had babies last year, ONS figures show
The number of women aged 45 and over giving birth is at the highest level since records began 80 years ago, figures show.
The number of live births in this age group rose from 1,619 a decade ago to 2,366 in 2018. In 1938, when records began, there were 2,085 births to women over 45, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Related: The agony and ecstasy of becoming an older mother
Continue reading...Mode of delivery unrelated to whether a baby is overweight as a young adult, study suggests
Delivery by caesarean section does not increase the chance of a baby ending up overweight or obese as a young adult, researchers have found, contrary to previous research.
The authors of the study say their work drew on a huge number of people and more fully takes into account a wide range of possible factors that could explain why babies born by caesarean tend to end up heavier.
Related: Use of caesarean sections growing at 'alarming' rate
Related: Instead of judging women who want a C-section, why not listen? | Rebecca Schiller
Continue reading...Being pregnant is the weirdest thing I have ever experienced. But I broke some kind of code when I wrote about it on social media
When I read the message from the man on Twitter, I felt the instant inching of shame. It wasn’t what you would call rude. If he was asked, he would probably have called it “helpful”.
“You mention you’re pregnant way too much on here these days,” it said. He only came to my account for the “film stuff” – not beyond reason, given I am the editor of a film magazine. Nevertheless, as well as “film stuff”, I also talk about poverty, politics and domestic violence. I have sent a staggering number of tweets about cheese triangles. None of these topics warranted comment or were “too much”. But this was clearly different. I had breached a code.
Continue reading...Gelatine capsule could prevent unplanned pregnancies caused by errors in daily pill use
A contraceptive pill that needs to be taken only once a month has been developed by scientists.
The gelatine capsule, which has so far only been tested on pigs, dissolves in the stomach to a release a six-armed star-shaped polylmer structure that sits in the stomach for at least three weeks and releases synthetic hormones to prevent pregnancy.
Related: Revealed: pill still most popular prescribed contraceptive in England
Related: Long-lasting pill that releases drugs for two weeks a 'game-changer'
Related: From super-pills to second skin: meet the Willy Wonka revolutionising medicine
Continue reading...Unless you’re in a mafia clan, we all want to see crime come down. But different people approach that in different ways. Economists like to think of criminals as getting out their calculators to see if crime pays, so they focus on the impact of deterrence: increasing the severity of punishment or the likelihood of being caught.
Unfortunately, deterrence doesn’t do a great job because criminals don’t care enough about the future to pay much attention to jail terms. And of course everyone knows that reducing crime goes beyond more police or prisons – it’s about people’s roles in society.
Continue reading...Shock and outrage was the widespread reaction to the death of a newborn baby girl at Bronzefield prison in Surrey in September, after her mother (neither have been named) gave birth alone in her cell at night. How could a such a thing have happened in the UK in 2019? Eleven inquiries were launched. A justice minister, Lord Keen, declared the incident “distressing” and “rare”.
So it was extraordinarily disturbing to learn, through a Guardian investigation, that far from being an isolated incident, this baby’s death followed the birth of another child in a cell at the same, privately-run prison earlier this year, and a series of other incidents in which women who went into labour were transferred to hospital late. Bronzefield is the largest women’s prison in Europe, but the questions raised relate to other institutions too.
Continue reading...From pop songs to warm pools, Candice Pires hears six very different accounts of women’s experience in labour
My mum fainted with excitement the day I gave birth. I came home from hospital to find her and my dad waiting outside our flat and, as I got out of the car and they embraced me, she collapsed into our group hug. That’s the story most of my friends and family know about my birth experience. It’s sweet, it’s censored, it deflects from the stitches, the rollercoaster emotions, the stuff that’s harder for everyone to say or to hear. Our birth stories get lost when our newborns are put into our arms. There’s no time to look back as we hurtle headfirst into caregiving. But birth is a miracle, right? Another person grows inside you and then gets out of your body and lives its own life. It is objectively, painfully, hilariously awe-inspiring. As traumatic as it is hopeful. And interesting, too. So why don’t we make more room to talk about it? And why is discussion of the topic generally confined to women who are about to give birth or have recently done so? As part of an ongoing project, I spoke to women around the world to hear different stories that were also in many ways universal. Here are six of them…
She was born to Tears Dry on Their Own by Amy Winehouse
The hospital gave us his hand and footprints
I didn’t want my child taken from me again so we left
I focus on my time at the birth centre as it’s such a positive memory
Continue reading...At least four prisoners at HMP Bronzefield have given birth in potentially unsafe circumstances since 2017
The death of a newborn baby girl in a cell at HMP Bronzefield in September came after a string of concerning incidents involving pregnant women at the prison in the past two years, the Guardian has learned.
On at least four occasions in this period, women held at the privately run Surrey prison have given birth in distressing and potentially unsafe circumstances, including one woman who gave birth in her cell and another who was left in labour at night-time supported only by another pregnant prisoner.
Related: Pregnant in prison: 'I could feel the blood but didn’t put the light on to see'
Continue reading...Polly cried for help when she began bleeding heavily in her cell, but no one answered
Polly was alone in her cell at night when she started bleeding heavily. Doubled over in pain, she rang her bell over and over again, but nobody answered her cries for help. She was four months’ pregnant and terrified she would lose her baby while locked in a cell.
“I tried to sit it out in my cell, all night nearly,” she says. “I got no sleep at all, the pain was awful and I knew without looking the bleeding was worse, I could feel it but I didn’t put the light on to see. I was terrified, I thought: ‘I’m going to lose this baby here in this bloody cell.’
Related: HMP Bronzefield baby death casts light on string of incidents
Continue reading...I’m guessing Stuart Heritage is under 50 to write such a cringe-worthy piece about restricting nude scenes to the over-50s (Shortcuts, G2, 21 November). He even has the bare-faced cheek (get it?) to suggest “If only the middle-aged could do nude scenes, you could absolutely guarantee that those scenes would be vital to the script.” Yes, young actors need to be protected from the pressure to go naked, but really!
Jane Poyner
Bath
• Adrian Chiles is right – it’s best to ask what is needed by food banks (G2, 21 November). Also, don’t just think food but remember toiletries, toilet paper, tissues, sanitary towels, disposable nappies, cleaning products and, yes, seasonal treats. And while you’re at it, write to relevant ministers and your MP to remind them of this national scandal.
Val Harrison
Birmingham
Swedish study shows that induction of labour at or beyond term gestation is safer for babies
Inducing birth for women whose pregnancy lasts to 41 weeks could reduce the death toll from stillbirths, say experts, following publication of the results of an important trial in which six babies died after spending longer in the womb.
The results of the trial in Sweden, revealed last month in the Guardian, may change practice around the world. They confirm what experience and smaller studies have suggested – that there is a small increased risk of stillbirth for babies after 41 weeks’ gestation. The trial was stopped early after five babies of women who were more than 41 weeks’ pregnant were stillborn and one died shortly after birth.
Continue reading...Like Suzanne Moore (G2, 19 November), I too was threatened with induction. Fifty years ago, on maternity leave from my work as a midwife, I was a week overdue with my first baby. I met a woman I had previously cared for, who said that castor oil and orange juice would do the trick. My big baby Gavin was born four hours later. Of course, in Scotland the other advice was for the expectant mother to go for a ride on the top deck of a Glasgow tram-car.
Rose Harvie
Dumbarton
• I agree with Harry Scott on proxy votes (Letters, 20 November). In 2011 my wife and I were on holiday during the referendum on AV. We applied for postal votes and pestered the local authority for ballot papers before we left. The papers duly arrived – after we had got back. Bureaucratic or postal delay deprived us of our votes. So a proxy vote is preferable – assuming you can trust your proxy voter, of course!
Tom Rees
Thames Ditton, Surrey
Report describes ‘toxic’ culture at hospital trust where at least 42 babies have died avoidably
At least 42 babies and three mothers may have died unnecessarily and more than 50 newborns suffered avoidable brain damage at a hospital trust, in what is believed to be the worst maternity scandal in NHS history.
A leaked status update on a review of clinical malpractice in the maternity service of Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust raised concerns about the high number of deaths and injuries there.
Babies left brain-damaged because staff failed to realise or act upon signs that labour was going wrong.
Inadequate monitoring of heart rates during labour and poor risk assessment during pregnancy, resulting in the deaths of some children.
Babies left brain-damaged from group B strep or meningitis, which can often be treated by antibiotics.
A baby whose death from group B strep could have been prevented after the parents contacted the trust on several occasions with their concerns.
Many families struggling to get answers from the trust around “very serious clinical incidents”, continuing to the present day.
A family being told they would have to leave if they did not “keep the noise down” when they were upset after the death of their baby.
Bereaved families routinely being advised “they were the only family” and that “lessons would be learned”. The report said: “It is clear this is not correct.”
Continue reading...People with disability do not need the medical profession’s sympathy. What we do need is an understanding of the value of diversity
It’s the last thing you want to hear when you are expecting your first child.
But there I was with my partner in a public hospital consultation room for the exciting 20-week ultrasound.
Related: The secret to… preparing for a baby if you have a disability
Neither of us would change a thing. Yet this apologetic doctor felt obliged to offer sympathy
Related: New pregnancy guidelines bring back weigh-ins and end routine vitamin D tests
Continue reading...Bananas, nipple stimulation, castor oil: none of these will hasten labour. Instead, soak up your last chance to be alone
My daughter has passed her due date and we are all on tenterhooks for the baby to be born. What a strange space this is. Constantly texting – “Anything?” – is probably not the best idea. I am simply waiting for the call. But still, this is yet another part of a woman’s life in which one is bombarded with weird and contradictory advice.
I thought it would have changed over the years, but no, it’s much the same. Sex. Curry. Various kinds of herbs.
Continue reading...In the 1950s, photojournalist Lennart Nilsson set out to capture the earliest stages of existence. His foetus images seized the public imagination – and sparked a controversy that has raged ever since
In April 1965, Life magazine put a photograph called Foetus 18 Weeks on its cover and caused a sensation. The issue was a spectacular success, the fastest-selling copy in Life’s entire history. In full colour and crystal clear detail, the picture showed a foetus in its amniotic sac, with its umbilical cord winding off to the placenta. The unborn child, floating in a seemingly cosmic backdrop, appears vulnerable yet serene. Its eyes are closed and its tiny, perfectly formed fists are clutched to its chest.
Capturing that most universal of subjects, our own creation, Foetus 18 Weeks was one of the 20th century’s great photographs, as emotive as it was technically impressive, even by today’s standards. And its impact was enormous, growing into something its creator struggled to control, as the image was hijacked by the fledgling anti-abortion movement.
Continue reading...Pregnancy, birth and looking after your child put a huge strain on your body – Nintendo’s Ring Fit can help you reclaim it
While celebrities and Instagram influencers seem able to shed their pregnancy weight within a few months (while cheerfully chronicling the process on an hourly basis) the reality is quite different for most women. I didn’t bounce back, I sort of crawled, and it’s hard not to feel at a loss when you’re so tired even looking at your trainers feels like work.
Between the lack of sleep and having to recover from one of the most physically demanding experiences the human body can go through, just leaving the house is an achievement in itself, let alone exercising. While the NHS recommends waiting until after your six-week postnatal check before doing anything strenuous (longer if you’ve had a caesarean or complicated delivery), experts also recommend regular activity to keep you fit, help your body recover and possibly prevent postnatal depression.
Continue reading...Looking after a woman during what is one of the most devastating events of her life is a huge responsibility. But we can reduce the number of stillbirths
The operation saved a mother’s life. But she will soon wake up from her anaesthetic and learn the heartbreaking news that her baby was stillborn. As the assistant during this operation, I am devastated. It is the first stillbirth I have witnessed as a junior doctor working in obstetrics.
In the sterile, empty corridor of the operating theatres afterwards, I crumble onto the shoulder of a senior clinician and tears punctuated with grief, shock and helplessness flow freely. But the moment is short-lived.
Related: 'She made me brave': Kristina Keneally demands paid leave for parents of stillborn babies
Marrwah Ahmadzai is a resident medical officer working in obstetrics and a change ambassador for Still Aware, the first Australian not-for-profit charity solely dedicated to raising awareness and ending preventable stillbirth
Continue reading...Women who have miscarried have seen their bodies change exponentially, but with no baby to prove why. It can all feel so futile
In recent years, a zeitgeist shift surrounding the way we talk about postpartum bodies has stormed through culture. The preoccupation with “bouncing back” after the birth of a baby, while not completely erased, has begun to fade. In its place, a dialogue borne mainly through social media encourages grace, acceptance, and self-love for women whose bodies have changed in the wake of growing a human. You made a person. Of course things are different. Wear these changes with pride, the messages say.
It’s a well-intended and much-needed societal shift – women needn’t expect themselves to return to their pre-partum body overnight, if ever. But unfortunately there are countless women who may not feel included by these mantras about loving your postpartum body, as they imply one crucial element: a live birth.
Jessica Zucker is a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health and the author of a forthcoming book about pregnancy loss. Sara Gaynes Levy is a freelance writer in New York City covering health, wellness and women’s issues.
Continue reading...Exclusive: study shows women with private cover pay considerably more than those who go to public hospital
The out‐of‐pocket fees incurred by mothers with private health insurance are considerably higher than fees for mothers who give birth in public facilities, according to a new study – a finding that a leading midwifery researcher has described as “shocking”.
The study was led by Griffith University associate professor Emily Callander, who said until now very little was known about out‐of‐pocket expenses associated with maternity care in Australia.
Related: AMA calls for overhaul of private health insurance as young people opt out
Related: Private health insurance review finds reforms failed and industry in a 'death spiral'
Continue reading...I was saddened to read Devika Bhat’s article (Grieving for a baby who did not live, G2, 28 October), which happened to be published the 32nd anniversary of our own stillborn daughter’s birth. I was saddened also that Bhat feels the subject of pregnancy loss is something that is swept under the carpet.
I found that when I talked about my experience, many women and men told me that this had happened to them also. I did draw comfort from feeling I was not alone. I also joined Sands, a fantastic organisation that offers advice and support to families who have lost babies. When stillbirth or any pregnancy loss happens to you it is a tremendous and terrible shock. Grief is very hard and lonely. And when people are pregnant it is not the right time to talk about all the ways a baby can be lost. So many of us when we are expecting a baby or when a woman is pregnant shut our minds to the fact that a baby can be stillborn or die. It is only when this terrible thing has happened that we can talk about this experience. You are not alone. Contact Sands at sands.org.uk or via the helpline on 0808 164 3332.
Helen Jenkins
London
Swedish researchers say proceeding with induction trial would have been unethical
Sweden has cancelled a major study of women whose pregnancy continued beyond 40 weeks after six babies died.
The research was halted a year ago after five stillbirths and one early death in the babies of women allowed to continue their pregnancies into week 43.
Continue reading...I am still devastated but they have avoided me after I said how unfair I felt it was that I had lost my baby
Three years ago, I had a miscarriage and I am still heartbroken. It’s been made harder by my in-laws giving me the cold shoulder. Not long after my loss, my mother-in-law asked if I was uncomfortable seeing my sister-in-law (who was pregnant with her third child). I answered honestly that I was, and added in an unguarded moment that I felt it unfair that she was able to get pregnant while I struggled. Since then they have avoided me. I asked my mother-in-law about it and she said they didn’t want to see me “in case they said something wrong”. My husband thinks they will come around eventually but I feel as if I’m being punished and constantly reminded of what was the saddest time of my life. I really don’t know how to move forward.
• When leaving a message on this page, please be sensitive to the fact that you are responding to a real person in the grip of a real-life dilemma, who wrote to Private Lives asking for help, and may well view your comments here. Please consider especially how your words or the tone of your message could be perceived by someone in this situation, and be aware that comments that appear to be disruptive or disrespectful to the individual concerned will be removed.
Continue reading...We live in the real world where pregnant people are people and shouldn’t be locked in a cage of guilt for nine months
Pregnancy seems like a scary time. Not just because you’re all of a sudden growing a tiny person inside you – although, yes, definitely that – but because there are a million people trying to terrify you with stories about otherwise-innocuous things. Sushi? Before pregnancy, it’s a delightful lunch. Once you’re pregnant, it’s suddenly horrifying poison, only to be eaten if you want to die of listeria or campylobacter or some other scary-sounding disease.
Also, and I cannot stress this enough, growing a tiny person inside you.
Related: Kaz Cooke: women were in the dark about their pregnancies. Now there’s too much advice
Who do we believe? The new study or the previous research?
Related: Pregnancy is the ultimate endurance test. If a man says it, it must be true | Suzanne Moore
Continue reading...Your article (Pregnant women encouraged to drink by alcohol industry, researchers claim, 14 October) suggests that Drinkaware has published information saying “light drinking” in pregnancy is safe. Nowhere on our website are there any such statements. On the contrary, we advise unequivocally that the safest approach is not to drink at all during pregnancy or while trying to conceive, and we refer clearly to the chief medical officers’ guidelines. We also set out in detail on our website the risks of foetal alcohol syndrome. It is suggested that our information “confuses matters by adding: ‘How a baby will be affected depends on how much its mother drinks’”; far from confusing matters, this is simply a statement of fact. We urge anybody in doubt to visit our website to view what we say: www.drinkaware.co.uk
Leigh Lewis Chairman, Drinkaware
Elaine Hindal CEO, Drinkaware
• Your article claims that Éduc’alcool “maintains that ‘[the] risk to the foetus is reduced considerably if you have only one drink every now and then’”. This is actually an excerpt from a joint publication by the Quebec College of Physicians and Éduc’alcool – part of the answer to a very specific question: “Does limited drinking endanger the foetus in the same way [as heavy drinking]?” And the answer continues: “The effects of alcohol are proportional to the amount you drink and how frequently you drink. That’s why abstaining from drinking throughout your pregnancy is the safest choice.”
Continue reading...Labor senator will move a cross-party motion in the Senate to recognise the loss of stillbirth and the coming national action plan
It might seem like a regular Tuesday, but for millions of parents around Australia, it represents beloved children’s birthdays they didn’t live to celebrate.
International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day commemorates the death of a newborn, serving as a day to remember fluttering heartbeats which suddenly stopped.
Related: Stillbirths: Australia's health policies 'failing these babies and their families'
Hi Kristina, we're committed to supporting our people, through all personal circumstances. In addition to our paid leave options we offer a range of additional support mechanisms for people experiencing loss and grief, including miscarriage and stillbirth. Best, ^Matt
Related: The tragedy of stillbirth: 'An unfathomable amount of heartbreak'
Continue reading...Whether you or someone you know has been pregnant or given birth behind bars, we would like to hear from you
The death of a newborn baby after a woman gave birth alone in her cell last month has prompted a wave of concern from MPs, medical professionals and those working with prisoners. Since the Guardian’s initial report on the case, 11 separate investigations have been announced aimed at uncovering how this tragedy came about. A central question is how the woman had come to be without medical or emotional support during her labour and the birth of her baby at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, Europe’s largest female prison.
There are an estimated 600 pregnant women held in prisons in England and Wales, and about 100 babies are born there each year.
Continue reading...Firms and bodies are casting doubt on health advice for expecting women to abstain from drinking
Alcohol firms and bodies they fund are encouraging women to drink in pregnancy – putting their unborn child in danger – by publishing false and misleading information about the risks involved, new research claims.
The alcohol industry is ignoring scientific evidence as part of a drive to “nudge” mothers-to-be into drinking as part of a deliberate strategy to ensure women keep consuming their products because young people are turning away from them, researchers say.
Continue reading...Congratulations to Suzanne Moore for highlighting those who are forgotten in campaigns such as Every Mind Matters (Telling people to jog will not solve this mental health crisis, 8 October). When Jeremy Hunt spoke of the biggest expansion of mental health services in Europe, he referred to expanded provision for people with mild to moderate problems. Those with serious mental heath problems have found that there is no therapy for them, specialist services like assertive outreach have disappeared, and their community mental health teams are too busy managing crises to support them.
I work with people who regularly self-harm and feel suicidal. Because the NHS has a tendency to keep them out of services and ignore NICE guidelines aimed at helping them, they find themselves the subjects of reports such as “No Longer A Diagnosis of Exclusion” and “The Patients Psychiatrists Dislike”. As they are turned away while seeking help and reading “If you feel that life is not worth living, you’re harming yourself or have thought about self-harm, it’s important to tell someone” on the Every Mind Matters website they will rightly feel gaslighted. We are building awareness of difficulties for which there is no help. We are encouraging people to talk while leaving them alone. Despite this, the insult of being manipulative and deceitful is thrown at the people wanting help, not those who promise the earth but whose words are dust. It’s clear that some minds don’t matter as much as others.
Keir Harding
Wrexham, Clwyd
In 20 years, Up the Duff has sold almost half a million copies – in that time the science of pregnancy has changed, but people haven’t
A woman with bird’s nest hair plonked down next to me in a cafe last year, holding a tiny baby with dark chocolate eyes and a fluffball of black hair. She launched into a graphic description of her baby’s recent birth. “… and then Aunty Helen* barged right into the room holding up her phone, taking photos of my hoo-hars”.
I had never seen this woman before, wasn’t aware the word hoo-har could be a plural, and couldn’t have picked Aunty Helen out of a lineup for a cash prize. But somehow she knew I had written the pregnancy book she’d read. In her mind, I’d been through the pregnancy with her, so she was just giving me the exit report. It was lovely.
Related: Pregnancy is the ultimate endurance test. If a man says it, it must be true | Suzanne Moore
Related: We’re a queer couple trying for a baby. Stop asking ‘How does that work?’ | Kat Patrick
Continue reading...Most of us will be familiar with the “12-week” rule – the longstanding social convention that dictates that women mustn’t tell anyone they’re pregnant before the 12-week mark, “in case something happens”. It’s time to talk about the insidious effect it has on women who suffer a miscarriage early in their pregnancy.
An estimated 650 babies are miscarried every day in the UK, with the vast majority occurring during the first trimester. Most of these losses will be suffered in silence, because it’s considered so socially unacceptable to reveal that you’re pregnant before 12 weeks – let alone that you were pregnant, but now you’re not. It’s baffling that in 2019 we seem so wedded to an anachronistic superstition about tempting fate that shames women into keeping quiet and heaps blame on the woman who dares to “tell” and subsequently loses her baby – as though we were still in a bygone era where the stigma of miscarrying could mark you out as cursed. Social mores around the 12-week rule are brimming with contradictions: it’s fine to broadcast the minutiae of our daily lives on Instagram, yet disclosing that we’re pregnant, even just to close friends and family, is somehow transgressive.
Related: How a pioneering study of child health has influenced a generation of parents | Juliet Rix
The 12-week rule perpetuates the notion that early pregnancy loss is something to hide and we shouldn’t make a fuss.
Continue reading...Controversial bill is Emmanuel Macron’s biggest social reform since he was elected in 2017
France’s lower house of parliament has approved a draft law to allow lesbians and single women to conceive children using donor sperm, a move that has set the stage for street protests next month.
At present, only heterosexual couples have the right to use medically assisted reproduction methods such as IVF and artificial insemination. Lesbians and single women who want to have children often travel abroad to fertility clinics for treatment, a situation they say is discriminatory.
Continue reading...Infant mortality rate higher in babies exposed to pollutants such as sulphur dioxide
Babies living in areas with high levels of air pollution have a greater risk of death than those surrounded by cleaner air, a study has found.
It is not the first study to investigate the link between air pollution and infant mortality , but thestudydrew particular focus on different pollutants and its analysis at different points in babies’ lives.
Related: Air pollution harm to unborn babies may be global health catastrophe, warn doctors
Related: UK parents 'worryingly unaware' of damage from air pollution
Continue reading...At a bright green table scattered with toys and juice cups sit Charlotte and her six-year-old daughter Amelia, while two-year-old Isabella races a yellow plastic shopping trolley across the floor. Being here is much more fun than school, announces Amelia, as she shows off the animal plaster that covers her (apparently painless) blood test to a smiling Professor Jean Golding.
The emeritus professor of paediatrics and perinatal epidemiology at the University of Bristol is founder of the hugely influential Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (Alspac), better known as Children of the 90s (CO90s). She has just turned 80 and has just published her latest paper on child health.
Related: Children in UK least happy they have been in a decade, says report
Related: Summer camps for all: no mobiles, no selfies – just the chance to be children | Hazel Davis
Continue reading...Children, pregnant people and the elderly are the most at risk from extreme weather and heat – but the impact is already felt across every specialty of medicine
The climate crisis is making people sicker – worsening illnesses ranging from seasonal allergies to heart and lung disease.
Children, pregnant people and the elderly are the most at risk from extreme weather and rising heat. But the impact of the climate crisis – for patients, doctors and researchers – is already being felt across every specialty of medicine, with worse feared to come.
Continue reading...Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh
Eve Austin is vividly volatile as a schoolgirl adrift over summer holidays in Sophie Ellerby’s slow-burning drama for HighTide
Year 9 is said to be the toughest for schoolchildren. The looming GCSE workload hasn’t yet fixed their focus, bodies seem to change by the day, emotions explode and a no man’s land opens up between childhood and adulthood. Sophie Ellerby’s slow-burning debut play, Lit, mostly unfolds over the summer holidays bridging years 9 and 10 in a Nottingham secondary. These are weeks that may be spent reading Harry Potter at home, as the sheltered Ruth does, or partying in a field off the A52 with an older boy, which is where Ruth’s unlikely new friend Bex finds herself.
Bex Bentley (“Like the car – proper classy”) can light up a room with her smile and her filthy wit, which is frequently deployed in raging retorts to her beleaguered foster mum, Sylvia. Bex, like Ellerby’s play, can be both as fizzy and sour as the Tangfastic sweets she demands from Dillon, her new boyfriend, before she’ll take her top off.
At Omnibus, London, 17-21 September and at Nottingham Playhouse, 24 September-5 October.
Continue reading...That women are still in this position is enraging, says Mariella Frostrup. Know your rights and stand your ground
The dilemma I have a 21-month-old baby and took six months maternity leave. Since returning to work I’ve managed large projects and am delaying trying for baby number two as I don’t want to leave during project delivery. I have high aspirations and I really like my job and enjoy these opportunities. My boss is offering me another big project next year and I feel in a predicament. If I have my “family life” hat on, I don’t want to leave trying for another baby any longer, but if all goes well, I would be pregnant for a large portion of it and my boss wouldn’t give ownership to me – he’d find someone else on the team. My husband thinks we should just go for it. However, it doesn’t have a massive effect on his working life and career. I’d be grateful if there were any reality checks as I feel I’m going around in circles.
Mariella replies Let’s not leap too far ahead. First, can I just say how livid your letter makes me. There’s too much lip service paid to advances in equality for women, generally from those with something to gain by association (ie politicians or business moguls). But whether it’s sexual abuse or harassment, equal pay, investment in female-specific medical research or a fairer division of domestic labour, we still haven’t caught up with the rhetoric. Instead, we dawdle in the doldrums and it’s hard not to surmise that no matter how loud we shout and how many headlines we monopolise with salacious stories of starlets abused, enduring equality remains far from accomplished.
You have every right to this work and no duty to inform your boss
Continue reading...The documentary Seahorse tells the story of trans man Freddy McConnell, whose attempt to conceive and give birth was filmed from start to finish. In this exclusive video for the Guardian, McConnell and Seahorse's director, Jeanie Finlay, discuss the filming process and the challenges of portraying an emotional and unpredictable situation
Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth, is presented by BBC Two and produced by Andrea Cornwell, Jeanie Finlay, Grain Media and Glimmer films
Continue reading...We had planned to get pregnant again when I found the lump in my breast
I was 31, finishing my PhD in ecological physiology and planning ahead for an academic career. Planning ahead like I always did, I figured this was the right time to start a family. I’d hand in my thesis and we’d have two in quick succession – maybe even twins, a boy and a girl – then I’d get back to research. I knew the rules, the game. I wanted two kids, maybe three; I wanted lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor, professor; I wanted to succeed.
We got pregnant straight away, and our daughter was born in September. She was small and didn’t sleep and I couldn’t keep up with feeds, much less research papers. But in late April 2008, as planned, we started trying to get pregnant again.
Related: I was 31 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer – it cost me so much | Becca Leaver
Related: New breast cancer treatment offers hope of longer life to younger women
Continue reading...Ruling comes despite woman, who has bipolar disorder, saying she does not want procedure
A judge has given doctors permission to perform a caesarean section on a woman with mental health problems if she becomes agitated during labour and loses the capacity to make decisions about how her baby should be born.
The woman has been deemed to have the mental capacity to make decisions and has told doctors that a caesarean section is “the last thing she would agree to”, Mr Justice Hayden heard.
Continue reading...A woman who gave birth alone in her prison cell in Denver is suing the city after jail deputies and nurses allegedly ignored Diana Sanchez’s pleas for help during five hours of labour
Continue reading...You report how a pregnant rape survivor experiencing a miscarriage and barely able to stand was unlawfully held in immigration detention which amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment (Home Office pays £50,000 to trafficked woman detained during miscarriage, 20 August).
This case show precisely why the Home Office must heed our advice and that of the medical profession, and actually ban the detention of pregnant women.
Continue reading...When I look at my newborn son, whose eyes crinkle as he smiles, and his older sister who wakes each morning asking to give him cuddles, I find it hard to believe that the NHS would describe our family as a “burden on society”.
But, because I’m a single mother who used fertility treatment and a sperm donor to conceive my children, this is how NHS South East London sees us.
The reality of families that have chosen invasive treatment is that all these children are so very wanted and planned
Related: People seeking IVF are flying blind. Success rates should be public | Stirling Griff
Continue reading...There was a point during labour when I would quite happily have ripped off every scrap of clothing, hunkered down into a squat and moaned like a pilot whale in the middle of a busy Frankie & Benny’s to deliver that baby. You could have thrown 10-inch four-cheese pizzas at my face and served cajun cheese fries off my head and I would hardly have noticed. Forty hours in, I was so beyond my body, so utterly absorbed by the swollen, fuzzy, monumental pressure beneath my skin, so transported by a feeling that wasn’t pain but felt like the tearing open of rock, that I would hardly have noticed if a family of four from Smethwick had turned up and started eating chicken wings in the corner of the birthing room. I have never been more aware of and more occupied by the present moment in my life.
Which is why, when I first read that University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff is offering labouring woman virtual reality headsets during labour, I wondered, why bother? During the last 12 hours of my labour I was so completely transported by my physical experience, as I hung off door handles, appeared to slide up the wall and felt my breath leave my body like a coil of golden thread, that visions of a herd of buffalo or a quick virtual swim through a coral reef would hardly have registered. The idea of walking around my room in that wonderful east London birth centre, utterly naked but for a Daft Punk-style helmet over my pale and sweaty face, colostrum falling across my pulsating orb of a stomach, shuddering with each contraction like a freight train, seemed faintly ridiculous.
Related: What does childbirth feel like? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Nell Frizzell
Continue reading...First there was the baby shower, then came the gender-reveal party. Now parents-to-be are embarking on a new way of celebrating imminent parenthood: the “mother blessing”.
Unlike other baby events, where the emphasis is on gifts for the newborn, these gatherings are focused on nurturing the mother-to-be and wishing her love and luck. Controversially, they are said to derive from the Navajo tradition of “blessingway” – and have been condemned as cultural appropriation.
Continue reading...Amy McKeown had been 12 weeks pregnant when she came round on her bathroom floor, blood pooling on the tiles, unable to move. Ten days earlier, in the spring of 2016, she had gone for her first scan with her husband, Matt, and their two-year-old daughter. At the appointment, a nurse told her she had miscarried; the baby had no heartbeat.
McKeown opted to let nature run its course and give birth, rather than have a procedure (dilation and curettage) or an induced labour. Her stillborn baby was born at home a few days later. McKeown ended up bedridden for six weeks, and haemorrhaged heavily for almost 10, causing frequent blackouts.
Continue reading...Experts are divided over what causes postpartum psychosis, which can leave mothers of newborns detached from reality
When Sarah Hayes’ son Alex was born 24 years ago, she wasn’t just happy – she was euphoric.
“I couldn’t believe Alex was mine. Even after 30 hours of labour, I was full of energy,” she says. “I was so elated, I couldn’t switch off and sleep.”
We need to start asking how the mum is doing. Not just the child
Continue reading...These very intimate details of our lives are always requested as if nothing is at stake. It’s laziness masquerading as curiosity
There are suddenly a lot of babies in my life. Lovely, squishy babies that are loud and ridiculous. Babies that squawk and dribble on pets, bibs and other babies. At mealtimes these babies smash already smashed food with their perfect, tiny fists and yet somehow I find them completely remarkable. I never thought I would be the sort of person who talks this much about babies, about starting a family, about parenting. But after a long, complicated road, my partner and I are happy to have finally decided: we do want kids, we really do.
But for us the choice to procreate has come with a caveat: when the subject of starting our family comes up, people contemplate mine and my partner’s bodies before asking “So how will that work?” There’s usually a brief pause as they remember their manners, following up with: “If you don’t mind me asking.”
Related: It’s a woman’s choice: falling fertility rates are not the business of government | Gaby Hinsliff
Asking about queer lifestyles could be seen as a demonstration of being a good ally, but also – it isn’t being a good ally
Related: After a bruising year, the kindness of strangers made our wedding unforgettable | Kat Patrick
Continue reading...Women in New South Wales have been campaigning for reproductive rights for so long. It’s time politicians listen
It’s been just over two years since my bill to fully decriminalise abortion was defeated in the upper house of New South Wales parliament. The anger and disbelief of those present in the public gallery that day is etched in my memory. Women of all generations were overcome with emotion, outraged that even in the 21st century, politicians would vote to deny them their reproductive rights.
While disappointed, I knew this moment was not the end of our campaign, but an essential milestone in putting this long neglected issue squarely on the political radar. Once the silence was broken, it was inevitable that NSW’s archaic abortion laws would go into the dustbin of history sooner rather than later. That time is now here.
Related: NSW abortion bill: Alex Greenwich hits back at claims of 'unrestricted' terminations
Related: NSW abortion decriminalisation delayed after conservatives resist
Continue reading...From morning sickness to a swollen belly, some expectant fathers say they share their partners’ symptoms. But how is that possible?
Kirsten, 22, knew something strange was happening at about eight weeks into her pregnancy. The classic first trimester symptoms, such as weight gain, food aversions and nausea, were all arriving as expected – but she wasn’t the only one affected.
Her partner, Silas, 23, was experiencing similar physical shifts. He started gaining weight and felt repelled by familiar foods. As Kirsten’s morning sickness took hold, he was struck with equally debilitating nausea. “I felt sick every day for weeks,” he says.
When Amanda is pregnant, I just get emotional and lazy, and eat cake
Continue reading...Sperm counts in western men are falling, and nobody is sure why. But relax – because help is here, with everything from home-testing kits to sperm-freezing
Lads, lads, lads, hate to interrupt, but how’s your ejaculate? Would you struggle to fill half a teaspoon? And your concentration, please: are we talking 20m-plus little swimmers a millilitre? And how’s that motility? Are your spermatozoa wagging their flagella as if they can’t wait to get to that ovum – or listlessly floating around like dead tadpoles in a poorly executed classroom experiment? It’s not that embarrassing, surely?
If you are hoping to fertilise a human egg someday and haven’t given much thought to these matters … well, Big Sperm reckons it is time you did. A wave of tech startups, such as ExSeed, Yo, Trak and Legacy, are offering next-generation home sperm-testing technology and – in some cases – sperm-freezing services. And even if British men aren’t quite ready to start comparing their fertility concerns yet, these are clearly lurking at the back of many minds.
It’s not like heating up a frozen pie from Tesco. You can freeze good sperm, take it out and it can be depleted
Continue reading...With the ‘fertility IV’ drip, the wellness industry hit a new low. Perhaps regulating bodies should take a look
Get A Drip, a wellness company offering “affordable IV vitamin drips and booster shots”, has withdrawn a product it called a “fertility IV” from sale after the British Pregnancy Advisory Service said there was no evidence this “treatment” could improve fertility.
The drip was advertised as costing £250. The only supplements medically recommended for women trying to conceive are folic acid and vitamin D, so you wonder what on earth it contained to warrant such a price tag (£250 would get you 28 bottles of folic acid from Holland & Barrett, incidentally). More to the point, how could the wellness industry have stooped to such a new, exploitative low?
Related: Wellness company pulls £250 'fertility drip' from sale after outcry
Continue reading...Stillbirth Foundation Australia says national stillborn baby toll ‘dwarfs the national road toll’
The federal government has sought advice on covering the cost of autopsies on stillborn babies under Medicare as part of a $50m response to a parliamentary inquiry that found the rate of stillbirths in Australia had been unchanged for 20 years.
The announcement coincided with the release of a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) into the rates of stillbirths and neonatal deaths in 2015 and 2016, which found that rates of perinatal death had remained “relatively constant since 1997”.
Related: 'We could have saved them': Australia's stillbirth rate unchanged for 20 years
Related: The tragedy of stillbirth: 'An unfathomable amount of heartbreak'
Continue reading...Lawyers defending the woman argued the state used a ‘flawed and twisted rationale’ that ‘ignores the law and ignores reason’
An Alabama district attorney said Wednesday she is dropping charges against a woman who was indicted for manslaughter after she lost her foetus when was shot during a fight.
Marshae Jones was arrested last week after a grand jury concluded she intentionally caused the death of her foetus by initiating a fight, knowing she was pregnant.
Related: Alabama: pregnant woman shot in stomach is charged in fetus's death
Continue reading...The forced withdrawal of a vitamin drip injection this week has highlighted the growing exploitation of couples who are struggling to conceive
Of couples trying for a baby, 84% will conceive naturally within the first year, others after a little more time, but the one in seven who continue to have problems are increasingly at the mercy of unproven “treatments” that promise to boost fertility for a hefty price tag.
This week, intravenous wellness company Get A Drip was forced to withdraw a £250 “fertility boost” after the British Pregnancy Advisory Service highlighted the product’s lack of proven benefits. It accused the company of “causing real damage to women’s emotional wellbeing”.
Continue reading...Schoolchildren in Caldas take part in a voluntary project using a rubber doll with built-in software programmed to act like a newborn
Continue reading...More than 61,000 women still smoking last year at time they gave birth, NHS England says
Women who smoke during pregnancy are endangering themselves and their baby, NHS England has warned, as figures show more than one in 10 continue to use cigarettes.
The trend in pregnant women and the stubbornly higher rates of smoking among the least affluent groups in society trouble experts, even though the latest data shows the overall smoking rate is at an all-time low.
Related: Test all pregnant women for smoking, say NHS chiefs
Continue reading...The ludicrous indictment of Marshae Jones for the manslaughter of her unborn child is an extreme example of a disturbing pattern
Marshae Jones was five months pregnant when another woman, Ebony Jemison, shot her in the stomach, in an Alabama town called Pleasant Grove. The 27-year-old Jones survived but the foetus, hit by the bullet, did not. Jemison successfully pleaded self-defence, since her gun was drawn in the middle of a fight that Jones reportedly started and was winning – according to an unnamed police source – until the gun was fired.
Since the shooter was exonerated, it seems odd still to be preoccupied with who started the fight. But this is one of two key elements in the extraordinary case against Jones, who was indicted for the manslaughter of her unborn child. As a pregnant woman, Jones’s alleged decision to provoke an altercation represented wilful endangerment. Since the law in Alabama confers “personhood” on a foetus, Jones was treated as she would have been had she endangered a child. Her lawyers have yet to decide whether or not to build a challenge to that idea of “personhood” into their case.
Related: The US right’s concern for the foetus doesn’t survive the trip down the birth canal | Emer O’Toole
Continue reading...In Alabama, a woman who was shot in the stomach five times and lost her pregnancy as a result has been charged with the manslaughter of her foetus. Marshae Jones allegedly instigated a fight that resulted in the shooting, and, thus, according to a local police source, the “only true victim” was the “unborn baby”. Lieutenant Danny Reid further explained that the foetus is “dependent on its mother to keep it from harm, and she shouldn’t seek out unnecessary physical altercations”.
If Jones can be tried for manslaughter, what other types of pregnancy loss can be treated as serious crimes? If a pregnant woman is hit by a car while jaywalking, is this manslaughter? How about if – despite knowing of the tiny risk – she chooses to eat soft blue cheese and miscarries due to listeria? What if she changes the cat litter and contracts toxoplasmosis?
Related: Alabama: pregnant woman shot in stomach is charged in fetus's death
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued in court that the migrant children do not require soap, toothbrushes, blankets or beds
Continue reading...Through video games, live-action role-playing games and interactive documentaries, developers are challenging the conversation around reproductive rights
The year is 1972. You’re part of an underground network of feminists in Chicago that provide illegal (at the time) abortion services to vulnerable, pregnant people with few options. Despite the risk of imprisonment, and the ways that your personal experiences may not always perfectly align with your activism, you persist.
It’s emotionally complicated. It’s politically fraught. It’s a live-action roleplaying game by Jon Cole and Kelley Vanda called The Abortionists, which requires three players, one facilitator, six hours and a willingness to dig deep into the painful history of reproductive rights in the United States. That history has terrifying relevance in 2019, as numerous states pass laws that put their residents in a reality where abortion is functionally illegal. Based on the real-life work of a 1970s activist group called Jane, it challenges its participants to think about the “internal landscapes” of its players, and how they deal with the larger political and personal landscape of their world.
Continue reading...Marshae Jones was charged with manslaughter, while the woman accused of shooting her walks free, report says
A pregnant woman from Alabama has been charged with manslaughter after she was shot in the stomach during an argument, killing the fetus.
Marshae Jones was reportedly five months pregnant when she was shot by another woman in December outside a shop in Pleasant Grove, near Birmingham.
Continue reading...Results suggest environmental factors could play a role in female reproductive health
Air pollution has been linked to a drop in activity of a woman’s ovaries, researchers have revealed.
Experts say the findings suggest the female reproductive system is affected by environmental factors, although the study does not look specifically at the impact of air pollution on fertility.
Related: 'Artificial ovary' could help women conceive after chemotherapy
Continue reading...Bobbi Jene Smith is excellent as a dancer attempting to reconcile motherhood, performance and family in this promising indie film
The latest triumph from Film London’s Microwave scheme – the BFI and BBC Film’s programme that has produced such worthwhile investments as Hong Khaou’s Lilting and Eran Creevy’s Shifty – is an engrossing close study of a thirtysomething woman caught between two worlds, and two states of being.
American choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith plays Charlotte, a principal in a contemporary dance troupe whose preparations for a major show are dealt two blows in quick succession. First comes a positive pregnancy test, and the realisation the body with which she so forcefully expresses herself will undergo radical change. Second, there’s a call from her family, gathering round the hospital bed of her dying grandmother. A rehearsal-room prologue has already established Charlotte’s remarkable physical flexibility; what follows is a test of mental and emotional adaptability.
Related: Three to tango: the pregnant dancer duetting with her husband
Continue reading...Almost a third of parliamentarians in the House of Commons are women, an all-time high. This success is beginning to highlight the archaic working practices that prevent parliament from being representative of the nation it serves. In a brave and important article for these pages, the Labour MP Stella Creasy outlined her fight to get paid maternity cover for her work as a parliamentarian outside of the Commons. Ms Creasy has suffered repeated miscarriages. She now is pregnant again and says she can no longer keep her public and private lives separate. What she wants is maternity cover for MPs so that, in the autumn, her constituents in east London are not left without representation. This seems a reasonable request that ought not only to be granted to Ms Creasy but also afforded to all parliamentarians.
A woman should not to be forced to choose between being a mother and an MP. For too long Westminster has been run in otherworldly terms. The block to progress appears to be twofold. First, members of parliament are office-holders, not employees. Whereas many employees have line managers, MPs have 75,000 voters to answer to. MPs cannot seek recourse through employment law. They find themselves in a situation familiar to many self-employed people. However, MPs’ obligations are, unlike the self-employed, often largely out of their control. It is also the case that MPs’ hours are not normal working hours and their work is undertaken in the chamber and in their constituencies. Voters’ expectations are high: they demand well-researched replies to their emails and letters within hours, not days. They expect MPs to give up weekends and evenings to attend events and hold surgeries. A minority of MPs might fall short of these assumptions. But most do not.
Continue reading...A screen role as an expectant dancer prepared Bobbi Jene Smith for the real thing. She talks about doing the bump … with a bump
It’s a case of life imitating art. In the new film Mari, Bobbi Jene Smith plays a dancer who discovers she’s pregnant just as she is choreographing her first big show. After the shoot, Smith became pregnant herself, and now must face some of the same challenges to her character.
When I Skype the dancer in her New York apartment, she looks suitably glowing in the laptop’s wan light. “I don’t feel like I’m glowing!” she says. “I’m pretty tired. I can tell my body’s telling me: slow down.”
'I made sure not to do anything to make the audience worry for me'
Continue reading...Where once just not vomiting in my hair was enough, now I’m supposed to wonder how cute my bump looks in my lingerie selfies
By the time you read this I will be days away from having a baby taken out of my body – something that, even as I stare down the barrel of child number three, will never stop seeming extremely weird to me. So this is the last you’ll hear from me for a few months. Who will I rant to every week? Will the baby want to hear my thoughts on politics? If his or her first word is “Trump”, we’ll all know whose fault that is.
I’ve been pregnant a bunch of times now: once with twins, now with one baby, plus assorted miscarriages and an abortion along the way. And what I’ve learned from what I think of as my 360-degree experience of pregnancy is that it is a lot like flying economy on a long-haul flight. It is so all-consuming, exhausting and uncomfortable that you can’t actually believe it will ever be over. But then it is; you walk away and never think about it again, because the ultimate destination is a lot more interesting than the journey.
Related: Breast v bottle? Motherhood is messy enough without picking sides | Hadley Freeman
Continue reading...Struggling to care for a baby is all too common. A new report shows the UK ranks shamefully low on support for parents
The first day my partner went back to work after we’d had a baby, I had to shower, eat breakfast and make my lunch at 4.30am. In the dark. Without waking the neighbours. I had no other choice. My partner’s 90-minute commute and his 7.30am start time meant he had to leave the flat at 6am and wouldn’t be home again until 7pm. Thirteen straight hours of keeping an utterly helpless infant alive, on my own, having never done it before. If I wanted to eat, wash the night’s sweat, breastmilk and mustard baby shit off my body and have something for lunch, then I had to get it all sorted while there was someone else on hand to hold, rock, soothe, bounce or wind our baby.
Related: UK among least family-friendly countries in OECD, survey finds
The support for mothers who struggle to breastfeed is being snatched away from us by government underfunding
Related: You can smell a new mother’s loneliness. Unless you’re the state | Nell Frizzell
Continue reading...The author explains how The Farm, her novel about an upmarket surrogacy service, shows ‘where we are today, pushed forward a few inches’
After being sure that Donald Trump would never be president, then that his travel ban couldn’t last, or that Brett Kavanaugh would never be appointed to the supreme court, Joanne Ramos no longer trusts her own judgment. “In my heart I’m like, ‘There’s no fucking way this is going to happen,’ but it very well could,” she says. Alabama’s near-total ban on abortion has left her fearing the worst: “I still can’t fully believe it, to tell you the truth. The extremity of it is shocking. It’s everything – it’s rape or incest. I can’t believe that we’re here again.”
When the impossible keeps happening, it can feel disorienting and overwhelming: “It’s like, what is up and what is down? … It’s like you’re living in a world that’s been turned.”
Continue reading...League table compiled based on parental leave and childcare levels puts UK in bottom third
The UK is among the least family-friendly of the world’s richest countries, according to a Unicef assessment of policies on child care and parental leave.
While Estonia offers women 85 weeks’ maternity leave at full pay after having a baby, the UK comes out as one of the meanest of the 41 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), placing 31st with an offer of six weeks at 90% of pay and 33 weeks at a lower rate – equivalent to 12 weeks of full pay, according to the data.
Continue reading...Most of us happily upload the most personal information on to the apps we use everyday. But do we really want to share our data with organisations funded by anti-abortion campaigners?
Updating a mental list of what our phones have become today includes, but is not limited to, high street, museum, magazine, therapist, nightclub, funhouse mirror, personal trainer and abusive partner. A chilling recent addition is “crisis pregnancy centre”.
Five years ago the scandalous practices of Britain’s unregulated crisis pregnancy centres were revealed, offices where women who believed they were receiving unbiased advice and referrals for abortion were instead met by anti-choice campaigners who lied to them over tea. They said women who’d had abortions were more likely to suffer psychological damage, more likely to get breast cancer, more likely to miscarry in the future, 70% more likely to split up with their partner, and more likely to abuse their children. “There is a statistical increase,” one counsellor told an undercover Telegraph reporter. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s many people, obviously it’s still a very low percentage, but it just seems like there’s a correlation between the two.” Mmm.
Anti-choice campaigners continue to insert themselves into women’s lives uninvited, like wasps at a picnic
Continue reading...Later in her career, Baroness Warnock, architect of the UK’s fertility legislation, apologised for having “got surrogacy wrong all those years ago”. The 1984 Warnock report should not, she said, have condemned the practice. Her views had been coloured by her experience: as a mother, she would have found it impossible to hand over a baby she had carried.
Maybe it’s a good thing, then, that none of the UK law commissioners who have just set out proposals to make surrogacy easier, is capable of succumbing, as she did, to sentimental prejudice. By great good luck – for the occasional woman has, in the past, talked her way in – the six-strong Law Commission of England and Wales, tasked with modernising the law, is all male. The public can be confident that there was never a chance these reformers could allow an understanding of how it feels to carry a child, to undergo this all-consuming physical upheaval, to give birth, and then to live with the irreversible physical aftermath, to compromise their assessment of whether surrogacy is a gendered industry that this country can, ethically, encourage.
Continue reading...There’s warmth and emotion – if also some awkwardness – in this gentle documentary about a matchmaking service for wannabe co-parents
“It’s like being on Tinder but 100 times more awkward,” explains Saschan, a single 26-year-old who is attempting to find someone to have and raise a child with her. This is an understatement. Pregnant and Platonic meets a handful of people who are, for a multitude of reasons, looking to explore “co-parenting” – that is, an agreement between two parties, romantically unconnected, who want to have a baby. There are 40,000 people currently signed up to co-parenting sites in the UK, which act as a sort of matchmaking service for wannabe parents.
Related: 'Having a child doesn’t fit into these women's schedule': is this the future of surrogacy?
Continue reading...