Not expecting: pregnancy after getting ‘tubes tied’ is surprisingly common

Between 3 and 5% of people who received tubal ligation surgeries later reported pregnancies, new study reveals

A new study finds that getting pregnant after a woman gets her “tubes tied” – the colloquial expression for permanent female surgical sterilization – may be surprisingly common.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine Evidence, examined survey data of more than 4,000 women who reported tubal ligations, the formal term for a range of surgeries that clamp or remove fallopian tubes. Researchers found that 3-5% of these women reported pregnancy after surgery.

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Mother dies shortly after giving birth to twins due to complications with C-section

Rachael Galloway’s partner pays tribute to ‘best person he ever met’

A first-time mother died after complications relating to a caesarean section just 30 minutes after giving birth to twin sons.

Rachael Galloway, 36, died on 1 August at Royal Lancaster Infirmary. The hospital said it was carrying out an internal review, and there was a continuing coroner’s investigation but it did not give any details.

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Young people’s health at risk from fall in condom use, warns WHO

International survey of 250,000 15-year-olds found nearly a third of them did not use a condom or the pill

An alarming decline in condom use is putting young people’s health at risk, the World Health Organization has warned.

The WHO’s survey of nearly 250,000 15-year-olds in 42 countries and regions across Europe and Canada found that between 2014 and 2022, condom use among sexually active adolescents declined significantly, putting them at significant risk of sexually transmitted infections, unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

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A drink to the health of new mums, pregnant women and a dying dad | Letters

Readers recall the days when Guinness was recommended after childbirth and during pregnancy

There was more than “a suggestion” that Guinness was good for new mums in the late 60s (Letters, 21 August). In 1976, when my son was born in University College hospital in London, all new mums were offered a daily small glass of Guinness. I told a nurse I couldn’t drink it as I hated the taste, and she said: “Ask your husband to bring in a bottle of sherry – that’ll build you up.” And there began a lifelong devotion to the healing properties of a pre-dinner manzanilla. Or two.
Lillian Adams
Hereford

• When my dad was dying from cancer in hospital in 1990, he kept asking the nurses for a Guinness, who kept refusing. A doctor intervened and wrote on the notes on the end of his bed: “This man is dying. If he asks for a Guinness, for heaven’s sake give him one.” Sure enough, on the bedside table was a can of Guinness with a prescription label on it stating: “Administer orally, as and when requested by patient.”
Pete Lavender
Woodthorpe, Nottingham

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‘I wasn’t sure I’d make it’: how a new mother’s brush with TB could mean better treatment for pregnant women

Fewer that 1.5% of drugs trials between 1960 and 2013 included expectant women. Now, campaigners and doctors are aiming to change that

When she was pregnant with her second child, Busisiwe Beko was living with HIV, but that didn’t worry her. She had been taking antiretrovirals for years and as an experienced Aids activist in South Africa she knew that as long as she continued to take her pills every day, her second baby would be born free of infection, just like her first.

But another illness was lurking in Beko’s lungs: tuberculosis (TB) had been hiding behind the common signs of pregnancy. The illness turned her pregnancy into a nightmare.

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‘This is paramount’: footballers get new help with pregnancy and playing return

• Fifpro launches guide to assist players and club staff
• Union pushing for solution on contract extensions

The international players’ union Fifpro has launched a Return to Play guide to help players, club staff and other football stakeholders better understand and manage pregnancy and the return to playing.

The guide takes players from the first steps involved in planning for pregnancy as a professional to a return to high-performance play, with details on regulations, methods of delivery and the effect those can have, the support needed at each stage, and more.

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Fewer US women received early and adequate prenatal care last year – CDC

Decline in early prenatal care was accompanied by 5% rise in number of patients who received no prenatal care at all

Fewer women received early and adequate prenatal care in 2023, new data released this week by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows.

The small year-over-year decline comes amid tectonic shifts in women’s rights and access to reproductive healthcare in the US and in spite of a federal government initiative meant to improve prenatal care access. Seventeen states ban abortion at conception or soon after.

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Pregnant people and fetuses not being protected from wildfire risks – report

Researchers say public health officials not doing enough to share warnings and safety information with health workers

Wildfires pose serious risks to pregnant people and their developing fetuses, including low birth weight and preterm birth. But public health officials are not doing nearly enough to keep these vulnerable populations safe, according to a new report.

“While we know that wildfires are continuing to intensify in the US, and we’re increasingly clear on what damages wildfires represent to maternal and newborn health, we’re still not seeing the kind of response from policymakers and public health officials that we need,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of report’s authors.

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‘It felt shameful’: the profound loneliness of modern motherhood

The mothers of babies and young children often experience extreme isolation – and all the health problems that accompany it

One of the weirdest experiences for me in early motherhood was a recurrent image or sense, when I was walking down the street, pushing the baby in the pram, that a slight breeze could disintegrate me, dissolve me into fragments or dust.

I imagine some of this was due to the startling (to me) metamorphosis of becoming a mother, psychologically, physically and socially. But looking back, I’m sure it was also to do with loneliness.

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Olympic runner Elle St Pierre on parenting, milking cows and ‘being a normal person’ – in pictures

The champion runner ‘followed her heart’ to start a family and continue dairy farming in Vermont hours from her team in Boston

Elle St Pierre grew up on a dairy farm in Montgomery, Vermont. When the Olympic 1500m runner graduated college and joined New Balance Boston, a professional running team based in the city, she deeply missed life on the farm. After a few years, she came to a compromise with coach Mark Coogan: she would come to Boston for key workouts, but Vermont – specifically, her high school sweetheart turned husband Jamie St Pierre’s family dairy farm – was home.

“If she puts her mind to something in a race or a workout, she usually gets it done,” says Coogan.

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Babes review – Pamela Adlon’s caustically funny pregnancy comedy

Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau fizz in the Better Things creator’s directorial debut, a rapid-fire riff on pregnancy, motherhood and female friendship

Motherhood changes everything. Or that’s the received wisdom anyway. However, Eden – Ilana Glazer, who also co-wrote the film and rattles out her lines with a flip, crackling energy that veers between the scatological and the screwball – didn’t get that particular memo. A freewheeling, terminally single yoga teacher from Astoria, Queens, she is not about to let an unplanned baby derail her life. Her personality (large, loud, tirelessly hedonistic) is stamped on to every aspect of her pregnancy. Her birth plan features helium balloons and tiaras; she has already compiled a Spotify playlist of party bangers for the delivery room. And holding her hand through it all, Eden assumes, will be her best friend since childhood, Dawn (Michelle Buteau).

But Dawn has a demanding career and family of her own: a newborn whose birth provides the extended comic set piece that opens the film (and sets its forthright tone), and a three-year-old who is dabbling in satanism after Eden’s unorthodox babysitting (she lets him watch The Omen). Dawn is one exploding nappy away from a meltdown. She has, to put it bluntly, more than enough shit to deal with without Eden’s contribution.

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Birthrates are plummeting world wide. Can governments turn the tide?

Nations are deploying baby bonuses, subsidised childcare and parental leave to try and reverse a rapidly declining fertility rate – largely to no avail

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Sophia and her partner have been thinking about having children for about five years. They are concerned about humanity’s impact on biodiversity loss and climate change and worried about what the future holds.

“Our conversation has two parts,” says Sophia, a communications specialist who preferred not to use her full name. “One is: what’s the contribution of a child to the global [climate] crisis? The second one is [about] what would their life be like.

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Broad City’s Ilana Glazer on her new pregnancy comedy: ‘I had no idea how effortful having children is’

After defining goofy millennial aimlessness with her beloved sitcom Broad City, the writer-actor is facing up to motherhood with new film Babes. But don’t worry: she hasn’t grown up too much

Ilana Glazer is trying to think of films about pregnancy and early parenthood that aren’t told from a man’s perspective. “There’s Knocked Up, but that’s about Seth Rogen. And there’s Nine Months, but that’s about Hugh Grant. Three Men and a Baby cracks me up because it’s like, three?!” says the 37-year-old, with comically perfect levels of incredulity (cracking me up in the process).

Glazer – best known as co-creator of the seminal millennial sitcom Broad City – is making a serious point: there are outrageously few movies about birth and babies that centre on the female experience. The comedian’s attempt to rectify this, however, has taken the form of a distinctly unserious film: in fact, Babes has to be among the most viscerally funny depictions of motherhood ever created.

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