When a doctor announced my possible pregnancy, for the first time I didn’t feel frozen by dread

Though it was clear from the start Mary Rose Madigan’s new relationship was different, she didn’t comprehend the gravity of her feelings until a visit to a bulk-billed medical centre

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Like many women in their 20s, I have a complex relationship with contraception. In other words, even though the thought of an unplanned pregnancy fills me with great anxiety, I sometimes forget to take the pill. That fear has been further fuelled by shows like MTV’s Teen Mums. I realise having a baby in my 20s wouldn’t make me a teen mum, but when it comes to having babies, I still feel about as prepared as a teenager.

Still, considering my struggles to find contraception that works for me, pregnancy has always been a real possibility.

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jul/24/when-a-doctor-announced-my-possible-pregnancy-for-the-first-time-i-didnt-feel-frozen-by-dread

‘Thank the lord, I have been relieved’: the truth about the history of abortion in America – podcast

Abortion in the 19th-century US was widely accepted as a means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy. The idea of banning or punishing it came later

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‘You are not being heard’: the devastating black maternal mortality crisis in the US

Aftershock, a grimly revealing new documentary, focuses on grieving families in a system that endangers women of colour

Shamony Gibson spent the final months of her life excitedly anticipating the birth of her second child. “Time is flying, four months already,” she says in a home video collage at the beginning of Aftershock, a new documentary about the black maternal health crisis in the US. “Every day is a new process, you wake up like, ‘Oh my god, I’m that much closer to being a mom again.’”

Gibson, a 30-year-old resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, gave birth to her son, Khari, in September 2019 via c-section. For days afterwards, she complained of shortness of breath. She and her partner, Omari Maynard, repeatedly called doctors, who told her it was fine, just relax.

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Premature birth ‘almost twice as likely’ in England’s prisons than outside

Data says more than 11% of women who give birth behind bars do so before 37 weeks, compared with 6.5% in community

Female prisoners are almost twice as likely to give birth prematurely as women in the general population, leaving them and their babies at risk, research has revealed.

More than one in 10 (11%) women who have a child while behind bars do so before 37 weeks of their pregnancy, compared with 6.5% of mothers in the community, the Nuffield Trust found.

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Experience: I gave birth at a Metallica concert

The doctor cut the cord as the band finished their set. It was magical

Jaime and I met at school when we were 12, got together two years later and have now been married 17 years. We run a tattoo studio in Curitiba, Brazil, are fans of rock and metal, and have done work for lots of musicians.

After becoming parents to our daughter, Letícia, it had been harder for us to get to concerts. But when Metallica announced they were coming to Brazil in 2020, we didn’t hesitate to get tickets. It would be a dream come true to see Metallica live – Jaime’s late dad used to listen to them all the time.

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Expectant mothers like me feel we’ve been abandoned to Covid | Letter

Beth Waters says she has no choice but to isolate due to difficulty in accessing fourth doses and the lack of Covid measures at large

As the latest wave of Covid-19 sweeps the country, pregnant women are being forgotten once again. Not so long ago, women were receiving mixed messages from healthcare providers on whether or not the new vaccines were safe in pregnancy, with many being actively discouraged. This resulted in disproportionately high numbers of otherwise healthy unvaccinated pregnant women in hospital with severe disease, and led to deaths.

Now we are in the midst of another wave. I am 37 weeks pregnant with my second baby, and I am not eligible for the fourth dose. I feel very vulnerable due to the lack of free testing and mask mandates. My midwife tells me that Covid-19 can increase the risk of blood clotting in the placenta, which can lead to stillbirth, and so pregnant women who catch it are prescribed blood thinners based on their risk. But surely prevention should come before management?

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‘Thank the lord, I have been relieved’: when abortion was safer than childbirth

Abortion in the 19th-century US was widely accepted as a means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy. The idea of banning or punishing it came later

At our rural county’s historical society, the past lives loosely in bulletins, news clippings, maps and handwritten index cards. It’s pieced together by pale, grey-haired women who sit at oak tables and pore over old photos. Western sun filters in, half-lighting the women as they name who’s pictured, who has passed on. Other volunteers gossip and cut obituaries from local newspapers.

I was sent here by hearsay. For years, my neighbour has claimed that the old cemetery in the low-lying field on my Wisconsin property contains more bodies than the scant number of tombstones indicates. The epic flood of 1978 washed away the markers of the nameless – civil war soldiers, he says. I want to know who the dead were in life. After many walks through the cemetery, I’m familiar with the markers that remain. One narrow footstone reads simply: “MAS”. Three marble headstones rest at odd angles among the box elder trees. Stained, eroded and lichen-crusted, the stones belong to a boy and two baby girls who died in the 1850s and 60s. On the boy’s is a relief of a weeping willow; on the sisters’ are rosebuds. Signs of young lives cut short.

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