Support new mothers with mental ill health | Letter

Perinatal mental illness is eminently treatable, and women and their partners should not suffer in silence, says Dr Livia Martucci

Every day, many new mothers continue to suffer in silence, as highlighted in your article (Seven out of 10 UK mothers feel overloaded, research reveals, 28 January). The Royal College of Psychiatrists revealed postnatal depression harmed up to 85,000 new mums in England last year.

Maternal suicide is one of the leading causes of death among women between six weeks and a year after birth. Perinatal mental illness accounts for 34% of all deaths in this group during this period. Untreated prenatal and antenatal mental illness also affects unborn infants, potentially putting them at risk of premature birth and low birth weight. Parents may find it difficult to bond with their baby once they are born, which can contribute to attachment issues.

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Anna longed for a second child. Coming to terms with secondary infertility meant letting go of her fixed notion of family | Bianca Denny

Therapy helped her sit with the uncertainty of being part of a single-child family – and realise others’ successes with pregnancy were not her failures

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

Anna* delighted in motherhood and was eager to add a second child to her family. She expected conception and pregnancy to again be quick and easy, but after a year of negative pregnancy tests, Anna’s doctor used a term she’d not heard before: secondary infertility.

For Anna, the anguish associated with secondary infertility – the inability to conceive or carry to term a second or subsequent child – was pervading all aspects of her life. Anna believed her family to be incomplete without a second child and was devastated at the thought of her child growing up without a sibling.

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Taliban birth control ban: women ‘broken’ by lethal pregnancies and untreated miscarriages

Women across Afghanistan describe the traumatic impact of disappearing clinics and contraception

Parwana* no longer recognises her own children. Once known for her beauty in her village in Kandahar province, the 36-year-old sits on the floor of her mother’s home, rocking silently. After nine pregnancies and six miscarriages, many under pressure from her husband and in-laws, Parwana has slipped into a permanent state of confusion.

“She is lost,” says her mother, Sharifa. “They broke her with fear, pregnancies and violence.”

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As LA maternity wards close, patients are giving birth in ERs: ‘There’s no system to care for these women’

From 2016 to 2023, more than 26,500 people, mostly Latino, have gone to an ER in LA county to seek birthing care

This story was produced in partnership with the non-profit newsroom Type Investigations and the investigative reporting program at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Sigita Cahoon’s 16 September 2024 stretched through the night.

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Guess How Much I Love You? review – shattering portrait of a pregnancy in crisis

Royal Court theatre, London
Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo excel as a couple reeling from an ultrasound scan in Luke Norris’s extraordinary play

The trigger warnings are handed to us on a card as we file into the auditorium. For good reason: Luke Norris’s play is a harrowing portrait of pregnancy and grief, plumbing the depths of sorrow within a marriage. But it is not only that. It is funny and profound, intense without ever becoming overwrought.

The play follows a thirtysomething couple who remain unnamed, just like their baby, as they navigate loss. Their relationship seems to feed off a sparky kind of contrariness. She (Rosie Sheehy) is clever, ferocious, always up for a fight. He (Robert Aramayo) is gentler, using humour – and poetry, even in the face of her jeering – to soften her edges. Their dialogue sounds like a contact sport – ricocheting, fast and furious – while they wait for the results of their 20-week ultrasound scan in the first scene.

At Royal Court theatre, London, until 21 February

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Meet the OB-GYNs fighting back against Trump’s ‘guerrilla war on science’

As some medical groups cave to the Trump administration, the American College of OB-GYNs is taking a stand

When Steven Fleischman took over as president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in 2025, he knew that controversy was practically part of the job description. But the Connecticut-based physician at Yale University School of Medicine never predicted that things would get this dire.

As the premier membership group for US-based OB-GYNs, ACOG provides its more than 62,000 members with clinical guidance, educational opportunities and career help. It also advocates for abortion rights – a stance that has long made the organization far more politically active than many other major medical societies. And in the last year, the nonpartisan organization has become a leading voice in the fight against Donald Trump’s anti-science crusade and the US government’s embrace of medical misinformation, especially on the topic of pregnancy and childbirth.

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Experience: my daughters were born conjoined at the head

Seeing them separated for the first time felt like a miracle

I was already a mother of three when I lay back for my 10-week ultrasound in 2019. At first, seeing the gel on my stomach and the flickering black and white image on screen was familiar and soothing. Then I saw the look on the sonographer’s face.

She dropped the probe and ran out of the room without a word. I tried not to panic, but by the time she sprinted back in with a doctor, who looked at the screen and said, “Oh my goodness”, I was terrified.

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