Unlocking the mystery of placental disorders and recurrent stillbirths

The winning essay in the Max Perutz science writing award 2022, published below, was written by Emily Cornish, a clinical research fellow and PhD candidate at University College London

The Medical Research Council (MRC) Max Perutz science writing award is open to MRC-funded PhD students, who are invited to write about why their area of research matters. This year’s 10 shortlisted topics included immune therapies for cancer, Scotland’s drug-related death rate and the neglected tropical disease schistosomiasis. The high quality of the entries made judging hard. Ultimately, the panel, made up of the Observer’s Ian Tucker, Roger Highfield of the Science Museum, the journalist Samira Ahmed, the science communication lecturer Andy Ridgeway, the MRC’s Jennifer Anderson and the award-winning young science writer Zara Hussan, agreed that the £1,500 prize should go to Emily Cornish, a Phd candidate at University College London’s EGA Institute for Women’s Health, for her essay about recurrent pregnancy loss. “I am so thrilled to have won this inspirational prize,” says Emily.

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‘Miracle’ baby opens debate over possible use of centuries-old sperm

Technology allows sperm to be frozen longer than the legal 50-year limit, but poses medical and ethical questions

A change of law has paved the way for more babies to be born from sperm frozen up to 50 years ago, but experts say there is no scientific reason why sperm hundreds of years old cannot be used.

This week, a boy was born using sperm frozen in 1996, collected when his father was diagnosed, aged 21, with Hodgkin lymphoma, in case his treatment caused infertility.

Described as a “miracle” by his now 47-year-old father, Peter Hickles, the baby is close to holding the record for the longest gap between sperm collection and birth – he was beaten by a baby born in the US using a 27-year-old sample.

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Post-pregnancy body positivity? On Instagram, it’s hard to find

After analysing 600 images tagged #postpartumbody on Instagram, Australian researchers found stretch marks, bellies and scars were rarely in the picture

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Stretch marks, abdominal fat, caesarean scars. This is the reality for many new mothers, but you’d think otherwise from scrolling social media, according to a new Australian study.

Researchers examined 600 Instagram images with the hashtag #postpartumbody and found that only 5% of images focused on bodies bearing stretch marks, cellulite, sagging breasts or scars.

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Care substandard at 39% of maternity units in England, NHS watchdog finds

Care Quality Commission reports deteriorating services and ‘the same concerns emerging again and again’

Two out of five maternity units in England are providing substandard care to mothers and babies, the NHS watchdog has warned.

“The quality of maternity care is not good enough,” the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said in its annual assessment of how health and social care services are performing.

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Maternity care is not on a journey of obvious improvement

History suggests that reports exposing NHS failings do not banish the culture that harms babies and mothers

Reports showing that babies and mothers died or were harmed as a result of failures by, and sometimes heartless cruel treatment in, NHS maternity units are becoming worryingly common.

Dr Bill Kirkup’s just-published 192-page exposé of an appalling catalogue of failings at East Kent NHS trust between 2009 and 2020 is the second in the last 12 months. As many as 45 babies and 23 mothers in East Kent died avoidably during that time because their care was substandard, his inquiry found.

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What a pregnancy actually looks like at nine weeks – in pictures

In 13 US states, abortion is banned even in the earliest stages of pregnancy. But we rarely see what such tissue really looks like

Abortion is now banned or severely restricted in 14 states in the US, the outcome of a decades-long campaign by anti-abortion advocates. In many states, abortion is no longer seen as a health procedure, but a morality issue. Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano – once a state senator, now running for governor – is one of a number of Republican politicians who has called for murder charges for people who defy abortion bans.

In 13 of those 14 states, abortion is banned even in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

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How the psychiatric ward rescued me from severe postpartum anxiety

Days after my baby was born, I was overwhelmed by raw terror. Soon, my son and I were living in a specialist unit. This is what I learned

“If you tried to leave now, we would section you.” It was my second day in the mother and baby unit, a psychiatric ward that treats women with perinatal mental health issues, while helping them care for their babies. I was sitting on the edge of my single bed, with its squeaky vinyl cover, my son asleep next to me in a cot that was impossibly huge for a four-week-old baby. I bit my lip and tried to stop my leg twitching up and down.

“You’d section me?”

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How the psychiatric ward rescued me from post-partum psychosis

Days after my baby was born, I was overwhelmed by raw terror. Soon, my son and I were living in a specialist unit. This is what I learned

“If you tried to leave now, we would section you.” It was my second day in the mother and baby unit, a psychiatric ward that treats women with perinatal mental health issues, while helping them care for their babies. I was sitting on the edge of my single bed, with its squeaky vinyl cover, my son asleep next to me in a cot that was impossibly huge for a four-week-old baby. I bit my lip and tried to stop my leg twitching up and down.

“You’d section me?”

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After my miscarriage, it was hard to find reliable online support for an issue shrouded in shame – that’s about to change | Isabelle Oderberg

Miscarriage Australia is a first of its kind website that uses medically proven facts to help patients, and it’s been far too long in the making

When I was pregnant after having a miscarriage, there were a lot of things I didn’t do. I abstained from sex for the first 12 weeks. I stopped going to my beloved yoga. I didn’t lift anything heavier than my handbag. I refused even one coffee.

Not one of these things that I so fastidiously avoided cause miscarriage. But subliminal messaging all around us tells us that miscarriage must be something we did, right? Even the word miscarriage implies an error: did the birth parent carry the baby incorrectly? Eat sushi? Have a bath that was too hot?

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The future of surrogacy is in the balance. We should be wary of relaxing the rules | Sonia Sodha

With exploitation and health risks rife, we must tread with care before a change in law

I first thought about surrogacy when a friend was having issues conceiving. It made me think about the hypothetical: if I could carry a baby for someone I loved dearly, would I do it? I didn’t need to think long; I knew I personally could never hand over a baby I had given birth to.

Surrogacy is fraught with moral complexity. On the one hand, there are joyous parents who never thought they’d be able to have their own biological children and women who say they find being a surrogate fulfilling. On the other, heartbreaking stories of what happens when it goes wrong, tales of terrible exploitation of women in poor countries, and – recently – babies left stranded with no parents in countries such as Russia and Ukraine during Covid, then war.

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Toxic air pollution particles found in lungs and brains of unborn babies

Particles breathed by mothers pass to their vulnerable foetuses, with potentially lifelong consequences

Toxic air pollution particles have been found in the lungs, livers and brains of unborn babies, long before they have taken their first breath. Researchers said their “groundbreaking” discovery was “very worrying”, as the gestation period of foetuses is the most vulnerable stage of human development.

Thousands of black carbon particles were found in each cubic millimetre of tissue, which were breathed in by the mother during pregnancy and then passed through the bloodstream and placenta to the foetus.

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Study links in utero ‘forever chemical’ exposure to low sperm count and mobility

PFAS, now found in nearly all umbilical cord blood around the world, interfere with hormones crucial to testicle development

A new peer-reviewed Danish study finds that a mother’s exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” during early pregnancy can lead to lower sperm count and quality later in her child’s life.

PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are known to disrupt hormones and fetal development, and future “reproductive capacity” is largely defined as testicles develop in utero during the first trimester of a pregnancy, said study co-author Sandra Søgaard Tøttenborg of the Copenhagen University Hospital.

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‘We are expected to be OK with not having children’: how gay parenthood through surrogacy became a battleground

In New York, a gay couple fighting to make their insurers pay for fertility treatment have found themselves in the middle of a culture war. What happens when the right to parenthood involves someone else’s body?

Corey Briskin and Nicholas Maggipinto met in law school in 2011, were engaged by 2014, and had their 2016 wedding announced in the New York Times. They moved to a waterfront apartment block in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a bright playroom for families on the ground floor.

“We got married and then we wanted all the trappings: house, children, 401K [retirement saving plan], etc,” Maggipinto, 37, tells me in their building’s shared meeting room, tapping the table in sequence with the progression of each idea.

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