A woman who gave birth alone in her prison cell in Denver is suing the city after jail deputies and nurses allegedly ignored Diana Sanchez’s pleas for help during five hours of labour
Continue reading...You report how a pregnant rape survivor experiencing a miscarriage and barely able to stand was unlawfully held in immigration detention which amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment (Home Office pays £50,000 to trafficked woman detained during miscarriage, 20 August).
This case show precisely why the Home Office must heed our advice and that of the medical profession, and actually ban the detention of pregnant women.
Continue reading...When I look at my newborn son, whose eyes crinkle as he smiles, and his older sister who wakes each morning asking to give him cuddles, I find it hard to believe that the NHS would describe our family as a “burden on society”.
But, because I’m a single mother who used fertility treatment and a sperm donor to conceive my children, this is how NHS South East London sees us.
The reality of families that have chosen invasive treatment is that all these children are so very wanted and planned
Related: People seeking IVF are flying blind. Success rates should be public | Stirling Griff
Continue reading...There was a point during labour when I would quite happily have ripped off every scrap of clothing, hunkered down into a squat and moaned like a pilot whale in the middle of a busy Frankie & Benny’s to deliver that baby. You could have thrown 10-inch four-cheese pizzas at my face and served cajun cheese fries off my head and I would hardly have noticed. Forty hours in, I was so beyond my body, so utterly absorbed by the swollen, fuzzy, monumental pressure beneath my skin, so transported by a feeling that wasn’t pain but felt like the tearing open of rock, that I would hardly have noticed if a family of four from Smethwick had turned up and started eating chicken wings in the corner of the birthing room. I have never been more aware of and more occupied by the present moment in my life.
Which is why, when I first read that University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff is offering labouring woman virtual reality headsets during labour, I wondered, why bother? During the last 12 hours of my labour I was so completely transported by my physical experience, as I hung off door handles, appeared to slide up the wall and felt my breath leave my body like a coil of golden thread, that visions of a herd of buffalo or a quick virtual swim through a coral reef would hardly have registered. The idea of walking around my room in that wonderful east London birth centre, utterly naked but for a Daft Punk-style helmet over my pale and sweaty face, colostrum falling across my pulsating orb of a stomach, shuddering with each contraction like a freight train, seemed faintly ridiculous.
Related: What does childbirth feel like? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Nell Frizzell
Continue reading...First there was the baby shower, then came the gender-reveal party. Now parents-to-be are embarking on a new way of celebrating imminent parenthood: the “mother blessing”.
Unlike other baby events, where the emphasis is on gifts for the newborn, these gatherings are focused on nurturing the mother-to-be and wishing her love and luck. Controversially, they are said to derive from the Navajo tradition of “blessingway” – and have been condemned as cultural appropriation.
Continue reading...Amy McKeown had been 12 weeks pregnant when she came round on her bathroom floor, blood pooling on the tiles, unable to move. Ten days earlier, in the spring of 2016, she had gone for her first scan with her husband, Matt, and their two-year-old daughter. At the appointment, a nurse told her she had miscarried; the baby had no heartbeat.
McKeown opted to let nature run its course and give birth, rather than have a procedure (dilation and curettage) or an induced labour. Her stillborn baby was born at home a few days later. McKeown ended up bedridden for six weeks, and haemorrhaged heavily for almost 10, causing frequent blackouts.
Continue reading...Experts are divided over what causes postpartum psychosis, which can leave mothers of newborns detached from reality
When Sarah Hayes’ son Alex was born 24 years ago, she wasn’t just happy – she was euphoric.
“I couldn’t believe Alex was mine. Even after 30 hours of labour, I was full of energy,” she says. “I was so elated, I couldn’t switch off and sleep.”
We need to start asking how the mum is doing. Not just the child
Continue reading...These very intimate details of our lives are always requested as if nothing is at stake. It’s laziness masquerading as curiosity
There are suddenly a lot of babies in my life. Lovely, squishy babies that are loud and ridiculous. Babies that squawk and dribble on pets, bibs and other babies. At mealtimes these babies smash already smashed food with their perfect, tiny fists and yet somehow I find them completely remarkable. I never thought I would be the sort of person who talks this much about babies, about starting a family, about parenting. But after a long, complicated road, my partner and I are happy to have finally decided: we do want kids, we really do.
But for us the choice to procreate has come with a caveat: when the subject of starting our family comes up, people contemplate mine and my partner’s bodies before asking “So how will that work?” There’s usually a brief pause as they remember their manners, following up with: “If you don’t mind me asking.”
Related: It’s a woman’s choice: falling fertility rates are not the business of government | Gaby Hinsliff
Asking about queer lifestyles could be seen as a demonstration of being a good ally, but also – it isn’t being a good ally
Related: After a bruising year, the kindness of strangers made our wedding unforgettable | Kat Patrick
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