Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives review – fresh take on pregnant-woman-in-peril horror

Unfolding in what looks like a single take, Thomas Sieben sends his protagonist into a house that’s haunted by historical trauma

When Maria (Nilam Farooq) shows up 37 weeks pregnant at the attractive but remote country home of her husband Viktor (David Kross), you sense immediately that no good can come of this. If a character is pregnant in a film, it’s about even odds that said pregnancy will function as a way to increase their vulnerability – though not all films take this as far as this nifty little low-budget horror movie from talented German director Thomas Sieben, which combines the haunted house subgenre with pregnant-woman-in-peril to nicely nerve-jangling effect.

Occult horror always needs a starting point, a first evil from which the later ghosties and bumps in the night derive. Some films take as their inciting incident a broader historical crime or atrocity and it’s into this category Home Sweet Home falls. The Herero and Nama genocide, conducted by imperial German forces against indigenous people in what is now Namibia, was the first genocide of the 20th century, and is the basis for subsequent terrors visited upon our heavily pregnant heroine. Paying a price for the actions of previous generations is a big theme in German horror, but by looking to an earlier period than the horrors of the Nazi regime, Sieben reminds us that genocidal white supremacism was not invented in the 1930s.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/6jWKLnE

More than 200 pregnancy-related prosecutions in first year post-Roe

Study finds highest yearly number of prosecutions related to pregnancy – and experts say that is likely an undercount

In the year Roe v Wade was overturned, at least 200 people in the US were prosecuted for conduct relating to their pregnancies – the highest number of cases in a single year ever recorded, according to a new report released on Tuesday.

The report, compiled by the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, is the first comprehensive accounting of pregnancy-related criminal charges between June 2022 and June 2023, but researchers warn that it is still probably an undercount.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/D9ydrfL

Surrogates face higher risk of pregnancy complications, study finds

Postpartum haemorrhage and severe pre-eclampsia more likely than in women who conceive naturally or with IVF

Women who act as pregnancy surrogates appear to have a higher risk of health complications than those who carry their own babies, researchers have found.

The use of surrogates, or “gestational carriers”, has boomed in recent years, with figures for England and Wales revealing that the number of parental orders, which transfer legal parentage from the surrogate, rose from 117 in 2011 to 413 in 2020.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/V4gA9Sb

Shocks delivered: why pregnancy body horror is on the rise

Films including Immaculate, The First Omen, Apartment 7A and Alien: Romulus show terrifying depictions of childbirth – in tune with post-Roe v Wade America

Nosebleeds, a metallic taste in the mouth, feet that go up a whole size the side effects of pregnancy are their own kind of body horror and a slew of films released this year hone in on just how bloody and brutal childbirth can be. Immaculate, The First Omen, Apartment 7A and Alien: Romulus all feature pregnancies that are invasive, the result of non-consensual sexual encounters. The terror the women in these films experience when they’re at their most vulnerable is heightened by how isolated they are, either in remote locations, by a language barrier, in new cities or in the vast reaches of space. Escape seems impossible – where can you run when you’re hostage to the horrors of your own body?

The past few years have birthed a spate of pregnancy horror films – Clock’s take on the societal pressure to have a child, Baby Ruby’s examination of postpartum depression – marking a significant trend in the wake of the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, and several states enacting laws that deprive women of bodily autonomy. Apartment 7A (a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby) is set in the mid-1960s, The First Omen in 1971, Immaculate in the present and Alien: Romulus between 2122 and 2183, but all reflect current anxieties. For all their otherworldly and supernatural frights, they tap into very real fears.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/yJGkESK

Trump says he’s the ‘leader’ on IVF, but Republicans are blocking national access

The ex-president may not be able to explain how in vitro fertilization works, but he’s had a lot to say about it lately

Donald Trump, I strongly suspect, would not be able to explain how in vitro fertilization (IVF) works if his life depended on it. Yet in recent months – and in what seems to be a disingenuous and desperate attempt to woo female voters – he has had a lot to say on the subject.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/Cce7oTI

The sweeping reorganisation of the brain in pregnancy, and why it matters – podcast

Ian Sample talks to Dr Laura Pritschet, a postdoctoral fellow of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, about her research using precision scans to capture the profound changes that sweep across the brain during pregnancy. She explains what this new work reveals about how the brain is reorganised in this period, whether it could it help us better understand conditions like pre-eclampsia and postnatal depression, and why women’s brains have often been overlooked by neuroscience

Scans capture sweeping reorganisation of brain in pregnancy

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/jtkKPJY

Scans capture sweeping reorganisation of brain in pregnancy

MRIs taken from before conception until two years after birth show some short-lived changes and some lasting years

Profound changes that sweep across the human brain during pregnancy have been captured for the first time, after researchers performed precision scans on a woman carrying her child.

MRI scans taken every few weeks from before conception until two years after childbirth revealed widespread reorganisation in the mother’s brain, with some changes short-lived and others lasting years.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/R9yOVPX

Millions of US women in ‘maternity care deserts’ facing dangers, report warns

More than 2.3 million women of reproductive age don’t have access to birthing facilities or obstetric doctors, report says

More than a third of US counties do not have a single medical birthing facility or the services of an obstetric clinician, causing health advocates to warn about the dangers of “maternity care deserts”, a new report says.

The report, issued by March of Dimes, an infant health non-profit, and published on Tuesday, found that 35.1% of US counties are what the group calls maternity care deserts, meaning there are no specialist medical services available to provide care.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/8WDoIbZ

Selena Gomez reveals she’s unable to carry her own children due to health risks

In Vanity Fair interview, Only Murders in the Building actor says her ongoing medical issues mean pregnancy ‘would put my life and the baby’s in jeopardy’

Selena Gomez has revealed she will be unable to carry a child to term due to her ongoing medical issues, which would mean pregnancy would pose a risk to both herself and a foetus.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, the Only Murders in the Building actor and former Disney star said she had planned to start a family by the time she turned 35.

In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/e0G1JPH

As our friends with kids become grandparents, it reignites the sadness of being childless not by choice | Tess Pryor

At times we fear a future without the anchor of family. But love bombs from the many children in our life can be great defibrillators for a blown-up heart

If life had panned out the way we had imagined, Chris and I would be doting grandparents by now. People who are childless not by choice know that as much as having children changes you, so does not being able to have children when you want them.

With five pregnancy losses, the last one 26 years ago, that is us.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/XCgKFQk

Christopher Redman obituary

Obstetric physician who collaborated on the development of life-saving software to interpret foetal heart traces

Pre-eclampsia is a dangerous pregnancy complication, once so mysterious it was dubbed “the disease of theories”, but the obstetric physician Christopher Redman greatly improved the understanding of how to treat it and why it develops. Redman, who has died aged 82, spent his career at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, where he set up the world-class Silver Star Unit to care for women with pre-eclampsia and other complex pregnancies. He was an early pioneer of computer technology, creating a sonicaid monitoring device that bears his name, and which is used today in about 130 countries to analyse unborn babies’ health and has saved countless lives.

Redman initially intended to become a paediatrician, but his career path changed in 1970. Then a junior lecturer in Oxford University’s department of medicine, he was asked to run a trial on women with high blood pressure as a result of pre-eclampsia.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/eBnCdXJ

State abortion bans are forcing doctors to provide substandard care – new study

Research group describes health workers waiting until patients ‘on brink of death’ before providing care

More than two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, state abortion bans are forcing doctors to provide substandard medical care, new research released Monday shows.

The study describes how one woman, whose water broke too early on her pregnancy, ended up in the ICU with severe sepsis because she could not get an abortion to end her doomed pregnancy. Her story is one of dozens of narratives collected by the research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, which is housed at the University of California, San Francisco.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/feDASiT

Australian pregnancy drugs shortage sparks call to include pregnant women in clinical trials

Experts call for more research into ‘off-label’ medications, and supply chain alternatives not driven by profit motive

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Several crucial medicines for pregnant women are in shortage in Australia because of a “perfect storm”, experts warn, whereby the only drugs registered as safe for pregnancy are old and less profitable to pharmaceutical companies discontinuing their distribution amid manufacturing disruptions since the pandemic.

An editorial published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday called on the government to create a body responsible for registering, importing and manufacturing critical medications for use during pregnancy, independent of the need to obtain a profit.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/JCKZByN

The NCT pushes for ‘natural birth’ too strongly, but we have much to thank it for | Letters

Michelle Gibson says there is no room for a stubborn, idealistic response when intervention is the only way to save the day, while Janet Mansfield recalls how the organisation fought for women

Yet another piece on how birth has been hijacked by one or other of the cults that surround how women should live their lives (‘Women feel like failures if they haven’t had a “normal” birth’: how the NCT has shaped childbirth in the UK, 27 August).

A good and trouble-free pregnancy is no indication that birth will follow the same pattern. When it comes to squeezing a fully-formed human being through a narrow tunnel, things can go wrong very quickly. When that happens, we need professionals around who ensure that mother and baby are as OK as possible in the circumstances. There is no room for a stubborn, idealistic response when intervention is the only way to save the day. Birth is messy and painful, and it is cruel to make women believe that they have failed if they need help to deal with this.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/syqeXUS

Target for cutting premature birth rate will not be met, says patient safety minister

Goal of reducing rate of preterm births – when babies are born before 37 weeks of pregnancy – to 6% was set in 2019

The women’s health minister has admitted there is no chance the government will meet its target of reducing the premature birth rate to 6% by 2025.

Preterm birth – when a baby is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy – is the biggest cause of death among children under five in the UK. The previous government set a target in 2019 to reduce the preterm birth rate to 6% by 2025.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/QyCO7BX

April review – Dea Kulumbegashvili comes into her own with haunting abortion drama

Shocking violence is tempered by strange, silent sequences in a sophomore feature about an obstetrician under investigation, which has echoes of The Piano Teacher

Dea Kulumbegashvili is the much-admired Georgian director whose feature debut, Beginning, won golden opinions, though I confess to having been agnostic on the grounds of mannerisms that were a little derivative – some resemblances there to Carlos Reygadas and Michael Haneke.

Her follow-up movie, April, is now presented at Venice. That month has never seemed crueller. The high arthouse influences are still detectable, but Kulumbegashvili has mastered and absorbed them and has an evolving film-language of her own, though still involving extended static takes, long shots in which people have inaudible but important conversations in the far distance, and explicit moments of violence whose shock is tempered and complicated by strangely exalted, if bizarre, visionary sequences.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/XCzyHtn

Air pollution harms male fertility while women face similar risk from noise, study finds

Environmental pollutants may have different effects on male and female reproduction, research in BMJ suggests

Air pollution is associated with a higher infertility risk in men, while noise pollution is associated with a higher risk of infertility in women, a study has found.

The study, which has been peer-reviewed and published in the BMJ, looked at whether long-term exposure to road traffic noise and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a particular form of air pollution, was associated with a higher risk of infertility in men and women.

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/EfvFztX

There’s no guarantee of a rose garden on the road to recovery | Brief letters

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden | Ofsted reform | Trollope’s bottled porter | Guinness while giving blood | Boxing Day menu

Before it was a song, the words “I never promised you a rose garden” (Letters, 29 August) belonged to the kindly psychoanalyst Dr Fried in the eponymous semi-autobiographical novel by Hannah Green. She wished to convey to her young patient that there was no guarantee that the road to recovery would be a pleasant one. Indeed, things might have to get worse before they got better.
Rosy Lovelady
Tilehurst, Berkshire

• As a retired secondary school teacher, I note that one suggestion for the long-overdue reform of Ofsted is that “new regional teams will work with institutions to address areas of weakness” (Report, 2 September). I’ve got an idea: let’s call these regional teams “local education authorities” and their staff “advisers”.
Ruth Eversley
Paulton, Somerset

Continue reading...

from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/47MGzDV