A Child of My Own review – barely believable true crime tale of desperation and delusion

Candy-coloured recreations of one woman’s pregnancy unravel as dark truths are revealed in Maite Alberdi’s intimate docudrama

This cheekily inquisitive docudrama by Chilean director Maite Alberdi features a unique variation on the long con, and one with a precise duration: nine months. After suffering three miscarriages and under pressure from her husband and in-laws to give them a child, Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza (aka Ale, and played by Ana Celeste in re-enactments) decides to fake her next pregnancy. She is determined to have something to show at the end of it: after meeting single mother Mayra, who wants to abort her second pregnancy, at the hospital where she works, Ale agrees to take her baby once it is born.

The details are hardly believable: eating copiously to gain weight, Ale manages to convince husband Arturo (Armando Espitia) and his family that this pregnancy is on track for her entire term. She reflexively tenses her muscles while he strokes her baby bump and smiles through a swirl of conflicting thoughts at her baby shower. While most con artists must dupe themselves on some level, it is true down to a physiological level in Ale’s case: a judge later testifies that her desperation to bear children may have resulted in a pseudo-pregnancy. How else to explain that the doctor signing off her maternity leave appears to hear the baby’s heartbeat?

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Women must not feel pressure to have ‘ideal birth’, says Yvette Cooper

Exclusive: New health secretary promises root-and-branch reform after damning maternity scandals

Women should not feel pressurised into experiencing an “ideal birth”, the new health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said, promising a root-and-branch reform of standards after several damning maternity scandals.

Cooper, who returns to the department 27 years after she was the minister for public health under Tony Blair, said maternity and child health would be a major focus in the role, where she will also be expected to implement significant reforms to social care.

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‘She wasn’t acting, she wanted to live it’: how a fake pregnancy resulted in the wildest true crime film of the year

Netflix documentary A Child of My Own tells the stranger-than-fiction story of a hospital worker who went to extreme lengths in her efforts to become a mother. Its director recounts their meetings in a Mexican prison

The CCTV footage of the hospital corridor is grainy but you can make out a young woman carrying an oversized gift bag. Nothing unusual there. Except that inside the bag is a newborn baby girl, just hours old. And the woman carrying the bag, walking out of the hospital’s main entrance, past two security guards who are idly chatting, is not the baby’s mother.

Her name is Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza, known to everyone as Alejandra. When film-maker Maite Alberdi met her in a low-security Mexican prison, Alejandra was in the final year of a 13-year jail sentence for snatching the baby. Alberdi listened rapt as Alejandra told her story: “Everything she was telling me was extraordinary, stranger than fiction.”

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Regulation cannot eliminate surrogacy risks | Letter

Lexi Ellingsworth of Stop Surrogacy Now UK responds to news that the rise in the use of surrogates abroad is leaving more babies at risk of becoming stateless

Your article (Rise in overseas surrogates ‘increases risk of stateless babies, 19 July) suggests that the solution lies in better regulation to make surrogacy safe and ethical. But regulation cannot remove the central ethical problem: every surrogacy arrangement begins with the deliberate separation of a newborn baby from their mother, who they have naturally bonded with throughout the pregnancy.

Regulation is also not able to eliminate the physical risks borne exclusively by surrogate mothers. A study in Canada has suggested that surrogate mothers are more likely to experience severe complications including postpartum haemorrhage and pre-eclampsia than women who conceived naturally or with IVF.

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‘I was full of fears’: the story of a premature birth – in pictures

João Linneu’s raw and intimate photographs capture his partner and child as they navigate isolation, lumbar punctures and even a lightning storm

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I was struggling after eight rounds of IVF – and then a former midwife became my surrogate

Narzny McKinney and her surrogate, Sarah, discuss their experience – and the misconceptions that surround the practice

After struggling with infertility and eight unsuccessful rounds of IVF, Narzny McKinney had two precious embryos left – her last chance to have biological children. After considering her options, she made the decision to find a surrogate to carry her child for her.

“We were eight years down the line at this point and I just didn’t want to risk anything going wrong,” she said. “It was a tough decision but it was absolutely the right thing to do.”

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UK surrogacy law ‘creaking at seams’ as demand rises sharply

Experts urge ministers to update legislation to prevent intended parents resorting to riskier arrangements abroad

Surrogates, parents and children are being failed by the UK’s archaic laws, which are “creaking at the seams” as demand for surrogacy grows rapidly, experts have said.

Figures obtained by the Guardian show there were just under 1,000 children born to surrogates in 2025, double the number in 2015. The rise has been driven by a rise in the number of gay couples seeking to be parents, increasing infertility and shifting cultural attitudes.

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