'Having a child doesn’t fit into these women's schedule': is this the future of surrogacy?

US doctors are seeing an increase in patients avoiding pregnancy or time off work by paying someone else to carry their baby – with no medical need to do so

The Pacific Fertility Center on Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard is the place where the people who have it all make their babies. With its crystal chandeliers and plush velvet and leather upholstery in shades of cream and mink, you’d be forgiven for thinking the waiting room was the changing room of a high-end bridal shop. But the pictures on the flatscreen on the wall give it away: digital photos of newborns in scratch mittens, thank you notes, family Christmas cards, tiny heads cradled in grateful hands. The images float upwards and disappear like bubbles in champagne.

In the 25 years Dr Vicken Sahakian has been practising, he has made families for thousands of the most privileged people in the world. He has worked with Hollywood stars, although he says he is too discreet to tell me names. (“You won’t hear it from me, but of course you would have heard of them.”) His clients are straight, gay, young and old, and they come to him from across the globe, particularly from China, or parts of Europe where surrogacy is either illegal or very tightly regulated. In the UK, surrogacy is legal, but surrogates can claim only expenses for carrying a child for another person. California law allows surrogates to earn a profit, and upholds the rights of intended parents over anyone else who is involved in the creation of their babies. It’s given the state a reputation as the most surrogacy-friendly place in the world.

The message was, this guy can get a 62-year‑old woman pregnant. So I had everybody over 50 calling me

Surrogacy isn’t taboo any more. In the UK, you are so far behind. Thank God – it’s good for business

A surrogate at one clinic said, ‘So I must risk my life to save someone from having stretchmarks?’

Related: A letter to… our surrogate, who had second thoughts

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2HDyVzT

‘Pregnancy is a time bomb’ – what I learned about motherhood working in a women’s prison

Pregnant women in jail are revered by other inmates – but the question of what will happen to the child is never far away

Prison is full of mothers. Mothers of adult children, who visit at weekends bringing grandchildren in tow; mothers whose motherhood is on pause because their children are being looked after by foster families; mothers whose mothers are doing the mothering for them – an army of grans and nanas collecting children from school and footing bills for food and clothes; and mothers whose children, passed from pillar to post by the care system, have followed in their footsteps and live just up the corridor.

There are also, often, mothers-to-be. Pregnancy seems to happen more rapidly in prison, as though life is hurtling towards the surface faster than anyone could prepare.

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2YHDjDo

Baby with spina bifida receives pioneering keyhole surgery

Jaxson Sharp has spine repaired while in the womb, in first for UK surgeons

For the first time in the UK, doctors have performed pioneering keyhole surgery to repair the spine of a baby with spina bifida while still in the womb.

Surgeons from King’s College hospital in London used the cutting-edge technique to successfully close a hole in the spine of Jaxson Sharp 27 weeks into the pregnancy.

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2VrZcVq

Antibiotics after childbirth could avert dangerous infections

Thousands of women could be spared pain and long-term health problems, trial suggests

Thousands of women every year could be spared painful and occasionally life-threatening infections if doctors administered preventive antibiotics after every assisted childbirth, a major trial has found.

A single dose of antibiotics within six hours of childbirth nearly halved the number of infections in women whose babies were delivered with either forceps or ventouse suction cups, procedures that are used in one in eight UK births.

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2LU8Mkz

Five ways to strengthen your pelvic floor

Using apps and exercises, women and men can benefit from keeping their pelvic floor muscles healthy

Not everyone’s does. Suzanne Hagen, professor of health services research at Glasgow Caledonian University, says there is little research to show the effectiveness of pelvic floor exercises as a preventive measure, although they did help to reduce symptoms in women with early stages of prolapse. Pregnant women should do strengthening exercises, and so should peri- and postmenopausal women, even if they don’t have symptoms. But if you haven’t given birth (either vaginally or by C-section), or had pelvic or abdominal surgery (male or female) and you don’t have symptoms of a weak pelvic floor such as incontinence or prolapse, you may not need to do them, says Lucy Allen, a pelvic health physiotherapist. Overworking the muscles can lead to pain. “We see issues in people whose pelvic floor doesn’t fully relax,” she says.

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DRcZP8