I’m giving birth as a battle rages over maternity care in Ireland. We shouldn’t have to pay to feel safe | Caelainn Hogan

An unfair two-tier system is, at last, giving way to universal state care. But private interests and highly paid doctors are resisting

There were no chandeliers in the public ward where I spent my first days as a mother, at the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world. The room echoed with cries, the well-worn floor bouncing under footsteps, the windows looking out on Dublin’s city centre.

Now the Rotunda hospital, where I’m due to give birth again soon, is counting down to its 1 millionth baby. It is also at the centre of a bitter debate over plans to reform Ireland’s two-tier state healthcare system, so that those who pay to “go private” in public hospitals no longer gain an unfair advantage over those who don’t.

Caelainn Hogan is a journalist and the author of Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘Fallen Women’ and Their Children

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‘There’s no place to go’: providers see more abortions later in pregnancy as bans spread in US

Patients are showing up ‘later and sicker’ for abortion care as more US states adopt bans and significant restrictions

Providers are seeing more patients in need of abortions later in pregnancy as abortion bans and restrictions proliferate in US states, all while access to insurance falls.

Those bans and restrictions have also meant that later abortion care access has grown over the past decade in a handful of haven states and cities.

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What is postpartum psychosis, the condition central to the trial of Lindsay Clancy?

Clancy’s defense team argues she killed her three children under the condition, and should not be convicted of murder

Postpartum psychosis, a rare and severe mental health illness, is central to the trial of Lindsay Clancy, who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. Her defense team argues that she killed her three children while experiencing the condition, which can cause hallucinations, delusions and rapid mood changes.

While the outcome of the trial may hinge on a determination of Clancy’s mental state, women who have experienced postpartum psychosis say the attention surrounding the case could help raise awareness about the need for better support, including more research and improved medical training.

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Queensland woman gave birth to twins with different parents after surrogacy coincides with natural pregnancy

Both children were born on same day in November 2025 in situation so rare it had not been contemplated by state surrogacy laws

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A Queensland woman gave birth to twin children with separate sets of biological parents last year, in what is believed to be an Australian first situation so rare it had not been contemplated by state surrogacy laws.

The woman, anonymised in a court judgment, conceived an unplanned natural pregnancy about the same time as she received an IVF embryo transfer under a surrogacy arrangement with another couple.

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‘My ability to cope was unravelling’: how I navigated ADHD and childbirth – and seven things I learned

Neurodivergence can make an already challenging process far trickier — and in the UK support isn’t automatically available. A new book aims to help mothers prepare

It’s 7am in a postnatal ward. I’ve been brought here having given birth around four hours earlier. I’m hot and have not slept since arriving at the hospital at 9pm for an induction, only to go into labour spontaneously before it could begin. All around me is incandescent hospital light and the sound of crying newborns. This would be challenging enough for someone who isn’t neurodivergent, but coupled with my attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) I could feel my ability to cope unravelling.

I remember looking around, crying, unable to shut off the noise in my brain. “What if I don’t ever sleep again,” the little voice asked. I shut my eyes and the noise grew. Then there was my newborn son, lying next to me in a cot, and the fact that I had absolutely no idea how to look after him. I pressed the emergency buzzer and told the midwife who arrived that I could not breathe and needed to be discharged immediately. She said they couldn’t do that because I was under the mental health team and needed to speak to them first. I cried more.

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John Oliver on fetal personhood: ‘It effectively treats women as incubators’

The host discussed problems with giving fetuses equivalent rights to humans after the overturning of Roe v Wade

On his HBO show on Sunday night, John Oliver discussed the debate over fetal personhood and how the topic has become central to the anti-abortion movement in the US.

About a third of US states have established fetal personhood by law, giving legal rights and protections to fetuses and in some cases embryos. As a result, hundreds of women have lost custody to their children for reasons related to their pregnancies.

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Nothing less than radical whole-system change is required to fix the NHS's maternity services | Julia Sanders

It’s vital that Yvette Cooper’s taskforce acts on the Amos and Ockenden reports – and puts the needs of women and families at the heart of maternity services

It is hard to find the words to describe the agony for those who have experienced preventable baby loss, injury or maternal death. Understandably, families who have been through this have campaigned relentlessly for local and national investigations. Every family deserves to know what caused their loss or trauma, but current and past reviews have failed to deliver on resolution and accountability.

The vital debate about how to ensure safe maternity care has intensified since the publication of two reports, led by Valerie Amos and Donna Ockenden, and the appointment of Yvette Cooper as secretary of state for health and social care, offering a golden opportunity for system-wide change. “I want to make it a personal crusade to put the cradle back at the heart of the NHS,” Cooper told the Guardian last week, adding that she was committed to introducing a new national maternity commissioner.

Julia Sanders is professor of clinical midwifery at Cardiff University and was an expert adviser to the national maternity and neonatal investigation led by Valerie Amos

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