How egg freezing got rebranded as the ultimate act of self-care

The procedure has gotten a makeover thanks to fertility startups, but some doctors are pushing back on efforts to appeal to younger women

When Valerie Landis underwent her first round of egg freezing in 2015, she was younger than many of the other patients. Landis, a healthcare sales professional, was 33 at the time. Between the pressures of work, which often required traveling internationally for business, and a breakup a few years prior, she was drawn to the idea of buying herself more time to decide if she wanted to become a parent.

Back then, “the lowest age I heard was 37”, Landis said. “Now there are people as young as 25 are freezing their eggs. The whole landscape has shifted.”

Related: The reverse birth tourists: US women seek cheaper countries to have babies

There are people as young as 25 are freezing their eggs. The whole landscape has shifted

I still have my eggs frozen [in storage]...I do want to hold on to them. Who knows what life looks like?

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A quarter of adopted UK children affected by drinking during pregnancy

Survey by Adoption UK finds 17% of adopted children are suspected of having foetal alcohol spectrum disorder

One in four adopted children are either diagnosed with or suspected to have a range of conditions caused by drinking in pregnancy, according to a recent survey of nearly 5,000 adopters in the UK.

Among the adopters surveyed by the charity Adoption UK, 8% of children had a diagnosis, and a further 17% were suspected by their parents to have foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), the neurodevelopmental condition characterised by difficulty with impulse control, as well as behavioural and learning difficulties.

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Only 23% of NHS trusts letting birth partners stay for whole of labour

Exclusive: data on Covid rules for England, Scotland and Wales also shows 40% of women go to 20-week scan alone

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Three-quarters of NHS trusts are not allowing birth partners to support mothers throughout their whole labour, despite being told by the NHS and the prime minister that they must urgently change the rules around visiting, the Guardian can reveal.

According to data collected for 144 trusts in England, Scotland and Wales by an independent doula and analysed by the Guardian, half of the trusts and health boards covered by the research were restricting partners from attending at least two of three key moments: the 12-week scan, the 20-week scan and the duration of labour.

Related: 'I started shouting at the midwives': the stress of giving birth under lockdown

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Drinking during pregnancy is not without risk | Letters

David J Wilson, John Freeman and Phyll Hardie respond to an article by Zoe Williams

Zoe Williams could not be more wrong (Bilge, booze and misogyny: why I’m outraged by a new idea to police pregnant women, 18 September): drinking in pregnancy is everyone’s concern. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) consultation document provided compelling arguments explaining why society should be concerned about foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

For example, a systematic review and meta-analysis in the Lancet in 2017 revealed that the UK was among the five countries with the highest (41.3%) estimated prevalence of alcohol use during pregnancy. According to Nice, this results in an annual societal cost of over £2bn to support victims of FASD. Williams’ article simply perpetuates the debate about how much alcohol causes birth defects, when the advice should always be based on the argument that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”.
David J Wilson
Professor of medical education, Cardiff University School of Medicine

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Bilge, booze and misogyny: why I'm outraged by a new idea to police pregnant women

Perhaps I should be more shocked by the latest proposal to control women. But what else can you expect in this supremely sexist era?

Last week I got an email from a reproductive rights campaigner I have known, liked and admired for many years. “Good morning,” it began. “I thought this would make you cross.” She went on to describe a fresh frontier in the war against pregnant women: that any woman drinking anything during pregnancy, even a glass of wine in the first week of it, would have that marked on her medical records, which would then be transferred to her baby’s records. It was a Nice idea (for clarification, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – this is not a nice idea), being put out for consultation.

It did make me cross. Not because of the gross infringement of women’s privacy – it would probably be illegal to transfer a woman’s health records over to those of her child – and complete obliteration of trust between a prospective mother and her midwife, but because this is just bilge. Welcome to the age of bilge, where mindless hysteria accrues around risks for which there is no evidence; where experts are disregarded in favour of fanatics; where real and demonstrable threats to pregnant women – which come mainly from underfunded services – are ignored in preference for finger-pointing; where no explanation is ever more complicated or less divisive than: “People (especially women) are weak.” But far more than cross, I felt nostalgic. Because I remember a time when this unusual approach was limited to pregnant women, and now it’s our whole politics.

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Why are celebrities arguing over shapewear? | Arwa Mahdawi

Kim Kardashian West, Jameela Jamil and Chrissy Teigen are having a three-way altercation about control pants and pregnancy

What happened? I thought the pandemic had prompted a collective realisation that uncomfortable clothes are not to be tolerated. I thought we were all going to burn our skinny jeans and emerge from lockdown in loungewear. Alas, it seems that, instead of embracing baggy bliss, some pregnant people are squeezing themselves into the modern equivalent of corsets.

If there is a feminist-adjacent argument online, the odds are high that Kim Kardashian West, Jameela Jamil or Chrissy Teigen will be at the centre of it. This particular incident stars all three. To cut a long and tedious story short, Kardashian West jumped into the growing market for “shapewear” – control pants that squish your squidgy bits – last year. This caused a ruckus when it happened because she named her brand “Kimono”, but, after lots of outrage and free PR, she renamed it Skims. Now the enterprising Kardashian West has come out with a line of Maternity Solutionwear. Jamil, an actor who has built a brand on getting offended by Kardashian shenanigans, immediately started bemoaning the conversation around pregnancy shapewear, noting that she wished we could focus “on the inside of a pregnant body, not the outside”. At which point Teigen, who is expecting a third child, jumped in to say that, actually, pregnancy shapewear isn’t about looking small, but about support and pain relief. Kardashian West then explained: “Skims maternity line is not to slim, but to support.”

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Plans to record pregnant women's alcohol consumption in England criticised

Pregnancy charities suggest the guideline could fall foul of data protection regulations

Pregnant women’s alcohol consumption could be recorded on their child’s medical records under plans for England being considered by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), prompting criticism from pregnancy rights advocates.

The proposal from Nice has been drawn up as part of a consultation to cement guidelines for doctors to diagnose and prevent foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

Related: Pregnancy warning mandatory on alcoholic beverages within three years

Related: Alcohol industry 'puts pregnant women at risk', researchers say

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Genome editing for heritable diseases not yet safe, report states

Scientists warn embryos that have had DNA edited should not be used in pregnancies

Powerful genome editing procedures that could prevent parents from passing on heritable diseases to their children are far from ready for clinical use, and must be proved safe and effective before nations permit them, leading scientists warn.

In a major report on the procedure, an international commission said no human embryos that have had their DNA edited should be used to establish pregnancies until a substantial body of work shows genetic faults can be corrected precisely and reliably with no harmful consequences.

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Pregnant women in hospital with Covid-19 may not show symptoms, study finds

Analysis shows that pregnant women may be at a higher risk of needing admission to an ICU

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Pregnant women in hospital with coronavirus are less likely to show symptoms and may have a greater risk risk of being admitted to an intensive care unit than non-pregnant women of similar age, a study has found.

The analysis, which encompassed 77 studies conducted globally and was published in the British Medical Journal, looked at 11,432 pregnant women admitted to hospital and diagnosed as having suspected or confirmed Covid-19.

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