pregnancy: يوليو 2021

الخميس، 29 يوليو 2021

Pregnant women urged to get Covid jab amid rise in hospital admissions

New data finds unvaccinated expectant mothers more at risk, with Delta variant linked to more severe symptoms

England’s top midwife is urging expectant mums to get the Covid-19 vaccine as soon as possible, as new data suggests a worrying rise in Covid-19 hospital admissions among unvaccinated pregnant women in the UK.

There is also evidence that the Delta variant poses a significantly greater risk to pregnant women than previous strains.

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الثلاثاء، 27 يوليو 2021

Alabama is prosecuting a mom for taking prescribed medication while pregnant | Moira Donegan

At least 18 states require that doctors who know about substance use during pregnancy turn their patients in. A woman could be arrested just for being honest with her doctor

A 36-year-old Alabama woman is facing felony charges for filling a doctor’s prescription. Kim Blalock, a mother of six, suffers from severe back pain caused by degeneration of her spinal discs. “There are days that I can’t get up,” Blalock has said. Her condition worsened over the years following surgeries and car accidents. An orthopedist prescribed hydrocodone, an opiate pain killer, and she started using it occasionally when the pain became too much to handle. She stopped taking her prescription during her most recent pregnancy, but as her bump grew, the weight added pressure on her back, and the pain worsened. Midway through her third trimester, she couldn’t take it any more, and refilled her prescription. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy soon after, this past September. Out of caution, she told her doctor about medications she had taken during pregnancy – including the hydrocodone. That’s where the trouble started. After her son tested positive for hydrocodone, an investigation was launched. The state child services agency found no wrongdoing, but the local police and district attorney pressed on. Two months after she gave birth, seven armed officers raided her house, terrifying her children.

For many women, this will be the takeaway: don’t trust the doctor

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

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الأربعاء، 21 يوليو 2021

Covid restrictions on women giving birth are causing heartbreak. We need to be more humane | Hannah Dahlen

I’ve been studying the effects of restrictions on pregnant women since last year. Some are too harsh

Having a baby is one of the most significant life events in the human spectrum of experiences.

While it is a physical experience, it is also a profoundly social, psychological, cultural, and spiritual experience. This is something that is forgotten at times by busy health providers, but never by those giving birth and their partners.

Hannah Dahlen, AM, is a professor of midwifery at the school of nursing and midwifery at Western Sydney University

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الثلاثاء، 20 يوليو 2021

Pregnancy has taught me to relinquish control. So when lockdown arrived, I absorbed the shock | Léa Antigny

What pregnancy has also taught me so far is to feel my fear and then hope for the future anyway

I found out I was pregnant on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday in early April, ordinary except for the fact I’d been counting down to this day, the earliest possible I’d permit myself a test. Three minutes of averting my eyes for fear of jinxing the result and then the faint blue cross confirming what I’d already known for a week, with no proof but for a barely perceptible shift inside me, somewhere previously unknowable.

So began a blissful time, a sweet introduction to the ongoing paradox of pregnancy: a complete shrinking of the outer world alongside a glorious expanse of our inner lives. And then the sickness kicked in – already the bliss was a distant and inaccessible memory.

Léa Antigny is a Sydney-based writer and publishing professional

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الاثنين، 19 يوليو 2021

Doctors issue official guidance on effects of air pollution and bushfire smoke on pregnant people

Information should serve as ‘wake-up call’ that action on climate change is needed to protect people and their children

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New patient resources warning of the dangers of air pollution and bushfire smoke to pregnant people or those planning to conceive have been issued by the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG), in what is thought to be a world-first.

Patients are warned to avoid exposureto air pollution on heavily trafficked roads, bushfire smoke or indoor smoke from things such as cigarettes, unflued fireplaces or incense.

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السبت، 17 يوليو 2021

Reasons to be fearful of China’s data-gathering | Letters

We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William Matthews

In her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.

As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang.

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الجمعة، 16 يوليو 2021

I think the married woman I had an affair with is pregnant with my baby. What’s the right thing to do?

There’s little point in throwing a grenade into her life unless you are sure you can be there for the long term if the child is yours, says Annalisa Barbieri

Before lockdown, I began an affair with a married woman, J. She told me I was her soulmate and no one had ever made her feel like I did. Those feelings were reciprocated. After much indecision and heartache, she left her husband and I left my wife so we could start a new relationship together.

Very quickly we discovered J was pregnant. That put a lot of pressure on our relationship. Although we had wanted a child together (her first, my second), the speed at which it happened made things difficult between us. I did not cope well, but I didn’t want the relationship to end.

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الثلاثاء، 13 يوليو 2021

Nice guidance to induce minority ethnic pregnancies earlier condemned as racist

Draft guidelines for England, Wales and Northern Ireland will not solve poorer maternity outcomes for women of colour, say doctors

Proposed guidance that recommends inducing labour at 39 weeks in pregnant women from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds has raised concerns from doctors and midwives and been branded “racist” by activists.

White women with uncomplicated pregnancies should be offered an induction of labour at 41 weeks, according to the draft guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). The institute’s clinical guidelines such as this apply in England, Wales and Northern Ireland but do not cover Scotland.

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الاثنين، 12 يوليو 2021

‘Mixed advice’ driving Covid vaccine hesitancy in pregnant UK women

Exclusive: campaign group warns of ‘wildfire’ of negative messaging given by healthcare professionals

Pregnant women are being given dangerously mixed messaging from health professionals, with figures suggesting a “very high” vaccine hesitancy among the vulnerable group, according to campaigners.

Three-quarters of pregnant women in the UK feel anxious about the easing of coronavirus restrictions with many saying the move is like “another lockdown” for expectant mothers, according to a survey of about 9,000 pregnant women by campaigning group Pregnant Then Screwed.

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الخميس، 8 يوليو 2021

Pregnant Australian women demand to be considered priority group for Covid vaccinations

Pregnant women who contract Covid have an increased risk of hospitalisation, yet most are ineligible for the jab

Pregnant women remain mostly ineligible for Pfizer vaccine, despite a change in the official health advice to recommend they be offered the jab at any stage of pregnancy because their risk of suffering severe outcomes from Covid is higher.

In June, experts from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi), which advises the government on the vaccination program, declared comprehensive data from overseas had not identified any safety concerns with giving Pfizer to pregnant women. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstericians and Gyneacologists (Ranzcog) backed that.

Not eligible so far in Vic. Currently in quarantine in QLD, public health nurse was surprised I hadn’t had one. Suggested it was being given to pregnant women in QLD.

My OB passed on ATAGI advice that it’s recommended for pregnant women but noted if you’re not in the age bracket you can’t get yet. Haven’t been offered it at any point.

When the ranzcog advice came out in June I checked online and found that Tas had opened eligibility to include pregnant people so I’m booked in but there’s a bit of a wait so I haven’t had it yet. I don’t know if I would have been offered it if I haven’t done it myself.

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الأربعاء، 7 يوليو 2021

Prenatal test developed with Chinese military stores gene data of millions of women

More than 8 million women globally have taken the BGI test, which the US sees as a national security threat

A prenatal test taken by millions of pregnant women globally was developed by Chinese gene company BGI Group in collaboration with the Chinese military and is being used by the firm to collect genetic data, a Reuters review of publicly available documents has found.

The report is the first to reveal that the company collaborated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to develop and improve the test, taken in early pregnancy, as well as the scope of BGI’s storage and analysis of the data. The United States sees BGI’s efforts to collect and analyse human gene data as a national security threat.

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The Surrogate review – compelling drama for a new kind of family

A woman’s decision to provide a gay couple with a child becomes very complicated in this refreshingly real-world drama

This tightly focused, neatly formed story about adults facing relatively common but still profoundly challenging ethical problems is precisely the kind of movie that used to get made with a moderate amount of money and then went on to win awards. Think Ordinary People or Kramer vs Kramer. Nowadays, it’s something only film-makers willing to take risks will tackle, but maybe the results are all the better for it.

The core of the story is a decision facing a trio in their late 20s/early 30s who have compacted to form a new kind of family. Jess (Jasmine Batchelor, terrific at projecting a very millennial blend of intelligence and idealism) is a web designer for a non-profit who’s not ready to settle down with any lover, although there’s a guy she hooks up with occasionally. Instead, her most intense emotional relationship is with Josh (Chris Perfetti), her best friend ever since they went to Sarah Lawrence together, and his husband Aaron (Sullivan Jones). Jess has agreed to be their surrogate and have a baby for them, on the understanding that they won’t pay her directly for this act of generosity or expect her to co-parent the child, but they will pay all her expenses.

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الثلاثاء، 6 يوليو 2021

Amber Heard has had a baby – and proved an important point | Arwa Mahdawi

The actor is part of a growing trend for women to choose to become single mothers, a choice that represents genuine progress

Amber Heard has had a baby girl. “Who cares?” you might ask. Ordinarily, not me. However, while strangers reproducing isn’t top of the lists of things I normally think about, the actor’s baby announcement got my attention because she is part of what seems to be a growing trend of women becoming single mothers by choice. Heard is in a relationship with the cinematographer Bianca Butti, but is reportedly the sole legal parent of her daughter and decided to get pregnant before meeting Butti.

“Four years ago, I decided I wanted to have a child,” Heard wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday. “I wanted to do it on my own terms. I now appreciate how radical it is for us as women to think about one of the most fundamental parts of our destinies in this way. I hope we arrive at a point in which it’s normalised to not want a ring in order to have a crib.”

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Woman with Down’s syndrome takes Sajid Javid to court over abortion law

Heidi Crowter alongside Máire Lea-Wilson and her son Aidan argue the 1967 act is discriminatory

Allowing pregnancy terminations up to birth if the foetus has Down’s syndrome is discriminatory and stigmatises disabled people, the high court has heard.

Heidi Crowter, a 26-year-old woman with Down’s syndrome from Coventry, Máire Lea-Wilson, 33, and her son Aidan, who has Down’s syndrome, who both live in Brentford, west London are challenging Sajid Javid over the Abortion Act 1967. The act sets a 24-week time limit for abortions unless there is “substantial risk” of the child being “seriously handicapped”.

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الاثنين، 5 يوليو 2021

MPs say 1,000 babies die preventable deaths in England each year

Commons health committee says NHS has reduced baby deaths significantly but could do more to improve safety

A cascade of catastrophic failings’: the UK’s baby death scandals

A thousand babies die preventable deaths every year in England because a culture of shifting blame and keeping tight-lipped means lessons are not learned after mistakes happen on NHS maternity wards, a report by MPs has said.

Almost two in five childbirth units still provide care that is unsafe to some extent, despite maternity care improving in recent years after a series of scandals, the health select committee said in a hard-hitting report published on Tuesday.

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Sydney hospitals on ‘red alert’ as more than 600 NSW health workers in isolation over Covid case contact

A new Covid visitor ban at some NSW hospitals sparks fears pregnant women will be forced to give birth without their partner or support person

Hundreds of health workers have been forced to isolate after being deemed close contacts of an unvaccinated student nurse who worked across two Sydney hospitals while infectious with Covid-19, wreaking havoc on staffing levels.

As hospitals in greater Sydney were placed on ‘red alert’ due to the latest Covid outbreak, restrictions on visitors triggered alarm among expectant mothers.

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الجمعة، 2 يوليو 2021

Experience: I was pregnant at the same time as my partner

The first three months were torrid. Kathleen would be sick in the morning, and I’d be sick in the afternoon

I met my partner, Kathleen, when we were both aid workers in Zimbabwe, when I was 28. I liked her politics and her blue eyes. Four years later, in 1993, my family lost a generation when my beloved niece, Lucy, was killed in a car crash. Like many lesbian couples in the 90s, Kathleen and I had discussed having children, but this crushing loss changed the conversation: I was 34 and she was 36, and it turned from something we chatted about to something we needed to do. Section 28 (a law banning the promotion of homosexuality) was still around, with its clear message that our love should be discouraged, and the hurdles seemed insurmountable. We had wombs to spare, but no sperm.

Our GP explained that while heterosexual couples have only to prove one of them is infertile to get treatment, lesbians didn’t qualify. We looked into private fertility clinics but they charged too much, so we drew up a very short shortlist of potential donors.

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