الأربعاء، 22 أكتوبر 2025

It’s great to see pregnant women in the public eye – but must they all be so gorgeous? | Coco Khan

Call me cynical, but I have a feeling Victoria’s Secret wouldn’t have sent a heavily pregnant model down the runway if she looked like most of us do at that stage

Determined to find new ways to stay in the headlines, the underwear brand Victoria’s Secret recently had the model Jasmine Tookes – one of its most longstanding “angels” – open its runway show nine months pregnant. As a postpartum woman myself, my first thought, of course, was: “Finally! A pregnant woman I can relate to.” Only joking: it was a deep concern for her ankles, followed by a wish that one day the modelling industry will solve its recruitment crisis, because surely short-staffing is the only justifiable reason for wanting a heavily pregnant woman to work.

Nonetheless, body image and pregnancy have been on my mind recently. It is a curious thing, giving birth. We are all here because someone did it, yet what happens to women, mentally and physically, remains less known than, say, Liz Truss losing to a lettuce. And even though those of us who have given birth know intellectually that what we have done is miraculous and we should be proud, we still struggle with what it does to our physiques.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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الاثنين، 20 أكتوبر 2025

Protective immune cells in breastfeeding women identified as guard against breast cancer, new research finds

Patients who had more cells had better outcomes, particularly for aggressive types such as triple-negative breast cancer

In the 18th century, physicians noticed nuns had some of the highest rates of breast cancer. It was one of the earliest clues that led scientists to suspect that child-bearing and breastfeeding could protect against the disease.

Modern data has confirmed the centuries-old observation but the biological reasons behind it have remained unclear. Explanations have often focused on pregnancy-related hormonal changes, but research published Tuesday in Nature has found breastfeeding provides long-lasting immune protection.

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الأحد، 19 أكتوبر 2025

The Guardian view on childbirth and medical negligence: rising payouts highlight the urgency of maternity improvements

Grave shortcomings in the care offered to mothers and babies are well documented. But it is not clear that the right lessons have been learned

The startling rise in the cost to the NHS in England of medical negligence cases, and a sharp increase in birth injuries to mothers, are the latest warning signs of deeply troubling failures in maternity services. The £60bn estimate of negligence liabilities, from the National Audit Office, represents a quadrupling in less than 20 years. While some medical specialties have seen falling payouts, those in obstetrics rose. The reason why payments in such negligence cases are so high is that when babies are injured, awards must cover lifetime care needs.

Grave shortcomings in maternity care are widely recognised, along with unjust disparities in outcomes for women from different socioeconomic and racial groups. Preventable deaths and injuries at units in Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, and East Kent, have been among the most shocking patient safety scandals of recent years.

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الجمعة، 17 أكتوبر 2025

Thousands of new mothers in England readmitted to hospital after birth, figures show

Exclusive: More than 14,600 women readmitted within 30 days of birth in last year, raising alarm over early discharges

Thousands of new mothers are being readmitted to hospital in England every year, figures reveal, raising fresh concerns about NHS maternity care.

Discharging women from hospital prematurely increases the risk of conditions linked to childbirth being missed, and can be extremely distressing. If childbirth injuries or other conditions are not treated until the mother is readmitted days or weeks later, the chances of a complete recovery may also be reduced.

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الخميس، 16 أكتوبر 2025

Pregnant women in England at ‘growing risk’ of serious injury in childbirth

NHS figures show number of mothers sustaining third- or fourth-degree perineal tear has increased by 16% since 2020

Pregnant women in England are at growing risk of suffering a serious injury while giving birth, NHS figures reveal.

The number of mothers sustaining a third- or fourth-degree perineal tear while delivering their baby has risen from 25 in 1,000 in June 2020 to 29 in 1,000 in June this year – a 16% increase.

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الثلاثاء، 14 أكتوبر 2025

From the archive: ‘Infertility stung me’: Black motherhood and me – podcast

We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2022: I assumed I would be part of the first generation to have full agency over my reproduction – but I was wrong

By Edna Bonhomme. Read by Nerissa Bradley

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Pregnancy skincare products target women at a vulnerable time. Do any work or do they just stretch the truth? | Antiviral

Oils, creams and lotions with names like ‘mummy’s tummy’, ‘bump love’ and ‘belly butter’ abound

Pregnancy can be a trying time: you can’t tell whether you’re nauseous or hungry, your body is working at close to the sustainable limit of human endurance, your organs are rearranging to make space for a growing alien.

There are myriad indignities: nosebleeds, swelling feet, back pain, and, if you’re unlucky, ceaseless vomiting that goes “full Tarantino”.

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الاثنين، 13 أكتوبر 2025

My extreme sickness in pregnancy feels like a personal failure, even as society glorifies motherhood as divine suffering | Intifar Chowdhury

Hyperemesis gravidarum – a condition routinely dismissed as ‘just morning sickness’ – doesn’t just affect your stomach, it hijacks your entire life

When I came back to my senses, I turned to the paramedic and whispered, “Did I say something about terminating the pregnancy?” My voice cracked. “Please … don’t judge me.” My mother was beside me as they wheeled me into the emergency room, and I was sick with worry that she’d heard me. That she’d be ashamed. But mostly, I was terrified they’d send me home. Again. That I wasn’t sick enough. That I was just another hormonal woman with a flair for drama.

This was week five of what I now know is hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a condition where pregnancy nausea and vomiting go full Tarantino. I’d already been to the emergency department five times in two weeks. No diagnosis. Just a rinse-and-repeat routine: some staring down the tiles while holding a tie-and-twist vomit bag, some pokes and wriggles to find my dehydrated veins, some fluids and the awkward assurance that “baby is like a parasite, it will take everything it needs”. As if maternal suffering were a footnote. As if I were the side salad to the main course of foetal development.

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الأحد، 12 أكتوبر 2025

‘I wanted to write more than I wanted to have children’: author Sarah Perry on rejecting motherhood

When the novelist was faced with the decision of whether to pursue fertility treatment or focus on her career, her literary ambitions kicked in

Fifteen years ago, having said all my life that I never wanted a baby, that I couldn’t fathom why any free woman would do such a thing to her body and her mind, I suddenly and passionately wanted a child. I remember where I was when this feeling, so heretical to me, arrived: it was early morning in London, and having come down Fleet Street on my way to work, I was standing at the till of a newsagents to pay for a Diet Coke, a flapjack and a pack of Silk Cut. There were no children there and no pregnant women; nothing had been said or done to change my mind. It had simply landed on me, and more or less immediately – because I’ve never known how to control an impulse, and because I was 30, which seemed to me then a great age – my husband, Robert, and I set about trying to have a child.

When for some months nothing happened, I turned to the websites where women who’ve never met scrutinise their bodies for signs of pregnancy or fertility or miscarriage, and my vocabulary changed. I became able to communicate in acronyms impenetrable to anyone who hadn’t held a dozen ovulation sticks in a dozen urine streams, and it is all so long ago now that I only remember one: 2WW. At first I took this to be some dry reference to the second world war, since they did seem to be always in battle, these women, or in flight – but in fact it refers to the “two-week wait”, the fearful, hopeful days between sex and ovulation, and the first signs the uterus had succeeded or failed (that these signs can be identical sometimes invokes a kind of madness, to which I also briefly succumbed).

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الخميس، 2 أكتوبر 2025

Call to allow ‘safe and effective’ at-home abortions up to 12 weeks in UK

Experts point to study showing procedures at home are no risker or less successful than hospital care

At-home abortions should be allowed for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy across the UK, according to academics, after a study found they were just as safe and effective as hospital care.

A medical abortion involves taking two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, to end a pregnancy. In 2022, at-home medical abortions were made permanent in England and Wales, after temporary legislation allowed them to take place at home during the pandemic. In Northern Ireland, at-home abortion care is not permitted at any gestation.

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How the White House used studies with ‘weak’ evidence to tie Tylenol to autism

Experts say White House presented ‘association as causation’ and based conclusions on ‘poor quality studies’

The White House recently issued a press release with links to scientific studies to back up Trump’s claim that use of acetaminophen, commonly referred to as Tylenol, during pregnancy causes autism, but those studies provided only “weak” and “inconclusive”, evidence, according to physicians with expertise in reviewing medical research who spoke to the Guardian.

Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow at the Cato Institute who has written about the Tylenol/autism claims, said that the links in the White House press release showed that the claims contained a political spin.

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الأحد، 28 سبتمبر 2025

Paracetamol and Donald Trump’s medical myths - podcast

When the US president stood up at the podium and announced a link between autism and paracetamol, he sent alarm through the medical community and the public.

Guardian science correspondent Hannah Devlin speaks to Reged Ahmad about what the science actually says about the painkiller and why experts fear Donald Trump is deliberately fostering a narrative of distrust

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السبت، 27 سبتمبر 2025

Trump’s war on Tylenol is also very much a war on women | Arwa Mahdawi

A concern for women’s health is absolutely not at the heart of it – rather, this is yet another way to control women

Donald Trump is a man with no medical training. However, that’s never stopped the very stable genius from inflicting his unhinged health views on the rest of us, has it? Back in 2020, for example, Trump memorably mused that injecting disinfectant could help fight the coronavirus – which forced the maker of Dettol and Lysol to put out an urgent statement explaining that this was a very bad idea.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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الجمعة، 26 سبتمبر 2025

‘The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death’: Florence Welch on sexism, screaming and the lost pregnancy that nearly killed her

The Florence + the Machine singer talks about life after devastating loss, performing with Taylor Swift and the double standards for women in music

After Florence Welch came close to death, she felt strongly that, more than people, she wanted to be with plants and animals. “It was a real need to be around things that couldn’t speak, but had a life force or energy to them. I found that the most healing,” she says. Since then, cats have kept coming to visit her garden. Not her cats – it is hard for her to have pets, what with all the touring – but neighbourhood cats, treating the place as if they live there. “I’m not saying anything, but more and more started coming, and foxes,” she says. She sees patterns and prescience in many things, now. “I don’t know. Or maybe I just noticed them more, because that’s what I needed to be around.”

In August 2023, Welch had a miscarriage. Days later, she learned that the pregnancy had been ectopic, meaning that the fertilised egg had implanted in a fallopian tube, rather than the uterus. The fallopian tube then ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding. “The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death,” she says. “And I felt like I had stepped through this door, and it was just full of women, screaming.”

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الخميس، 25 سبتمبر 2025

Why is the Trump administration obsessed with autism? – podcast

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has long been consumed by the neurological condition autism – what causes it, and whether there’s a treatment. This week, Donald Trump took on the cause, making claims about acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol and paracetamol, that were dismissed outright by medical experts around the world.

Jonathan Freedland speaks to Carter Sherman, the reproductive health and justice reporter at Guardian US, about when and why the obsession with autism became political

Archive: Good Morning America, NPR, NBC News, WHAS11, BBC News, CBS News, Jimmy Kimmel Live, LiveNowFox

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الأربعاء، 24 سبتمبر 2025

The truth behind Trump's claims about autism and paracetamol, or Tylenol – video

Global health agencies and regulators have dismissed unscientific advice from Donald Trump, who made an unproven link between autism and the use of everyday painkillers and vaccines. But the science wasn’t the only problem with that press conference. Matilda Boseley explains what you need to know

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Obama says Trump linking paracetamol to autism is ‘violence against the truth’

Former president says successor’s claims about drug branded Tylenol in US ‘undermines public health that can do harm to women’

Barack Obama has said Donald Trump’s claims linking paracetamol to autism in infants is “violence against the truth” that could harm pregnant women if they were too scared to take pain relief.

Obama, who was being interviewed by David Olusoga at the O2 Arena, told the audience that Trump’s claims about paracetamol – branded as Tylenol in the US – had been “continuously disproved” and posed a danger to public health.

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Pregnant women deserve so much better than Trump’s theatre of scaremongering and shame | Kate Womersley

There is no credible evidence linking autism with maternal paracetamol use. But the US president’s ‘tough it out’ message could harm mothers and babies

  • Kate Womersley is a doctor and academic specialising in psychiatry

On Monday, Donald Trump, flanked by Robert F Kennedy Jr and the former talkshow host and head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr Mehmet Oz, announced that women should avoid paracetamol (known as acetaminophen or by the brand name Tylenol in the US) throughout pregnancy because of a spurious link with childhood autism.

This political theatre highlights a longstanding and harmful problem: pregnant women, and their babies, are routinely let down by partial, poor-quality and missing medical evidence. Pregnant women deserve better than irresponsible headlines raising fear based on shaky research that has failed to convince the scientific community.

Kate Womersley is a doctor and academic specialising in psychiatry

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الثلاثاء، 23 سبتمبر 2025

Is paracetamol safe during pregnancy and does it have links to autism?

US president’s claims around painkiller also known as Tylenol contradict scientific consensus that drug is entirely safe to take

Donald Trump has urged pregnant women not to take acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol or paracetamol. He claimed it raises the chances of children being autistic.

But the US president has been condemned by experts from across the world, who fear he is deliberately fostering a narrative of distrust that could be dangerous for women.

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Trump’s absurd Tylenol claims heighten the suffering of pregnant women in the US | Moira Donegan

There is no evidence to support the president’s assertions about autism. But they exploit fears that already come with pregnancy

Robert F Kennedy Jr continued his futile search for a single pharmaceutical cause of autism on Monday, when the Trump administration claimed that distorted recent studies and misstated scientific evidence to allege a link between women’s Tylenol use during pregnancy and the development of autism in children. Kennedy has long spoken with disturbing disgust about autistic people, claiming at one press conference that autistic children “destroy families” and “will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date.” He had previously pledged to find the cause of autism by this month.

As part of his apparent quest to eliminate this vast and varied group of people – who do, in fact, pay taxes, hold jobs, play baseball, write poems, go on dates, and function as beloved and caring members of functional families – Kennedy has already sought to restrict access to common vaccines. In June, he fired every member of the advisory committee on immunization practices, an influential group of vaccine experts whose recommendations had long shaped policy for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In place of the experts, he reconstituted the panel with a number of vaccine critics and cranks, whose incompetence has led to chaotic meetings and bizarrely changing vaccine recommendations. Donald Trump has recently joined his health secretary in casting aspersions on childhood vaccines – safe and effective treatments that have saved countless lives and are among the more wonderful miracles of human innovation. “It’s too much liquid,” the president said of the early childhood immunizations on Monday. “Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing, when you look at it.”

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Wes Streeting rejects Trump claim linking paracetamol and autism

Health secretary joins medical experts in urging pregnant women to ignore US president’s remarks

Wes Streeting has rejected Donald Trump’s claims of a link between taking paracetamol in pregnancy and autism, urging mothers-to-be to ignore the US president’s remarks.

The health secretary challenged Trump’s statements, which medical experts have stressed are not based on evidence, as part of a drive to reassure mothers-to-be in the UK.

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الأحد، 21 سبتمبر 2025

For years I struggled with infertility and loss. Then I had a life-changing call with a psychic

On some level, I realised it was a bit unhinged, writes the author and podcaster Elizabeth Day. But what did I have to lose?

On 29 December 2022, I received a text. ‘Hi mum I’m texting you off a friends phone I’ve smashed mine and their phones about to die, can you WhatsApp my new number x’ I was in a rental car when I got it, my partner at the wheel next to me as we drove down an anonymous stretch of motorway. Both the sky and the road were grey. It was that indeterminate space between Christmas and New Year when the days become sludgy and diffuse; a time when teenagers meet up with their friends to go shopping or gather in each other’s homes and post Snapchats or exchange festive gossip while pretending not to vape. It was the time of waiting – for the next thing to happen, for the promised excitement of New Year’s Eve and snogging underneath leftover mistletoe. So it wasn’t a particularly unusual text to receive, especially not given the trademark adolescent lack of grammar and punctuation.

There was just one thing.

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الجمعة، 19 سبتمبر 2025

Digested week: Return of the cassette tape … and maybe the dodo

Plus the right to roam the green and pleasant, and a £1,795-a-night solution to the postpartum blues

An all-party parliamentary group is calling for everyone to be given the right to go wild camping and swimming across our green and pleasant land (and, I suppose our blue and hopefully non-besewaged waters). Apparently we only have the right to roam across 8% of England at the moment, a situation that strikes me as so perfectly us that it should be submitted to the Unesco intangible cultural heritage list immediately if not sooner.

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We’re losing so many mothers to childbirth and genocide. It’s our responsibility to act on both | Jacinda Ardern

We know women give birth during war – and too often, they die. But we must do much more to achieve safety and stability

  • Jacinda Ardern is a former prime minister of New Zealand

It was usually when my daughter hadn’t slept that the conversation started. I’d message my friend wondering aloud whether I would get through the day without making some glaring mistake. I was the prime minister of New Zealand. Only the second woman in the world to have a baby while leading a country, and some days were hard.

Yet there was one response, a simple text message from my friend, also deep in the trenches of caregiving, that would stop me in my tracks: “Women give birth during war.”

Jacinda Ardern is a former prime minister of New Zealand

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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الثلاثاء، 16 سبتمبر 2025

Systemic racism affects maternity care for black women in England, say MPs

Commons committee finds women’s concerns not taken seriously due to bias, stereotyping and racist assumptions

Black women in England are still facing poorer outcomes in their maternity care due to systemic racism, alongside failures in leadership and data collection, according to a group of MPs.

Across the UK, black women are more than twice as likely to die in childbirth compared with their white counterparts, while babies born to black mothers are at an increased risk of stillbirth.

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Mississippi declares infant deaths emergency as CDC program that could have helped is halted

State forced to stop gathering critical data on pregnancy experiences after Trump administration’s shakeup

The Trump administration’s shakeup of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has forced Mississippi to stop gathering critical data on women’s experiences before, during and after pregnancy – even as the state recently declared a public health emergency over its surging infant mortality rate.

Mississippi has suspended data collection for Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (Prams), a national database that has been integral to policymaking on maternal and infant health for nearly four decades, the Guardian has learned.

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الاثنين، 15 سبتمبر 2025

The US town that pays every pregnant woman $1,500: ‘We’re not OK with our babies being born into poverty’

Infants in Rx Kids in Flint, Michigan, saw lower rates of prematurity and other issues, saving millions in NICU visits

When Angela Sintery first learned about Rx Kids, a program for new mothers in her home town of Flint, Michigan, she thought someone must be trying to scam her.

“I had some teacher friends that kept sending me links saying: ‘You need to apply for this. It’s a brand-new program. We think you qualify,’” Sintery said. But it seemed too good to be true.

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الأحد، 14 سبتمبر 2025

Reasons for rise in caesarean births | Letter

Simply blaming women ignores a range of clinical and societal factors that contribute to the increase in medical intervention during birth, says Dr Debbie Garrod

The rise in the rate of medically assisted births in the UK, particularly caesareans, is laid firmly at the feet of women for being older, larger and having more complex medical problems (Report, 11 September). This ignores a range of clinical and societal factors that contribute. Maternal factors play a part, but so does the rise in defensive clinical practice, the loss of midwives’ and obstetricians’ skills and confidence in supporting physiological birth, and the proliferation of misinformation and scare stories on social media that increase parental anxiety.

All these factors have led us to the current crisis, where more than 50% of babies are born with surgical intervention, with no concomitant improvement in maternal or perinatal mortality and with unknown consequences for the health and wellbeing of future generations.
Dr Debbie Garrod
Midwife and antenatal educator, Abingdon, Oxfordshire

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الخميس، 11 سبتمبر 2025

Experience: my babies were born seven weeks apart

After years of miscarriages, I had abandoned the prospect of giving birth. Then, as we prepared to conceive using a surrogate, the impossible happened

The first time I miscarried, I blamed myself. After getting pregnant early on in our relationship, at 34, I had a flash of doubt that my partner Alex and I weren’t ready to be parents. Then, a few weeks later, the pregnancy was over.

My second early loss, just a few months later, hit me harder. We went to a fertility specialist, and the tests on both of us came back clear, but then I couldn’t get pregnant at all.

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الجمعة، 5 سبتمبر 2025

How social media tries to exploit your pregnancy | Letters

Responding to an article by Kathryn Wheeler, readers describe how apps ‘found out’ they were pregnant and fed them worrying posts and targeted advertising

I am so glad to see an article published about the impact of social media on pregnant people and new mothers (‘I felt doomed’: social media guessed I was pregnant – and my feed soon grew horrifying, 3 September). I say “mothers” as I noticed my husband was not subjected to the same algorithms that I was. I, too, found it completely overwhelming when I was pregnant and have come off all social media, as the suggested reels I was barraged with did nothing but create anxiety for me as a new parent.

I decided it was toxic messaging that I didn’t need to be privy to. As there are lots of positive things happening on social media – eg groups connecting you with local new mums – it was a shame to miss out on what could have been happening in my area.

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الخميس، 4 سبتمبر 2025

Don’t call it morning sickness: ‘At times in my pregnancy I wondered if this was death coming for me’ – podcast

The Victorians called it ‘pernicious vomiting of pregnancy’, but modern medicine has offered no end to the torture of hyperemesis gravidarum – until now.

By Abi Stephenson. Read by Nicolette Chin

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الأربعاء، 3 سبتمبر 2025

‘I watched the bombs fall. I watched the mothers’: how do we grieve the children of Gaza?

Palestine is not a metaphor. And yet – I’ve superimposed every experience of my own mothering these last months on to Palestine

The last time I carried a life, I got to hear her heartbeat exactly three times before it stopped. It was my fifth pregnancy. After the final appointment, the one where the surgeon furrowed her brow as she looked at the ultrasound, I walked down First Avenue. It was winter. It was the year after the pandemic had begun. I was feral with grief. I snapped at strangers, cried in the bodega, etc. I’d spent a year getting pregnant, then unpregnant. I’d wake in the middle of the night and remember: heartbeat, heartbeat. At times, I felt absurd for my grief. I couldn’t ascertain what the metric of a mother was, what goalpost had to be met. Had I met it? Surely grief like this – love like this – had to be more deeply earned?

Three years later, I went under anesthesia again for another egg retrieval. At this point, I had a baby, nearly 18 months old. The surgery was on 6 October. The fertility doctor was cheery at my bedside when I woke; I now had a new crew of eggs on ice. I took a Lyft home. That afternoon, dazed on the couch, I watched sitcoms. The next day, I watched the news break: one urgent report after the other, in English, in Arabic, repeating the same details in different order: surprise attack, dawn, rockets, metal fence bulldozed, hostages taken, raids, combatants, dozens killed, no, hundreds killed, 16-year siege. Then I watched a city go dark. I watched water get cut. I watched the first bombs fall. I watched the mothers.

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‘I felt doomed’: social media guessed I was pregnant – and my feed soon grew horrifying

The algorithm knew I was expecting before I had had a chance to tell my family, friends or GP. At first, I was served up joyful videos. Then the tone became much darker ...

I don’t remember where I was when my TikTok feed showed me a video of a woman holding her stillborn baby, but I remember how I felt. At first, it appeared like any other video of a woman holding a newborn. It was tightly wrapped in blankets while she cradled it in her arms. She was crying, but so are most of the women in these post-birth videos. It wasn’t until I read the caption that I realised what I was looking at. Her baby had been delivered at 23 weeks. I was 22 weeks pregnant. I felt doomed.

My social media algorithms knew I was pregnant before family, friends or my GP. Within 24-hours, they were transforming my feeds. On Instagram and TikTok, I would scroll through videos of women recording themselves as they took pregnancy tests, just as I had done. I “liked”, “saved”, and “shared” the content, feeding the machine, showing it that this is how it could hold my attention, compelling it to send me more. So it did. But it wasn’t long before the joy of those early videos started to transform into something dark.

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الثلاثاء، 2 سبتمبر 2025

Pregnant or a new mum? How to cut costs when you’re expecting a baby

From free prescriptions and essential vitamins, to statutory maternity pay, a lot of assistance is available

Pregnant women in England are entitled to free NHS prescriptions during pregnancy and for 12 months after giving birth, whether they are employed or not. (In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, they are free for everyone.) You need a maternity exemption certificate, which you can get from a midwife, doctor or health visitor.

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الأحد، 24 أغسطس 2025

Exposure to some Pfas could increase risk of multiple miscarriages – study

Research tracking about 200 women found those who had at least two miscarriages had higher levels of chemicals in their blood

Exposure to some toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” may increase the risk of having multiple miscarriages, new peer-reviewed research has found.

The study, which tracked about 200 women in China, found those who had at least two miscarriages, or unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortions, showed higher levels of several types of Pfas in their blood. The study adds to a long list of reproductive harms associated with Pfas exposure.

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الخميس، 21 أغسطس 2025

How we get 'baby brain' wrong – video

‘Baby brain’ is often referenced jokingly and dismissively when discussing pregnancy and forgetfulness. But a new brain scan study reveals something more profound: pregnancy does not weaken the brain, it rewires it. Neelam Tailor explores what this means for neuroscience and caregiving, and how little we still understand about women’s health

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السبت، 16 أغسطس 2025

Float review – pregnancy is an intergalactic voyage in this poetic solo

Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh
Indra Wilson’s imaginative monologue is a touching exploration of grief and hope through space travel

If you ever need an extended metaphor, just ask Indra Wilson. In a feat of sustained poetic imagination, the playwright describes pregnancy – and pregnancy loss – in terms of space travel. And it is not just a passing analogy but a complete vision, from lift-off to orbit to “Houston, we have a problem”.

Remarkably the metaphor does not wear thin. Rather, it powers a beautiful and touching exploration of an intrepid journey undertaken and never completed.

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الأربعاء، 6 أغسطس 2025

US destruction of contraceptives denies 1.4m African women and girls lifesaving care, NGO says

Incineration of $9.7m of contraceptives to lead to 174,000 unintended pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions, IPPF says

A decision by the US government to incinerate more than $9.7m of contraceptives is projected to result in 174,000 unintended pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions in five African countries.

More than three-quarters of the contraceptives (77%) were destined for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mali, according to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), an NGO global healthcare provider and advocate of sexual and reproductive rights.

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الثلاثاء، 5 أغسطس 2025

I’m a perinatal psychiatrist. The US is promoting misinformation on SSRIs and pregnancy | Sunny Patel

A recent FDA advisory panel discussion contained falsehoods and overstated risks. That’s dangerous for mothers-to-be

Late last month, the FDA advisory panel – on the heels of the president’s “make America healthy again” executive order scrutinizing psychotropic medications – raised debate around the safety of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in pregnancy. Commonly called antidepressants, these medications are used to treat a range of disorders, and earlier this year a consortium of major mental health organizations pushed back on the administration’s stance.

As a perinatal psychiatrist who sees pregnant and postpartum people struggling with conditions such as depression and anxiety every week, I’m deeply concerned that this public discussion – chaired by the controversial FDA commissioner Marty Makary – shared significant misinformation about mental illness and the treatment modalities (with overly simplified statements denouncing “chemicals” during pregnancy).

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السبت، 2 أغسطس 2025

A professor had a $2.4m grant to study Black maternal health. Then Trump was elected

Jaime Slaughter-Acey’s study addresses the high rates of maternal mortality among Black women in the US. Trump’s NIH funding cuts threaten her years-long research

Jaime Slaughter-Acey was in a state of shock and anger when she learned that her National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study on birth outcomes in Black families was cancelled this spring. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill associate professor in epidemiology said that she felt like “the rug was pulled out from under us” when the university called her to share the news. The termination notice said that the study no longer met the agency’s priorities and didn’t promise to increase life expectancy.

“It was heartbreaking,” Slaughter-Acey told the Guardian, “and honestly, infuriating given the high rates of maternal and infant mortality in this country.”

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الجمعة، 1 أغسطس 2025

The pregnancy app that speaks the truth: the Edith Pritchett cartoon

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The harsh reality of ‘extreme morning sickness’ | Letters

Dr Wendy Bryant responds to an article by Abi Stephenson about hyperemesis gravidarum

Abi Stephenson’s article about hyperemesis gravidarum – “extreme morning sickness” – carried me through memories, confirmation, horror and, at last, hope (Don’t call it morning sickness: ‘At times in my pregnancy I wondered if this was death coming for me’, 31 July).

When I hear of a new pregnancy, I ask after the mother, recalling my two pregnancies in the early 1990s. Both ended with successful delivery, and I can’t imagine life without my two children. But I wonder whether my daughter will have inherited my predisposition to sickness throughout pregnancy, just as I did from my own mother.

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الخميس، 31 يوليو 2025

The five kinds of rest – and why they matter for new mothers

When we say ‘rest’, we don’t just mean ‘sleep’, say Sophie Walker and Jodi Wilson. Rest takes many forms and parents should consider building all of them into their lives

We live in a society that champions individualism, productivity and professional and financial success. At every turn we’re encouraged to do it all, which can make us worry that if we’re not being productive, what is our purpose?

Across two years of research, including interviews with more than 60 perinatal health specialists and hundreds of mothers on the Australian Birth Stories podcast, we learned that most mothers enter postpartum with unrealistic expectations of themselves and their bodies. Some are left feeling purposeless and questioning their worth when the work of caring for a baby doesn’t fit with the narrative of a results-driven society.

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الأربعاء، 30 يوليو 2025

Don’t call it morning sickness: ‘At times in my pregnancy I wondered if this was death was coming for me’

The Victorians called it ‘pernicious vomiting of pregnancy’, but modern medicine has offered no end to the torture of hyperemesis gravidarum – until now

The year my body revolted, I read all 1,296 pages of War and Peace. I did very little else. My body had become stuck in a perpetual rinse cycle, wringing itself out day and night. Becalmed on the sofa, too nauseated to mindlessly scroll, I found an unlikely emergency exit in the bloody Battle of Borodino. In between puking jags, I would prop the book open on my chest, squint at the tiny text, and drift into a Tolstoy-induced torpor. It occurred to me that clouds of saltpetre and the booming of cannon weren’t ideal conditions for a growing baby, but I had to go somewhere.

At 6am my husband left for work and I began another gruelling day on the front; purging viscous pond slime from my empty stomach and keeping up with the Cossacks on their flanking march. In the throes of extreme pregnancy sickness, I found strange comfort in the privations of 19th-century military life; in soaked bandages and musket fire and impromptu field hospital amputations. And even, or especially, in the seeming endlessness of the book itself. For the months that I starved, I lugged my starving Russian comrades with me, from the upholstery-chemical stink of the sofa to the sweet bleach-stink of the bathroom to the seamy oily-skin stink of the bed. Perhaps it was a derangement of dehydration and hormones, but I felt real solidarity with my gangrenous friends on the front – far more than with anyone in a “felt cute” sundress on the What to Expect When You’re Expecting app.

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الأحد، 27 يوليو 2025

If we’re serious about protecting pregnancies, we need to stop spraying pesticides | Letters

We must shift the conversation beyond food. These chemicals are in the air women breathe and the homes they live in, says biochemist Molly Shave

As a biochemist trained in environmental health, I was relieved to see coverage of pesticide exposure and pregnancy risk (Exposure to a mix of pesticides raises risk of pregnancy complications, study suggests, 19 July). But one key detail is missing: food is not the main route of exposure for most women, especially in urban environments.

While dietary pesticide levels are regulated, many studies – including urine biomonitoring – have shown less difference in pesticide load between children eating organic and conventional diets in cities than we would expect. Why? Because exposure is happening elsewhere.

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الجمعة، 25 يوليو 2025

Eating for two: the Edith Pritchett cartoon

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Surrogates at greater risk of new mental illness than women carrying own babies, study finds

Canadian data analysis underscores importance of support during and after pregnancy, researchers say

Surrogates have a greater chance of being newly diagnosed with a mental illness during and after pregnancy than women who carry their own offspring, researchers have found.

In addition, regardless of how they conceived, women with a previous record of mental illness were found to have a higher risk of being diagnosed with such conditions during and after pregnancy than those without.

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الثلاثاء، 22 يوليو 2025

‘I didn’t cry till the following year’: standup Thanyia Moore on the tragedy she turned into laughter

The comic was all set to make her debut at the Edinburgh fringe. Then, with hours to go, she had a medical emergency. The former dancer explains how it all fed into her new standup show

‘My first thought,” says Thanyia Moore, “was there has to be a show in this.” The comedian is talking about what happened when her debut Edinburgh festival fringe show flipped from fun into misfortune. Standups often embrace personal tragedy, spinning it all into material – and that was certainly the case with Moore, three years ago. The former dancer from London had a 10-year buildup to her first fringe show – a deliberately light introduction to her world. She’d become known as a consummate MC, won the Funny Women award in 2018, and was breaking into TV as an actor and writer. Moore wasn’t even sure she wanted to do the fringe. “I’ve never been enticed or influenced,” she says, “by what people think you should do.” But then came an offer from Soho theatre’s production arm, and the chance to prove she could build an hour of standup from scratch persuaded her to head to Scotland.

Compared to other debutantes – who are generally battling crushing financial and career pressures – Moore felt relaxed. Her show’s run was paid for, she’d had time to finesse it, and she’d just got to grips with some huge personal news: she was pregnant. She decided to keep this to herself, but take it easy, turning down other gigs to focus on her solo show.

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الأحد، 20 يوليو 2025

Half of black women in UK who raise concerns during labour did not receive suitable help, study finds

Maternity experiences of more than 1,000 pregnant people found black women up to four times more likely to die in childbirth

Almost half of pregnant black women raised concerns to healthcare professionals during labour, with half saying that their concerns were also not properly addressed, according to the largest report of its kind.

Black women in the UK are up to four times more likely to die during childbirth compared with their white counterparts, and are also more likely to experience serious birth complications and perinatal mental health illnesses.

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NHS facing ‘absolutely shocking’ £27bn bill for maternity failings in England

Exclusive: Legal actions rise after death or injury of hundreds of babies and women in recent years

The NHS is facing an “absolutely shocking” £27bn bill for maternity failings in England, the Guardian can reveal, after a series of hospital scandals triggered a record level of legal claims.

Hundreds of babies and women have died or suffered life-altering conditions as a result of botched care in NHS trusts across the country in recent years, prompting the government to launch a “rapid” national inquiry.

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السبت، 19 يوليو 2025

‘How did I feel giving the baby away? I never thought of it like that’: inside a weekend retreat for surrogate mothers

They don’t do it for money, and pregnancy takes a toll. So why do women lend their wombs to carry a baby for strangers they’ve met online?

As I walk out of Hobart airport’s small arrivals hall, I immediately spot the person I’m looking for. My contact, Mollie D’Arcy, is standing at the exit, heavily pregnant. Her baby bump isn’t the only giveaway – she’s holding up a laminated sign in hot pink writing, sticky taped to a retractable light sabre toy. It reads, “Surrogates on Tour.”

It’s mid-September 2024 and D’Arcy is this year’s Surrogacy Sisterhood Retreat organiser and captain. Since its inception in 2018, it’s the first time this event, a roving annual weekend away for surrogates past and present, has made it to Tasmania.

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الخميس، 17 يوليو 2025

Republicans wanted fewer abortions and more births. They are getting the opposite | Judith Levine

The rate of voluntary sterilization among young women jumped abruptly after Dobbs, and there’s no reason to believe it will drop off

Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the US supreme court case that rescinded the constitutional right to abortion, is failing on its own terms. Since the ruling, in June 2022, the number of abortions in the US has risen. Support for reproductive rights is on the upswing. And the rate of voluntary sterilization among young women – a repudiation of Trumpian pronatalism, if a desperate one – jumped abruptly after Dobbs, and there’s no reason to believe it will drop off.

Also rising at an alarming clip are preventable maternal deaths and criminal prosecutions of pregnant people.

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الأربعاء، 16 يوليو 2025

Is it safe to use magic mushrooms while pregnant? One woman’s quest raises questions

Inspired by Indigenous practices, Mikaela de la Myco has collected stories of mothers who say psilocybin helped them during pregnancy. US scientists are skeptical

When Mikaela found out she was pregnant six years ago, she knew she needed to stop drinking. What she wasn’t sure about was how she would manage the cravings.

As a teenager, she had discovered that alcohol and opiates could dull traumatic memories, including recurrent sexual assaults that played in her mind nonstop and led to suicidal thoughts. But as she entered her 20s, eager to address her mental health, she realized what helped most was psilocybin.

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الخميس، 10 يوليو 2025

A third of UK women who died during or after pregnancy known to children’s services, study finds

Researchers call for better coordinated and holistic care for women who often come from abusive backgrounds

A third of women who have died during, or in the year after, pregnancy were known to children’s social care services, with a fifth of these deaths being the result of suicide, according to research which is the first of its kind.

Between 2014 and 2022, 1,451 women died during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth, with 420 of these women having been in contact with children’s social care services, according to analysis of data from the maternal, newborn, and infant clinical outcome review programme provided by MBBRACE-UK.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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الأحد، 6 يوليو 2025

A rogue fertility clinic, stolen eggs, and an unlikely friendship – podcast

Jenny Kleeman reports on the IVF clinic in the US that stole women’s eggs to get other women pregnant

In 1995, Renée Ballou received a call from a reporter at the Orange County Register. The reporter asked if she was alone, and suggested she would need to sit down.

Ballou says: “She said, we’re breaking a story tomorrow. We have some records here that the FBI has released, and we have every indication that your eggs were stolen and that you have a child that was born from the stolen eggs.”

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Parents in Britain to be granted bereavement leave after miscarriage

Mothers and partners will gain the legal right if they lose a baby before 24 weeks, in Labour workers’ rights reform

Parents in Britain will be granted a right to bereavement leave after suffering a miscarriage as part of Labour’s workers’ rights reforms, it has been confirmed.

In a change to the law made via amendments to the employment rights bill, mothers and their partners will be given the legal right to at least one week’s bereavement leave if they have suffered a pregnancy loss before 24 weeks’ gestation.

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الأحد، 29 يونيو 2025

Living with polycystic ovary syndrome can be difficult and lonely | Letters

The NHS needs to provide better understanding and support for people with the condition, says one reader

Thank you for publishing the article about polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff (I was diagnosed with PCOS – and was soon drowning in misinformation, 22 June). It resonated with my experience of diagnosis and frustration at the complete lack of support. I was first tested in my teens and told my blood test was normal. I was retested at 34 when I went to my GP about weight gain and struggling with exhaustion. When I was confirmed to have PCOS I was warned about the health issues, and told the best thing I could do was lose weight, even though this would be very difficult, and to come back when I was struggling to conceive.

Charlie is right: the amount of time and energy I had to put in to try to understand how to be healthy has been a huge drain. Especially sifting through the masses of misinformation. It took me two years and a lot of hard work to understand a diet and exercise plan that worked for me. It’s been difficult and lonely trying to navigate this on my own.

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الأربعاء، 25 يونيو 2025

Equivalent of one child in every British classroom now born via IVF, data shows

Proportion of women giving birth after fertility treatment up by more than a third in a decade, figures reveal

The proportion of women giving birth after fertility treatment in the UK has increased by more than a third in a decade, with the equivalent of one child in every classroom now born as a result of IVF, figures show.

One in 32 births in 2023 were the result of in vitro fertilisation, up 34% from one in 43 in 2013, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

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الثلاثاء، 24 يونيو 2025

All parents need someone in their corner like we had. But for First Nations parents, having an Aboriginal midwife is essential | Narelda Jacobs and Karina Natt

Being in an Aboriginal midwifery program meant we had a culturally safe experience from both a First Nations and an LGBTIQA+ perspective

When we first shared our pregnancy news with friends, the advice from those who had been through birth was to get into a midwifery program. But the midwifery programs at our local hospital were full – or so we thought.

When we were offered a place in an Aboriginal midwifery program, we declined. Narelda, a Whadjuk Noongar woman, was not the birth parent – Karina was – and we didn’t want to take the place of someone who might need it more than us. We knew the healthcare system is notoriously culturally unsafe and this racism and discrimination is contributing to the shocking statistic of Indigenous women being three times more likely to die during childbirth.

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الاثنين، 23 يونيو 2025

Wes Streeting announces investigation into NHS maternity services

Health secretary announces ‘rapid’ national inquiry into failings in NHS care of mothers and babies in England

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has announced the launch of a national investigation into NHS maternity services.

The new rapid investigation is intended to provide truth to families suffering harm, as well as driving urgent improvements to care and safety.

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الأربعاء، 18 يونيو 2025

‘Wrapped in culture’: NSW birthing centre next step in long road to better maternity services for Aboriginal mothers

To be built among the trees in South Nowra, the maternity centre will aim to improve clinical outcomes for women and babies by fusing traditional and non-traditional practices

Melanie Briggs is gazing out at a grassy field, swatting away mosquitoes as we walk through the brush and scrub on a sunny autumn afternoon on the New South Wales south coast. We come to a stop amid the knee-length grasses where the tall eucalyptus trees reach up to the blue sky. Here she unfurls her vision for women giving birth on country.

“I can see the first birth here,” she says. “It will happen at night.”

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الثلاثاء، 17 يونيو 2025

Birth alerts are meant to help children at risk of abuse. They are routinely used against Aboriginal mothers

Medical professionals are required to report at-risk children to child protective services – but to some agencies ‘just being Black’s a risk’

At the end of 2024, Rachel* was days away from giving birth. Her feet were dangerously swollen and she was sleeping rough outside an Aboriginal support service in the city.

Her reluctance to seek antenatal care meant the usual routine of scurrying between midwives and doctors appointments for ultrasounds, blood tests and screenings was absent.

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الاثنين، 16 يونيو 2025

Bobbi was denied access to an Aboriginal midwifery program in her last pregnancy – and nearly lost her life

Indigenous women report experiencing racism, inadequate care and lack of consent in maternity wards – and are three times more likely to die during childbirth

After a life-threatening three-day labour, Bobbi Lockyer woke up alone in a single room in the intensive care unit of a Perth hospital with an IV drip in her arm. She had lost five litres of blood and had been rushed to intensive care for an emergency hysterectomy. Her new baby had been discharged while she was unconscious into the care of her now ex-partner.

“I woke up alone and thought something had happened to my baby,” she says. “I was distraught.”

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الأربعاء، 11 يونيو 2025

The best pregnancy pillows for support and comfort, tested

Our tired mum-to-be put 11 maternity pillows, from wedges to U-shapes, to the test in search of a better night’s sleep

Parents on the baby gear they wouldn’t go without

It’s a cruel twist that, just when you’re trying to bank some rest before the arrival of a baby, your body and brain conspire to make falling – and staying – asleep more difficult. Hormonal changes, pelvic or back pain, stress and extra bathroom trips are among the delights that can make sleep elusive for pregnant women. As your baby bump grows, general discomfort is a given.

Pregnancy pillows aim to help relieve some of this discomfort by supporting key parts of the body, such as your growing baby bump, back and hips. Many are designed to encourage an optimal pregnancy sleeping position: the NHS recommends sleeping on your side after 28 weeks. That’s due to research suggesting a link between falling asleep on your back and an increased risk of stillbirth – although note that the overall risk is still very low, and there’s no need to worry if you wake up on your back. Just roll over and go back to sleep.

Best pregnancy pillow overall:
Bbhugme pregnancy pillow
£159 at Bbhugme

Best budget pregnancy pillow:
Dreamgenii pregnancy, support and feeding pillow
£48.99 at Ebebek

Best pregnancy pillow for leg support:
Snüz SnuzCurve pregnancy support pillow
£84.95 at Snüz

Best for temperature control:
Simba extra support body pillow
£109 at Simba Sleep

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الاثنين، 9 يونيو 2025

Monash IVF admits second bungled embryo implant, this time at Victorian clinic

Patient’s own embryo instead of partner’s was ‘incorrectly transferred’, fertility company tells ASX, months after revealing separate Queensland clinic error

A second bungled embryo implant at Monash IVF has sparked a new investigation and the expansion of a review into the first incident, which led to a woman unknowingly giving birth to a stranger’s baby.

Monash IVF said in a statement on Tuesday that on 5 June “a patient’s own embryo was incorrectly transferred to that patient, contrary to the treatment plan which designated the transfer of an embryo of the patient’s partner”.

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الأربعاء، 4 يونيو 2025

Contraception warning over weight-loss drugs after dozens of pregnancies

UK watchdog has had 40 reports relating to pregnancies in people using drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro

Women using weight-loss drugs have been urged to use effective contraception after dozens have reported becoming pregnant while taking the medication.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued its first alert to the UK public regarding contraception and weight-loss medications after it received 40 reports relating to pregnancies while using drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro.

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الثلاثاء، 3 يونيو 2025

‘The high commissioner found us a bassinet!’ Jacinda Ardern on bringing her baby to the UN

New Zealand’s former PM made history as the first world leader to attend the general assembly meeting with a newborn. In the second extract from her book, she writes about her worry that the image would become a banner for ‘women doing it all’

Read our exclusive interview with Jacinda Ardern here
‘I was pregnant and unwed. I was also new to the job’: read the first instalment of her memoir here

Seventy-two hours after our daughter, Neve, was born, Clarke and I held a press conference to introduce her to the world. We planned the whole thing before I gave birth, and I’d been sure it would be fine. Kate Middleton did it, I’d thought. I can make it work.

Now that I’d just given birth, it did not feel fine.

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السبت، 31 مايو 2025

‘Men are not expected to be interested in babies’: how society lets new fathers – and their families – down

Around one in 10 fathers experience serious mental health issues in the period before and after their child is born. What can be done?

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Dean Rogut was holding it together.

He had become a father for the first time, but it had not gone to plan. At 12 weeks pregnant, his wife was put on bed rest. At 24 weeks, their son, Max, was born.

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الأربعاء، 28 مايو 2025

On World Hunger Day, make maternal nutrition a government priority | Letter

Former development ministers Valerie Amos, Lynne Featherstone and Liz Sugg call on leaders to commit to ensuring that women and children have access to good nutrition

Malnutrition and hunger are soaring across the world, leading to hundreds of millions of people suffering and posing a major threat to global security. Access to good nutrition is foundational to development. Without it, children cannot reach their full potential, physically or cognitively. As a result, economies are undermined and less productive, poverty is entrenched and instability spreads.

Women and girls are disproportionately impacted. One billion adolescent girls and women worldwide are suffering from malnutrition because they typically eat last and least. This has a generational impact as malnutrition passes from mother to child. Improving maternal nutrition is critical to arresting global malnutrition and building a healthier and more secure world.

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الأربعاء، 21 مايو 2025

What to say – and what not to say – to friends, or colleagues having IVF

It’s all too easy to say something crass or insensitive to someone who is going through IVF – as I discovered when I was. Here’s how to open your mouth without putting your foot in it

It is estimated that one in seven couples in the UK will experience difficulties conceiving, and many will go on to have fertility treatment. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) reports that more than 1.3m IVF cycles have been performed in the UK since 1991. I was 32 when I first underwent treatment, and I didn’t know anyone else who had been through it. Six years on, a quick headcount of IVF-enduring friends almost reaches double figures; we can no longer consider it rare. If you have friends, family or colleagues in their 30s and 40s, it is highly likely that some will be having IVF (that is not to say that no one younger will be – it is just statistically less likely: the average age is now 36).

It can be difficult to know what to say to someone who has shared that this is their path to potential parenthood – the outcome possibly exciting, possibly heartbreaking. From my experience of that challenging time, there are comments that can boost and others that, however well intentioned, can sting.

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‘Difficult choices’: aid cuts threaten effort to reduce maternal deaths in Nigeria

Staff at a UN-run clinic in country’s north-east worry about growing funding gaps amid dismantling of USAID

At a UN-run antenatal clinic in a camp for people displaced by Boko Haram, the colours stand out like the bellies of the pregnant women. Abayas in neon green, dark brown and shades of yellow graze against the purple and white uniforms of nurses attending to them in the beige-orange halls of the maternal healthcare facility.

Within the clinic in Maiduguri in north-east Nigeria, midwives and nurses are handing out free emergency home delivery kits, “dignity kits” for sexual abuse survivors and reusable sanitary pads to curb exploitation of young girls who cannot afford them.

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الثلاثاء، 20 مايو 2025

Delay in improving NHS maternity care ‘costs lives of hundreds of babies a year’

Baby charities’ report shows that high rates of stillbirth and neonatal death are not reducing quickly enough

A delay in improving NHS maternity care is costing the lives of hundreds of babies a year, analysis has shown.

At least 2,500 fewer babies would have died since 2018 if hospitals had managed to reduce the number of of stillbirths and neonatal and maternal deaths in England, as the government falls behind on its commitment to halve the rate of those three events.

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الخميس، 15 مايو 2025

UK women driven to unregulated sperm donors by high treatment costs, experts say

One unregistered sperm donor who claims to have fathered 180 children has sought access to four children in the UK

The high costs of having a child using a sperm donor are driving poor and marginalised women in the UK to use unregulated online services rife with “weirdos” and misogynists in order to have a child, experts have said.

In a ruling released on Wednesday, a Middlesbrough family court judge said a man who claimed to have fathered more than 180 children across the world as an unregistered sperm donor could not have custody of one of the children.

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الخميس، 8 مايو 2025

Having a child has been both the most transformative and mundane experience of my life | Rebecca Varcoe

Parenthood has opened the door to a new kind of love – one not necessarily more sacred or pure than the love for my friends, parents and husband

Two years ago I fell pregnant and within five weeks I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, a medical condition that causes extreme nausea and vomiting. It lasted my entire pregnancy and that year was (almost) the worst of my life. Now, I keep being told the relief of no longer being sick is the main reason I enjoyed the first year of my child’s life so much.

Shortly after my baby was born, I started seeing social media content about Charli xcx’s song “I think about it all the time” and its articulation of the apprehension many women have about becoming mothers. I have recently started back at work and miss my child terribly. It’s the unhappiest I have been since she was born, around the same time Chappell Roan said none of her friends with children were happy.

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الثلاثاء، 6 مايو 2025

Rihanna and A$AP Rocky reveal they are expecting third child at Met Gala

Barbadian singer-actor appeared at fashion event visibly pregnant, with Rocky saying: ‘It feels amazing, you know’

At a historic edition of the Met Gala with tons of news-making moments, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky once again stole the show.

The power couple is expecting their third child, the rapper A$AP Rocky revealed.

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How sure was I that I wanted a baby? About 55% certain

I thought the two sides of me – the one who wants children and the one who doesn’t – would duke it out till death

The light in the bookstore bathroom was dim. Even so, I could see the blood on the toilet paper. I wiped some more to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things, and then I stood up, grabbing on to the porcelain sink so I wouldn’t fall.

Suddenly, I understood. I didn’t want to lose my baby. I wanted to be this baby’s mother more than anything I’d ever wanted in the world. I would do anything in my power to keep it alive. The trouble: there wasn’t much I could do.

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الجمعة، 25 أبريل 2025

NHS in England failing to record ethnicity of those who sue over maternity care

‘Shocking blind spot’ in data collection comes despite ‘well-documented racial disparities in maternity care’

The NHS is facing criticism for not recording the ethnicity of people who sue it over poor maternity care, despite black, Asian and minority ethnic women experiencing much greater harm during childbirth.

Health experts, patient safety campaigners and lawyers claim racial disparities in maternity care are so stark that NHS bodies in England must start collating details of people who take legal action to help ensure services improve.

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الأربعاء، 23 أبريل 2025

What is America’s pro-natalism movement really about? | Moira Donegan

The movement isn’t actually interested in making motherhood easier by offering things like affordable childcare. So what is their aim?

Malcolm and Simone Collins, the pro-natalist couple who are reportedly consulting the Donald Trump administration on how to encourage American women to have more babies, are something of a deliberate heel: they often seem to be attempting to provoke the ire of their audience. The couple espouse the pro-natalism that is sweeping the political right with an explicit eugenicist tilt (self-styled “elites,” the Collins scan their IVF-generated embryos before their pregnancies, in an effort to select for features like high IQ). They dress in the severe black outfits of German modernists, with an emphasis on the “German” part, and wear large, unusually shaped eyeglasses; Simone has also taken to wearing large bonnets that make her look like Mother Goose, or, in their less subtle versions, like an extra on The Handmaid’s Tale.”The pair met on Reddit.

The founders of a pro-birth organization, the Collins’ assert that there is a crisis of declining birth rates in America. (In reality, the slight dip in America’s birth rate is almost entirely due to the decline of teen pregnancies.) They aim to fix this in part by breeding as many of their own children as possible: they currently have four, blameless innocents they have cruelly burdened with names like “Industry Americus” and “Torsten Savage.” But they seem to be more adept at siring media profiles of themselves, of which there have been many. The couple insist upon their own genetic superiority, like a breeding-obsessed Boris and Natasha. They aim to advance a future of more babies and – by their own terms – better ones: what Simone calls “genetically selected humans”. They must be doing it on purpose: no one could become so off-putting by accident.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist.

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الثلاثاء، 22 أبريل 2025

Number of births in US increased by 1% in 2024, according to CDC data

Small increase amounts to 3.6 million births and an increase in the women aged 40-44 giving birth

The number of births in the US increased slightly in 2024 to roughly 3.6 million, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The small increase of 1% in the number of births comes amid a long-term decline that began during the Great Recession, in about 2008. The provisional data was released on Wednesday.

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السبت، 19 أبريل 2025

Microplastics found in human ovary follicular fluid for the first time

Peer-reviewed study’s findings raises fresh question on the toxic substances’ impact on fertility

Microplastics have been found for the first time in human ovary follicular fluid, raising a new round of questions about the ubiquitous and toxic substances’ potential impact on women’s fertility.

The new peer-reviewed research published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety checked for microplastics in the follicular fluid of 18 women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment at a fertility clinic in Salerno, Italy, and detected them in 14.

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الخميس، 17 أبريل 2025

Black maternal health is about more than survival – it’s about thriving | Venice Haynes

Too often, healthcare ignores our pain and fails to value our lives. But communities are banding together to meet our needs

Maternal deaths have recently dropped in the US – that is, unless you’re Black.

Black women continue to face the highest rates of maternal mortality in our country. To be Black, pregnant and hopeful in the US is to hold on to life with a fierce and unyielding grip against devastating odds.

Venice Haynes is a social and behavioral scientist with more than 17 years of public health experience. She is the senior director of research and community engagement for United States of Care

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السبت، 12 أبريل 2025

Rogue doctors stole one woman’s eggs to get another patient pregnant. What happened next is an unlikely tale of friendship against the odds

When it emerged that a fertility clinic had made one woman pregnant with another’s baby, Renée Ballou and Carole LieberWilkins were advised to ‘lawyer up’. Instead they did something extraordinary – even as one raised the other’s biological child

Renée Ballou thought she was a lucky person. In the 1980s, she was living in a beautiful home an hour’s drive from Los Angeles, with a job she loved, a happy marriage and a young son. Everything had always felt so easy for Renée – until she began trying for a second child. Two years on, she still wasn’t pregnant. “I was pretty much used to getting what I wanted,” Renée, now 67, tells me with a sad smile. “It was very stressful.”

Along with her husband, Wesley, Renée went through a battery of tests, followed by years of surgeries, supplements and hormones. Her gynaecologist referred them to Dr Sergio Stone, a fertility specialist at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in Orange County, for more treatment. They tried artificial insemination – first with Wesley’s sperm, then with a donor – without success. Their son, Matthew, was four when they started trying for a sibling for him; by 1987 he was 10. It was lonely and emotionally and physically gruelling. But Renée refused to give up. “I wanted that baby more than anything.”

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الخميس، 10 أبريل 2025

Woman gives birth to stranger’s baby after IVF bungle in Brisbane

Mistake at Queensland fertility care clinic results in woman unknowingly giving birth to another patient’s baby after embryos mixed up

A woman has given birth to another person’s baby after their fertility care provider mixed up their embryos.

Monash IVF, which operates across Australia, has apologised after a patient at one of its Brisbane clinics had an embryo incorrectly transferred to her, meaning she gave birth to a child of another woman.

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الأربعاء، 9 أبريل 2025

A lifesaving midwife in Afghanistan: Noriko Hayashi’s best photograph

‘This woman was nine months pregnant but had never had a checkup. Anisa is listening to the baby’s heartbeat with a stethoscope. After foreign aid cuts, including Trump’s, she is now out of a job’

My home country, Japan, is one of the safest places in the world to give birth: it has one of the very lowest mortality rates in Asia. A few years ago I had the opportunity to work on a story about midwives in Japan, and I became very interested in their role. In November 2023 I travelled to Badakhshan province in the northeast of Afghanistan, the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in Asia. I wanted to meet midwives there and see how they support women.

The Badakhshan province is far from Kabul, with rugged terrain and poor transportation and medical infrastructure. In winter, heavy snowfall blocks roads for months. Women who are about to give birth are sometimes carried on donkeys escorted by family members or neighbours on multi-day trips to clinics. The literacy rate for women there is extremely low compared to other provinces – less than 10% – which is partly why there’s a serious shortage of midwives. This combination of geographic, social and cultural factors means there are often delays responding to emergencies, and deaths from complications like excessive bleeding or infection, which might otherwise have been preventable.

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الثلاثاء، 8 أبريل 2025

Woman becomes first UK womb transplant recipient to give birth – video

Surgeons are hailing an ‘astonishing’ medical breakthrough as a woman became the first in the UK to give birth after a womb transplant. Grace Davidson, 36, who was a teenager when diagnosed with a rare condition that meant she did not have a uterus, said she and her husband, Angus, 37, had been given ‘the greatest gift we could ever have asked for’. They named their five-week-old girl Amy Isabel – after Grace’s sister, Amy Purdie, who donated her womb during an eight-hour operation in 2023, and Isabel Quiroga, a surgeon who helped perfect the transplant technique. More than 100 womb transplants have been carried out worldwide, with at least 50 babies thought to have been born as a result

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