Late motherhood is on the rise, but as one who knows, it has its downsides | Yvonne Roberts

Pregnancy rates have increased in only one age group – fortysomethings – and with good reason

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932, only the savages, behaving like animals, became pregnant. “Normal” people had babies genetically designed, cloned and gestated in artificial wombs, the age of the mother and father irrelevant to the process.

In the real world, in 2018, we now have technological breakthroughs such as IVF, and the growth of the “mother machine” industry offers wombs for rent and “ovum donors” for those with the money to spend. This means that if a woman wants a baby, alone or with a partner, now, as in fiction, age is no barrier.

Two of the biggest obstacles barring the route to motherhood are the antiquated world of work and the cost of childcare

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2GqzMAJ

North Carolina ends shackling of inmates during childbirth

A new policy will remove wrist restraints once an inmate is in labor and the use of leg or waist restraints will now also be prevented

Pregnant inmates will no longer give birth in shackles in North Carolina after a change in the state’s prison rules.

Prisons director Kenneth Lassiter announced a new policy Monday that will remove wrist restraints once an inmate is in labor unless she poses an immediate risk of escape or is a clear threat to herself or others. The use of leg or waist restraints will now also be prevented.

“I am unaware of any cases of women or girls in labor attempting to escape. If I did – I would suggest that they are superhuman. Corrections officials often use this crazy scenario as a justification for chaining women prisoners during childbirth – but it simply doesn’t hold water,” Amy Fettig, deputy director of the ACLU national prison project, told the Guardian.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2GhlLcQ

Time for change: Ann Enright on Ireland's abortion referendum

In the coming weeks, voters in Ireland will have the chance to repeal the eighth amendment, which recognises the equal rights to life of a foetus and the mother during pregnancy. We must send a message to the world, the author declares

Recently I spoke to a reasonable, sane Irishwoman who said that she was against abortion and because she was so reasonable and sane, I was curious what she meant by that. Was she against the morning after pill? Certainly not. What about chemical abortifacients? They did not really worry her too much. So, what about terminations before 12 or 13 weeks, the time when woman are often given the all clear to confirm their pregnancy to family and friends? This woman was not, all things considered, against terminations during this window, when pregnancy is not considered medically certain. She was also, just to make clear, in favour of abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, rape and incest. In 1983 this woman might have voted “against abortion”, despite the fact that she is not against abortion, especially if it happens during those weeks when the natural loss of an embryo is called miscarriage. She just found abortion, in general, hard to vote “for”. Had there been no referendum in 1983 – where people with a range of uncertainties were asked for a single “yes” or “no” – then limited abortion might well be available now in Ireland, in the way that the morning after pill is legally available and widely used.

The 1983 referendum was a little like the Brexit referendum – a population voting about something that seemed, on one side, clear, and on the other, contingent and hard to describe. As it turned out, the language problem worked both ways. In order to bring the issue to a vote, a new legal term had to be minted, one that did not appear in any previous laws. The eighth amendment to the Irish constitution acknowledges the right to life of “the unborn” and this seemed to invent a new category of rights-holder, possibly a new kind of person. By acknowledging the “equal right to life of the mother” an impregnated woman was changed from a human being into a relationship, that of motherhood, and a peculiar equivalence established. Pregnancy was a binary state, in which two souls temporarily shared the same blood supply. The question of who had it first was neither here nor there and a fertilised egg was a grown adult, temporarily inconvenienced by being a few hundred cells large.

How does access to abortion vary across the UK?

Acknowledging the 'right to life' of the unborn seemed to invent a new category of rights-holder – a new kind of person

Related: Ireland's government approves abortion referendum bill

In 2016, Britain and the US voted for the tribal and symbolic –in Ireland we had a tribal, symbolic vote in 1983

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2pzTeVm

The story of one man’s pregnancy: ‘It felt joyous, amazing and brilliant’

Pregnancy is increasingly common among trans men. For Jason Barker, who has made a film about the experience, it changed his life

It’s hard to perform a somersault at 36 weeks pregnant. Towards the end of his debut feature film, Jason Barker is swimming in the London Fields lido in east London, a short walk from the flat he shares with his partner, Tracey. The screen is rinsed blue. Barker dances, makes a star. And then, very slowly, he turns full height in the water, his Hawaiian swim shorts flapping, his stomach a perfect, firm dome.

This is the viewer’s first sight of Barker’s pregnant belly in A Deal With the Universe, which premieres at the BFI Flare festival next week. And after seven years in which he and Tracey tried to conceive, it is a moment of pure levity and joy. “That swimming stuff that you see?” he says. “It felt like the first time I could ever say, ‘Yeah! I actually like this body. Love it. It’s brilliant.’”

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2puNUl6

'I felt I was being punished for pushing back': pregnancy and #MeToo

Pregnant women are still being patronised, blamed for our bodies’ failings, and made to feel guilty about our choices

I spent one third of 2015 – about 120 days – on bed rest. I moved only to visit a hospital or doctor’s office, where I was scrutinised and presented with a list of concrete and potential deficiencies. There was certainly something wrong with my cervix, likely something wrong with my hormone levels, probably something wrong with my placenta, and possibly something wrong with my baby’s heart. Every time I was examined – which was constantly – a new potential problem surfaced. Having already lost two pregnancies, I was overcome by the looming possibility of catastrophe. I refused to prepare for anything more than a week in advance, as if hope were interchangeable with hubris and therefore deserving of punishment.

Throughout the pregnancy, I was grimly enthusiastic about suggestions, tests, and treatments – convinced that the more I endured, the more likely I would be to bring a baby home. I injected progesterone; sustained weekly ultrasounds; underwent a special MRI scan. I attended my appointments with the obstetrician, the maternal-foetal-medicine specialist and the foetal cardiologist. Most of all, I tried not to move. I believed that stillness might give me the best chance of giving birth to a healthy infant. Also, a sense of self-preservation urged me: if I were the most careful patient, then I would not have to blame myself were a tragedy to occur. Lying flat at home, I was in a dull, perpetual panic.

Male anatomy is not defined as lacking. Men have 'premature ejaculation' not 'inadequate testicles'

For the sake of my baby, I would do well to yield – and then to go home and rage, feeling young and dumb and female

So many doctors deal in the fear surrounding pregnancy. They can impose terror upon their patients

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2FJbupz

Isabel Gal obituary

My mother-in-law, Dr Isabel Gal, who has died aged 92, was working at Queen Mary’s hospital for children in Carshalton, Surrey, in the 1960s when her research suggested that a hormone-based pregnancy test drug called Primodos caused birth defects similar to those seen with thalidomide.

Her findings were published in the journal Nature in 1967. In 1975 the Committee on Safety of Medicines issued a warning which was printed on the packaging, but the drug remained in use in the UK until 1978 – and Isabel believed that she was subsequently frozen out of the medical profession.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2pb6fnm

Elena Ferrante: ‘Nothing is comparable to the joy of bringing another living creature into the world’

Men have always been jealous of that experience which is ours alone

I was a terrible mother, a great mother. Pregnancy changes everything: our body, our feelings, the hierarchical order of our lives. The convention by which we have always considered ourselves one and indivisible fails. Now we have two hearts, all our organs are duplicated, our sex is doubled – we are female plus female or female plus male. And we are divisible, not metaphorically but in the acute reality of our body.

The first time I got pregnant, it was difficult to accept. Pregnancy was an anxious mental struggle. I felt it as the breakdown of an equilibrium already precarious in itself, as a revelation of the animal nature behind the fragile mask of the human. For nine months I was on a seesaw of joy and horror. The birth was terrible, it was wonderful. Taking care of a newborn, by myself, without help, without money, exhausted me; I hardly slept. I wanted to write and there was never time. Or if there was some, I would concentrate for a few minutes and then fall asleep fretfully. Until slowly everything began to seem to me marvellous. Today I think that nothing is comparable to the joy, the pleasure, of bringing another living creature into the world.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Yes, I’m Italian – but I’m not loud, I don’t gesticulate and I’m not good with pizza’

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2Hm8j3d

Care and midwifery in the world's most challenging places – in pictures

On International Women’s Day we celebrate the work of Unicef in supporting midwives and healthcare workers in some of the world’s most challenging countries to give birth

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2FlYykX

'We will not stop': Irish abortion activist vows to step up fight

Ailbhe Smyth says it is time for change as government prepares to release details of referendum

In 1983, Ailbhe Smyth was spat at and denounced as a “baby murderer” in the street as she campaigned for Irish women to have the right to abortion.

Thirty-five years later, the activist is still at the heart of Ireland’s abortion battle, fighting for her daughter, granddaughter and other women to get control over their bodies.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2H4wS4v

Canada woman guilty of killing her baby ordered to take regular pregnancy tests

Biannual testing as part of woman’s sentence for killing newborn is being described as first decision of its kind

A Canadian woman who pleaded guilty to killing her newborn baby will have to take a pregnancy test twice a year as part of her sentence, in what is being described as the first decision of its kind in Canada.

The court heard that the 43-year-old woman from Montreal, whose name is being withheld to protect her children, gave birth at home in 2016 to her fourth child. She had not realised she was pregnant.

Related: Pregnancy is a life experience I’d rather avoid. That doesn’t mean I’m selfish | Arwa Mahdawi

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2oAJLwr