Lockdown or loneliness? Covid brought on a kind of stressful baby boom in Australia

New data shows the birthrate went up in 2021, after a record low in 2020 and years of decline

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A pandemic might not seem like the ideal time to have a baby, but new data backs up the idea that Covid precipitated a baby boom.

According to an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report – Australia’s mothers and babies – a record 315,705 babies were born in 2021, while the birthrate itself was up to 61 per 1,000 women of reproductive age from 56 per 1,000 the year before.

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New federal law provides workplace accommodations to pregnant people

Pregnant Workers Fairness Act provides a range of arrangements for pregnancy-related conditions including morning sickness

A new federal law that requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant and postpartum employees took effect on Tuesday, providing protections to millions of eligible people.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires that employers with more than 15 workers provide “reasonable accommodations” to people who are pregnant, postpartum or have a related medical condition, NBC News reported.

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Matrescence by Lucy Jones review smashing motherhood myths

A thrilling examination of what it means to become a mother challenges assumptions in bravura fashion

Matrescence, the best book I’ve ever read about motherhood, is a delightfully unusual one. For starters, brief passages that lay out the machinations of nature, and many of its horrors, sit around its chapters. We meet eels that endure five life stages and multiple habitats before breeding once and then dying, and black lace-weaver mother spiders who feed their living bodies to their infants.

“Forty spiderlings, which resemble creamy yellow sea pearls, wander over her nonchalantly, devouring, snacking, nibbling, pulling bits of her flesh into their tiny mouths,” Jones writes, watching a grisly nature video. Spotting a similar spider in her children’s toy box not long after, she’s relieved to find no babies. The whole experience has felt “close to home”. “She’s safe,” she writes. “For now.”

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Dramatic rise in number of women freezing eggs in UK

Experts say restrictions on socialising during Covid crisis may have led more women to seek to preserve fertility

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of women freezing their eggs in the UK, while more single people are opting for IVF, figures show.

A report from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HEFA) found that more people than ever are undergoing procedures, with egg- and embryo-freezing the fastest-growing fertility treatments in Britain.

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Model embryo with heartbeat replicates cells in early pregnancy

Exclusive: Scientists used stem cells to create the structures, which were unable to develop into a foetus

Scientists have created a model human embryo with a heartbeat and traces of blood in an advance that offers an extraordinary window into the first weeks of life.

The synthetic structure, created from human stem cells without the need for eggs, sperm or fertilisation, replicated some of the cells and structures that would typically appear in the third and fourth week of pregnancy. But it was specifically designed to lack the tissues that go on to form the placenta and yolk sac in a natural embryo, meaning that it did not have the theoretical potential of developing into a foetus.

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All pregnant women are in danger: protests in Poland after expectant mother dies in hospital

Ombudsman rules that hospital in Nowy Targ failed to tell Dorota Lalik, 33, that her life was in danger and could be saved by an abortion

“Stop killing us,” protesters across Poland chanted this evening, demanding the legalisation of abortion, after reports reached the media of a pregnant woman’s death in a hospital in May.

On Monday, Poland’s patients’ rights ombudsman, Bartłomiej Chmielowiec, said that the John Paul II hospital should have told 33-year-old Dorota Lalik that her life could be saved through an abortion. The hospital violated her rights by withholding the information, the ombudsman ruled.

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More than one in 10 women struggle to bond with their baby, survey shows

73% of surveyed women say they received no information on bonding in first weeks after giving birth

More than one in 10 women struggle to bond with their baby, with the majority saying they are given no support from healthcare staff, a survey has found.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of women said they received no information or advice on bonding with their baby in the first few weeks after birth, despite guidance for doctors and nurses recommending that they assist with emotional attachment to encourage healthy child development.

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Annastacia Palaszczuk reveals past miscarriage amid anger at woman’s treatment in Ipswich hospital

Queensland premier tells Today show she will be personally involved in review of Nikkole Southwell’s harrowing experience

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Queensland’s premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has divulged the trauma she suffered after experiencing a miscarriage as a woman’s harrowing experience sparks an internal health review.

Palaszczuk’s comments came during questioning about allegations a woman was traumatised by the hospital treatment she received after a painful miscarriage.

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Access to contraception has got harder in England, top doctor says

Lesley Regan, women’s health ambassador for England, says ‘destructive’ changes to NHS system in 2012 are failing women

Women are finding it harder to access contraception than they did a decade ago, resulting in more unplanned pregnancies, the women’s health ambassador has said.

They have been discouraged by bad experiences, a confusingly disjointed system and long delays for procedures such as the coil or implant insertion, according to Prof Lesley Regan, a leading gynaecologist who was appointed women’s health ambassador for England last year.

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Gene genius: how the placenta project is unlocking the secrets of our cells

The Human Cell Atlas is already helping to ensure safer pregnancies, and scientists believe it will help them understand many other conditions

It provides oxygen and nutrients for a growing baby, removes waste products as they build up in its blood, and protects the life of the foetus. Yet the placenta, the temporary organ that cherishes the unborn, is a puzzle. It carries the DNA of the newly formed child but manages to elude immune responses from its genetically distinct mother.

Understanding how the placenta survives and functions is of critical importance in ensuring pregnancies are healthy and viable – and thanks to a remarkable global project, the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), researchers are now uncovering the secrets of its behaviour.

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Puzzled by Succession’s finale twist? Shiv’s pregnancy holds the answer | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

The physical and emotional storm of pregnancy can dramatically alter the ways we see the world, in many cases irrevocably

Pregnant women often dream of death. I know I did, and friends told me the same, though no one talks about it with the level of commiserating jollity that they do the strange cravings or the weirdly enhanced sense of smell or even this awful thing called, apparently, “lightning crotch”.

While pregnant, I remember reading about how thin the veil between life and death can feel when you’re pregnant, even in a modern western medical system. In our collective unconscious, pregnancy is still something that can kill us, and in certain places and circumstances still does to this day. For many women, it’s the closest they feel to death in their lifetime. Which isn’t something that is really appropriate to put in a baby shower card.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author

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