People in the UK: if you want children, is there anything that is holding you back?

We’d like to hear from people living in the UK who would like to have children what may have been causing them to put it off

The fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1939.

Official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed “total fertility”, calculated based on the birthrate across different age groups, fell to 1.49 children per woman in 2022, well below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population without significant immigration.

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How we met: ‘She was in the next hospital bed – and I loved her accent’

Sarah, 36, and Josie, 41, met in hospital in 2021, when they were both having babies and visiting hours were restricted due to Covid

After having an emergency caesarean section in July 2021, Josie found herself in a Bristol hospital feeling “pretty rotten”. Originally from Bedfordshire, she had moved to the area for her job in the civil service and didn’t have family living nearby. While lying in the hospital bed, she remembers overhearing someone speaking Welsh next to her. “Sarah was having a long video call,” she says. “I loved her accent and thought it sounded as if she was having a really good time talking to her family.”

The next day, Josie’s baby was taken to the neonatal intensive care unit (Nicu) for monitoring. “She’d gone all floppy,” says Josie. “I didn’t know what was wrong with her and I was on my own because of restricted visiting times due to Covid.”

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‘Medical colonialism’: midwives sue Hawaii over law regulating Native birth workers

Exclusive: Native Hawaiian midwives say new law criminalizes Indigenous birthing customs and will deal blow to maternal health

Six midwives and three patients sued the state of Hawaii on Tuesday after the government last year prohibited birth workers without a specific midwifery license from providing maternal healthcare.

The lawsuit, filed today by the Center for Reproductive Rights, claims that state lawmakers have criminalized Indigenous birthing customs and hollowed out medical care for pregnant women and families across Hawaii.

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Women must be told of sodium valproate risk to unborn babies | Letters

Readers respond to an article on how the epilepsy medication was prescribed to pregnant women despite the known risks

As a doctor training in obstetrics and gynaecology, I read your article on the families affected by sodium valproate with interest and then dismay (The mothers fighting a scandal bigger than thalidomide: ‘We were told the medication was safe’, 22 February). Although it’s clearly tragic that these women weren’t effectively counselled on the potential dangers of their medication regime for their unborn children, it cannot be ignored that valproate can provide a life-saving or life-enabling treatment option for some patients living with epilepsy.

Media coverage that fails to recognise this risks doing further harm by only presenting one side of the story. Current guidelines state that valproate should never be the first-line treatment for women of child-bearing age, but it remains a very effective anti-epileptic drug, and in difficult cases it may present a safer alternative to polypharmacy (itself associated with an even higher risk of congenital malformations – 16.8 per 100, compared with 10.7 per 100 for valproate or 2.3 per 100 for the background population), or poor seizure control.

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Pregnant women and new mothers shouldn’t be sent to jail, UK public says

Poll shared with Observer shows high support for reform of prison sentencing to stop ‘lives being torn apart’

The British public backs reforms to how pregnant women and mothers are sentenced in courts, a new poll shared with the Observer has found.

Polling conducted this month by Survation, on behalf of the campaign group Level Up and the women’s charity One Small Thing, found 53% of respondents believed a mother with a baby should not be sent to prison with her infant if a community-based alternative was available. Only 28% disagreed, with the rest answering “don’t know”. A similar majority believed the long-term effects on a child should be a key consideration when sentencing a mother.

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‘My embryos aren’t safe here’: US patients struggling with infertility scramble after Alabama IVF ruling

In the wake of the state’s ruling that embryos are ‘extrauterine children’, people in the US are terrified their state will be next

Tucker Legerski and his wife, Megan, have spent more than two years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to have a baby.

Married since 2021, the Alabama couple last year embarked on in-vitro fertilization (IVF). After they retrieved eggs, a specialist combined those eggs with sperm to create four quality embryos. Last fall, they successfully transferred one embryo, resulting in a pregnancy – but eight weeks in, it ended in a miscarriage. The couple had planned to attempt another embryo transfer in the fall.

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The mothers fighting a scandal bigger than thalidomide: ‘We were told the medication was safe’

Since the 1970s, it has been known that sodium valproate can harm babies in the womb. So why was it prescribed to pregnant women?

In 2009, Emma Murphy took a phone call from her sister that changed her life. “At first, I couldn’t make out what she was saying; she was crying so much,” Murphy says. “All I could hear was ‘Epilim’.” This was a brand name for sodium valproate, the medication Murphy had been taking since she was 12 to manage her epilepsy.

Her sister explained that a woman on the local news had claimed that taking the drug during her pregnancies had harmed her children. She was appealing for other women who might have experienced this to come forward.

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Parents in England who have lost baby before 24 weeks can apply for certificate

Documents recognising loss and grief were part of women’s health strategy in 2022

People who have lost a baby to miscarriage before 24 weeks of pregnancy will be able from Thursday to receive a certificate from the government recognising their grief.

Baby loss charities welcomed the move, which they hope will help bereaved parents manage the pain and trauma of their loss.

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Alabama university pauses IVF care after frozen embryos ruled as ‘children’

University of Alabama at Birmingham says state’s supreme court ruling could expose doctors and patients to criminal charges

A medical school in Alabama has paused in vitro fertilization procedures in the wake of first-of-its-kind decision made by the state’s supreme court on Friday, which ruled that frozen embryos are “children”.

The decision has been widely seen as one that would have serious implications for people seeking in vitro fertilization (IVF) or other assisted reproductive technology treatments.

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Alabama’s supreme court ruled embryos are ‘extrauterine children’. IVF patients are worried

The state’s sweeping ruling leaves doctors and patients scrambling to untangle its implications for frozen embryos

In a first-of-its-kind decision, the Alabama state supreme court ruled on Friday that embryos are “extrauterine children” – a term that could have widespread implications for anybody who is seeking or provides in vitro fertilization (IVF). The ruling has plunged IVF doctors and patients in Alabama into chaos and uncertainty, as they scramble to untangle the practical implications of the sweeping ruling.

Patients keep reaching out to the Alabama clinic where Dr Mamie McLean works with a version of the same question: can we still become parents safely?

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Call the midwife! No matter how bad you’ve heard care can be, ‘freebirthing’ is not the answer | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

NHS midwifery is in crisis and unmedicated birth in vogue, but doing it at home without medical support is simply dangerous

“Could you do a poo like this?” There’s a sentence I will never forget. I was in my second trimester and doing a hypnobirthing course. The question is supposed to be a metaphor for childbirth: being surrounded by doctors with clipboards would apparently make you too tense to poo, or give birth. To which my rejoinder was, “Well, surely it depends how much you need to go.”

Other than National Childbirth Trust (NCT) classes – in which the instructor told us that the ideal birth is at home, without pain relief (not their official line, they say) – this was my first glimpse of the anti-medical approach to childbirth. I thought about it again when I read about the concerning rise of “freebirthing” – when a woman gives birth at home without assistance from a doctor or midwife – and the fact that the Royal College of Midwives has stated that “midwives are understandably concerned about women giving birth at home without assistance, as it brings with it increased risks to both the mother and baby”.

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Pregnant women in Indiana show fourfold increase in toxic weedkiller in urine – study

Seventy percent of pregnant women in state had herbicide dicamba in their urine, up from 28% in an earlier study

Pregnant women in a key US farm state are showing increasing amounts of a toxic weedkiller in their urine, a rise that comes alongside climbing use of the chemicals in agriculture, according to a study published on Friday.

The study, led by the Indiana University school of medicine, showed that 70% of pregnant women tested in Indiana between 2020 and 2022 had a herbicide called dicamba in their urine, up from 28% from a similar analysis for the period 2010-12. The earlier study included women in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.

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Humza Yousaf ‘naive’ about links to evangelical Christian donor, say rights groups

First minister faces questions after it emerged he courted Sir Brian Souter despite his hostility to LGBTQ+ rights

Civil rights groups have accused Humza Yousaf of being “naive” about his links to Sir Brian Souter, the millionaire who funds a network of conservative Christian groups that campaign against gay and women’s rights.

The Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) said Scotland’s first minister faced “serious questions” after it emerged he courted Souter despite his longstanding hostility to equal marriage, abortion rights and trans rights.

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Studying medicine with a baby on board | Letter

Dr Rachel Clarke may have been the first medical student at Oxford to have a baby, but 50 years ago a fellow student gave birth halfway through our course at Barts, writes Dr Peter A Glanvill

Your interview with Rachel Clarke (‘I detest bullies’: Dr Rachel Clarke on Jeremy Hunt, government lies and the long legacy of Covid, 29 January) states that she “moved to Oxford for love and more medical school, where she says she was the first medical student to have a baby while studying”. When I was at Barts medical school 50 years ago, one of my fellow students gave birth halfway through our course and continued on to qualification. That was when the ratio of females to males in the year intake was radically different from what it is today. If I recall, she was one of the brightest students in my year. Another male medical student in my year was married and started a family before his finals. Nobody seemed to regard it as exceptional.
Dr A Peter Glanvill
Chard, Somerset

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Motherhood is saying ‘I can’t do this any more’ – then doing it

What if we reminded each other that our lives are not naturally unbearable but they are made so by the powers that be?

Maybe I uttered the words for the first time in my 15th week of pregnancy, when I was admitted to the hospital for an IV drip of anti-nausea medication because I had vomited six times in the past 24 hours and couldn’t keep down water.

Or maybe I said them on the second or third day of my failed induction, as I labored all day and all night toward the C-section I’d hoped to avoid, with no progress beyond 5cm of cervical dilation.

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‘This is a war on birth’: how one US organization helps pregnant Gazans from afar

As the war worsens, Safe Birth in Palestine Project finds holes in the system to bring women aid – and tries to stay hopeful

‘‘I’m overdue.”

“I just delivered and I have no baby clothes or diapers for the baby.”

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Primodos patients ‘betrayed’ after being left out of health scandals redress report

Families who suffered harmful effects of hormone pregnancy tests not included in Patient Safety Commissioner’s review

Ministers are facing a backlash after families affected by the hormone pregnancy test Primodos were excluded from a review about redress for victims of health scandals.

A report by the Patient Safety Commissioner says there is a “clear case for redress” for thousands of women and children affected by the epilepsy treatment sodium valproate and vaginal mesh implants.

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‘Statues are of dead blokes. This is a living woman kicking arse.’ How we made the fourth plinth’s Alison Lapper Pregnant

‘I was slated for it. People were writing to the papers saying, “It’s disgusting that disabled people should be allowed to get pregnant.” Excuse me?’

Around 1999, I started making sculptures of people with differently shaped bodies. I wanted to celebrate a different kind of beautiful, a kind of body other than what you normally see in art. I approached the British Paralympic Association and through them contacted Peter Hull [the British swimmer and Paralympic gold medallist] and made a sculpture of him. Pete was a friend of Alison Lapper and he put me in touch with her. By the time she agreed for me to sculpt her, Alison was pregnant with her late son Parys. I thought: “Wonderful! Pregnancy is about the future!” I thought the sculpture could be a monument to the future, when a great deal of sculpture is a monument to the past.

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‘At 45, I grieved the idea of motherhood. Then, by pure fluke, I was pregnant’

After miscarriages and IVF, I decided I was done. A few days later, I found out I was expecting, and the beautiful dismantling of my old life began

Five days before I turned 46, I gave birth to my first child: a small, solemn-faced boy with enormous eyes, and ears like tiny coracles. For weeks I could not name him; to reduce this feeling to a single word seemed impossible.

Any birth feels something like magic, but to become a mother at this age has felt astonishing; a dove drawn from my sleeve, the ace of hearts pulled from behind my ear. But it has come, too, with a certain intricacy. Older motherhood is not the most straightforward experience, and it elicits reactions that may be variously amazed or appalled or at the very least complicated.

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‘I wasn’t allowed to get the healthcare I needed’: the women suing Tennessee for being denied abortions

K Monica Kelly had to travel to Florida for an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 13 – now she’s part of a group suing her state

When K Monica Kelly saw that women in Texas had filed a lawsuit challenging the contours of their state’s abortion ban, she posted on Instagram to cheer them on.

“I shared how terrible I thought it was, that they weren’t able to get the proper healthcare they needed in their state,” Kelly said. “It never crossed my mind that that was actually going to happen to me soon.”

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