Women paying up to £8,000 for private midwives amid frustration at NHS care

Growing number are opting for private maternity services as inquiry finds poor childbirth care is common

People are paying thousands of pounds to hire private midwives amid frustration at the poor service many patients face in the NHS, with women left feeling fobbed off and ignored.

Growing numbers are paying up to £8,000 for maternity services, adding to a surge in people going private as the NHS struggles to provide swift and safe care.

Last month MPs found that women in labour had been mocked, ignored and left with permanent damage by NHS midwives and doctors. The UK’s first inquiry into birth trauma found poor childbirth care was so common, and its consequences so damaging, that ministers and NHS bosses needed to push through significant changes.

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Heatwaves increase risk of early births and poorer health in babies, study finds

Research that looked at 53 million births says Black and Hispanic mothers and those in lower socioeconomic groups most at risk

Heatwaves increase rates of preterm births, which can lead to poorer health outcomes for babies and impact their long-term health, a new study found.

Black and Hispanic mothers, as well as those in lower socioeconomic groups, are particularly at risk of delivering early following heat waves.

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‘I felt guilty’: women reveal harrowing details to groundbreaking NSW birth trauma inquiry

Report calls for urgent efforts after receiving 4,000 submissions including from patients, doctors, midwives and experts around Australia

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For a year after her daughter’s birth, Jessica Santos felt disappointed in herself.

When she arrived at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred hospital to give birth, the midwife who had supported her throughout her pregnancy was not able to help her, despite being on shift that day.

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You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to buy sperm

It’s easier than ever for single women to have children on their own ... or so I thought. Then began my $17,000 journey

One night in September 2022, like a kid sticking my finger into the flame of a candle, I Googled “how to buy sperm”.

I’d been thinking about it since splitting with a partner a year earlier. I was about to turn 37, and had started wondering if continuing on the “traditional” path – meeting someone, getting to know them well enough to decide to have children together, attempting to get pregnant – might cost me the chance to have kids.

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Women advised to pair effective contraception with ‘skinny jabs’

Amid baby boom reports linked to drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, experts say it would be ‘wise’ to take extra precautions

Claims that “skinny jabs” are fuelling an unexpected baby boom have led experts to warn women to pair their use with effective contraception.

Medications such as Wegovy and Ozempic, both of which contain semaglutide, have become hugely popular, not least because they can help people lose more than 10% of their body weight.

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NHS England spent £4.1bn over 11 years settling lawsuits over brain-damaged babies

Exclusive: £3.6bn has been paid out in 1,307 cases, according to information obtained under freedom of information laws

The NHS has spent £4.1bn over the last 11 years settling lawsuits involving babies who suffered brain damage when being born, amid claims that maternity units are not learning from mistakes.

It paid out just under £3.6bn in damages in 1,307 cases in which parents were left to care for a baby with cerebral palsy or other forms of brain injury, NHS figures reveal.

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Our maternity services need radical change. Women must reclaim birth | Letter

Wendy Savage on the Albany Midwifery Practice and missed chances to improve care for mothers and babies

Re your letters on how maternity services are failing mothers and babies (17 May), your readers are correct – there is a fundamental problem with our maternity services, which need radical change. As the World Health Organization stated in 1985, “birth is not an illness”; but NHS services treat childbirth as if it is.

In 1992, after years of campaigning, birth activists were delighted when the select committee chaired by Nicholas Winterton made far-reaching recommendations about reorganisation. The government responded by setting up a working party chaired by Julia Cumberlege. They reported in 1993 that women should be at the centre of care, midwives should have a greater and more autonomous role, and that there should be continuity of care.

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Louisiana descends into dystopia with historic law on abortion pills | Arwa Mahdawi

The state wasn’t the best place to get pregnant in the first place, with some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the US

Louisiana is not a great place to get pregnant. If you need an abortion, a near-total ban means it’s almost impossible to get one, even in cases of rape or incest – anyone who provides an abortion deemed illegal can go to jail for 15 years. And if you plan on having the baby, you have to deal with some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the US. Although, as Senator Bill Cassidy has helpfully noted, “if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear”. In other words, if you ignore Black people (a third of his constituents), things look a little better. So that’s OK then!

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Share your experience of private antenatal classes in the UK

We would like to hear from people who have taken classes to prepare themselves for pregnancy and parenthood

We’re keen to hear from people who’ve participated in private antenatal classes across the UK in order to prepare themselves for pregnancy and parenthood.

What sort of information were you taught by your course leaders about pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for a baby? Did you find the information to be useful and evidence-based? Or were there statements or comments that gave you pause for thought?

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Epidural in labour can reduce risk of serious complications by 35%, study finds

Researchers say expanding access to treatment may reduce risk of serious health outcomes and ensure safer childbirths

Having an epidural during labour can reduce the risk of serious childbirth complications by 35%, according to research that suggests expanding access to the treatment may improve maternal health.

An epidural is an injection in the back to stop someone feeling pain in part of their body. Making them more widely available and providing more information to those who would benefit from one was even more important than previously thought, researchers said.

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Maternity services are failing mothers and babies, and it’s not just down to austerity | Letters

Medical professionals and women who had bad experiences themselves respond to the findings of the birth trauma report

The maternity trauma report is deja vu all over again (Women having ‘harrowing’ births as hospitals hide failures, says MPs’ report, 13 May). I cannot read about it because it makes me want to scream.

I was around for the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust report a couple of years ago. All those dead babies, all those mothers and parents talking about not being listened to or respected. All that handwringing from service providers, all those promises from politicians. The recommendations were set up to prevent the experiences we heard about this week (‘I was left lying on the ground in pain’: shocking stories from UK birth trauma inquiry, 13 May). For instance, continuity of midwifery care through the maternal pathway prevents so much of the stuff we read about now.

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‘I was left lying on the ground in pain’: shocking stories from UK birth trauma inquiry

The most harrowing experiences of women in labour come under eight common themes in the MPs’ report

• Women suffering ‘harrowing’ births as hospitals hide failures, says MPs’ report

A parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma in the UK received more than 1,300 written submissions. The stories shared were harrowing. In many cases, the trauma experienced by women was caused by blunders before, during and after labour. Failures were often covered up by hospitals seeking to frustrate efforts by families to find answers, according to a review of the evidence by the Guardian.

There were also many stories about a lack of compassion. Women were often ignored when they felt something was wrong, and were mocked, shouted at or denied basic needs such as pain relief.

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Women suffering ‘harrowing’ births as hospitals hide failures, says MPs’ report

UK birth trauma inquiry finds women mocked, ignored, fobbed off with paracetamol and left permanently damaged

Women in labour have been mocked, ignored, fobbed off with paracetamol and left with permanent damage by midwives and doctors, while hospitals covered up their failures, a damning report by MPs has found.

Mothers have been left suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), unable to bond with their baby and too incapacitated to go back to work because of horrendous experiences while having a child, the UK’s first inquiry into birth trauma found.

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Women in the UK: share your experience of maternity care, birth trauma, and postnatal care

We’re keen to hear from women in the UK who experienced birth trauma, and about their experience of care in pregnancy and after giving birth

A health minister has apologised to women affected by birth trauma after a parliamentary inquiry that heard “harrowing” testimonies from more than 1,300 women about giving birth found a “postcode lottery” for maternity care.

The birth trauma inquiry, led by the Conservative MP Theo Clarke and Labour MP Rosie Duffield, will call for an overhaul of the UK’s maternity and postnatal care.

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Minister apologises to women affected by birth trauma after UK inquiry

Inquiry hears ‘harrowing’ testimonies and finds postcode lottery for quality of maternity care

A health minister has apologised to women affected by birth trauma after a parliamentary inquiry that heard “harrowing” testimonies from more than 1,300 women about giving birth found a “postcode lottery” for maternity care.

The birth trauma inquiry, led by the Conservative MP Theo Clarke and Labour MP Rosie Duffield, will call for an overhaul of the UK’s maternity and postnatal care.

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Katie Britt proposes federal database to collect data on pregnant people

Republican US senator from Alabama best known for delivering widely ridiculed State of the Union speech in March

Katie Britt, the Republican US senator from Alabama best known for delivering a widely ridiculed State of the Union speech in March, marked the run-up to Mother’s Day on Sunday by introducing a bill to create a federal database to collect data on pregnant people.

The More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (Moms) act proposes to establish an online government database called “pregnancy.gov” listing resources related to pregnancy, including information about adoption agencies and pregnancy care providers, except for those that provide abortion-related services.

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More babies will die from whooping cough if UK vaccination rates don’t rise, says expert

Government adviser says under-vaccination among pregnant women in particular is putting infants at risk

More babies will die from whooping cough in the UK unless vaccination rates go up to slow the spread of the infection, a leading expert has warned, citing low take-up of jabs among pregnant women as a particular concern.

Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, a consultant paediatrician and the chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the government, said under-vaccination was putting “the most vulnerable – those who are too young to have been vaccinated – at greatest risk”.

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The science on endometriosis is finally breaking through – so why do treatments feel stuck in the past? | Lucy Pasha-Robinson

As a patient, it’s frustrating to know a solution may be just around the corner but that you probably won’t be there in time to benefit

I’m kneeling on the hard, cold tiles of my bathroom floor retching into the toilet bowl, and I’ve been here for some time. The colour has drained from my skin and I’m clammy and delirious from a pain so intense, it is simply indescribable. Something is squeezing me from the inside so ferociously that I can barely catch my breath. All I can do is retch, unproductively, and writhe. “This must be what labour feels like,” I think, in a surreal, out-of-body way.

Ten years on, and one difficult childbirth later, I can confirm with some authority that this unrelenting, all-consuming pain was so much worse than giving birth. The bathroom floor episode was my first major inkling that something wasn’t right in my body. It was so frightening that I couldn’t dismiss it (even if A&E staff told me there was nothing wrong when I dragged myself there, and a GP explained it away as probably just a stomach bug). In reality, I had always been in pain to some degree. I had always bled through my PE shorts at school, swelled two dress sizes during my period – didn’t everyone? But even when my symptoms were at their worst, no one mentioned endometriosis.

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