Australia has protocols for stillbirths and neonatal deaths, but the quality of care varies widely across the country
The birth of Allanah Crameri and Braydon Newell’s son Lenny in September 2022 should have been filled with joy. But at just under 22 weeks, pregnancy complications led to a preterm labour and Lenny was born too early to survive.
“I felt everything from sadness, despair, anger and shock,” Crameri says.
Continue reading...Officer detained woman and confiscated mattress from under a Louisville overpass after she said her water broke
A homeless woman in Kentucky was cited by police and had her mattress confiscated and destroyed as she went into labor on the streets of Louisville, local media reported.
Body camera footage obtained by Kentucky Public Radio from the city police force showed Lt Caleb Stewart walking up to a pregnant woman under an overpass in the city’s downtown area.
Continue reading...While the risk of a H5N1 pandemic in humans is low, ‘it’s really important to think about vulnerable populations’, says Melbourne researcher
Most pregnant women who contract bird flu will die, according to an Australian review of infections that found most unborn babies with the virus also die.
Caused by influenza A viruses, a severe strain of bird flu known as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) is spreading globally.
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Continue reading...Abused as a child, barely able to support herself as an adult, Maria Arbuckle was one of thousands of unmarried women who suffered in Ireland’s mother and baby homes. She talks about her long battle to be reunited with her son – and the tragedy that struck soon after
When Maria Arbuckle thinks of her time in Ireland’s largest mother and baby home, she thinks of the nursery and its snug rows of cots, each one filled with a tiny, bleating bundle. She thinks of her boy, Paul, among them, and the 8lb 10oz weight of him in her arms. She thinks of how she fed and washed him under the careful watch of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. And she thinks of the refrain that ended each visit, when she had to hand him back to them: “He’s not yours any more. He doesn’t belong to you.”
Arbuckle, 62, was six months pregnant when she was sent by social services in Northern Ireland to Saint Patrick’s mother and baby home over the border in Dublin. She was 18 and emerging from a childhood spent shunted between a children’s home, an abusive foster home and a church-run industrial school for children considered to be in “moral danger”. It was 1981, Northern Ireland was in the thick of the Troubles and she was living in the border county of Monaghan, far from her native Derry. Her first serious relationship had collapsed, she had no contact with the foster family who had raised her for 11 years and she was barely making ends meet with her traineeship with a bookmaker. “At the mother and baby home, they told me that I had nowhere to go,” she recalls, more than four decades later. “I was on my own. I had no man, no family. And they were right.”
Continue reading...The only hospital in the country using foetal safety software has seen baby fatalities drop by 82% in three years
When Ellen Kaphamtengo felt a sharp pain in her lower abdomen, she thought she might be in labour. It was the ninth month of her first pregnancy and she wasn’t taking any chances. With the help of her mother, the 18-year-old climbed on to a motorcycle taxi and rushed to a hospital in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, a 20-minute ride away.
At the Area 25 health centre, they told her it was a false alarm and took her to the maternity ward. But things escalated quickly when a routine ultrasound revealed that her baby was much smaller than expected for her pregnancy stage, which can cause asphyxia – a condition that limits blood flow and oxygen to the baby.
Continue reading...Babies are big business, with a bamboozling array of products to cater to them. Here, five families with young children share their shopping regrets, and the items that actually helped
A bottle warmer? A baby food maker? A breast pump? If you’re preparing to welcome a baby into your life, it can be overwhelming to know exactly what items are worth buying.
After all, baby products are big business. According to Ibisworld, in Australia the market size of online baby product sales has grown almost 8% annually over the past five years, with the industry estimated to generate $1.6bn in revenue in 2024.
Continue reading...Some in the US are reconsidering children, with fears over reproductive healthcare and the climate crisis front of mind
Chris Peterson wasn’t surprised that Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. But he was surprised by how quickly he and his wife started asking one another: should we try to have another baby before a possible nationwide abortion ban takes effect? Or should we give up on having a second child?
Peterson and his wife, who live in North Carolina, are thousands of dollars in debt because their first child needed to spend weeks in the hospital after being born prematurely. They had wanted to pay off that debt and wait a few years before having a second baby. But now, reproductive rights are again in the balance – Trump has said he would veto a nationwide abortion ban, but his allies are emboldened to push through more restrictions.
Continue reading...‘Abrupt’ announcement will affect many women who have been planning their conception journeys to begin in early 2025, provider says
IVF providers are bracing for an influx of patients scrambling to access fertility treatments over the Christmas break after the New South Wales government said it would cut a rebate for fertility treatments for many patients from February.
The $2,000 rebate, an Australian-first program, was available to all NSW women accessing fertility services for the first time to cover some out-of-pocket expenses. It was introduced in 2022 by the former Coalition government.
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Continue reading...CQC study finds falls across a range of metrics dealing with antenatal care, labour, childbirth and postnatal care
More than a third of pregnant women in England do not always get help from maternity staff during labour or childbirth, the NHS care regulator has found.
Even more – almost half – do not always get help when they are in hospital after giving birth, a Care Quality Commission (CQC) survey of almost 19,000 women’s experiences of maternity care found.
Continue reading...Study also finds that number of female couples receiving IVF or DI treatment doubled between 2012 and 2022
The number of single women in the UK undergoing fertility treatment to start a family has more than trebled in a decade, a report has revealed.
In total, 4,800 women without a partner had in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or donor insemination (DI) treatment in 2022. This represents a 243% increase from the 1,400 single women who had fertility treatment in 2012, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
Continue reading...All too often, staying fit is about vanity and status. The slower and wheezier I become, the more I realise it’s also about survival
Have you recently seen a sweating woman with a watermelon stuffed up her fleece, wheezing her way behind a bush mere metres from a towpath to have a pee? If you have, please say hello next time – for that woman, I suspect, is me.
At seven months pregnant, I am still running three times a week. By “running”, I mean hurling my lumpen body through various woods, fields and city parks at a speed slower than walking, while wearing a pair of gently disintegrating trainers. Do I have to stop every 10 minutes to empty my bladder? You bet I do. Am I running half my usual distance in twice the usual time? Yes, ma’am.
Continue reading...Exclusive: FoI documents show Advisory Committee on Medicines considered tightening prescribing requirements for sodium valproate – but chose not to
More than 100 pregnant women have been exposed to medication for epilepsy and bipolar disorder which carries a high risk of birth defects, as the government’s independent medical and scientific committee opted against recommending stricter prescribing rules for the drug.
Freedom of information (FoI) documents show the Advisory Committee on Medicines (ACM) met in April to consider changing the prescribing requirements for the drug, sodium valproate, after the UK introduced tougher regulations in January.
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Continue reading...‘Forever chemicals’ pose health threat to developing children and linked with preterm birth, shorter lactation
Higher usage of personal care products among pregnant or nursing women leads to higher levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in their blood and breast milk, new research shows, presenting a serious health threat to developing children.
The new study helps connect the dots among previous papers that have found concerning levels of PFAS in personal care products, umbilical cord blood, breast milk and shown health risks for developing children.
Continue reading...The pronatalist movement in the US is gathering pace once again, rekindled by Silicon Valley personalities and hard-right conservatives who are becoming increasingly vocal about whether or not women are having enough babies. But it's not just in the US, some governments in other countries have launched marketing campaigns encouraging people to have more children, while others have offered financial incentives. But while many of these policies claim to be about halting population decline, there are other factors at play. Josh Toussaint-Strauss interrogates efforts around the world to boost birth rates, as well as the underlying political motivations, from bodily autonomy to immigration
Birthrates are plummeting worldwide. Can governments turn the tide?
When desperate measures to persuade women to have children fail, it’s time for fresh thinking
Exclusive: New research finds ‘clinical, cruel’ language used by medics is unacceptable to many
Women who have lost a baby often dislike the language used by medical professionals and would prefer the term “pregnancy loss” over “miscarriage”, research has found.
More than six in 10 women (61%) who had lost a baby between 18 and 23 weeks of pregnancy said it was unacceptable for doctors, midwives and nurses to use the word “miscarriage”.
Continue reading...Trump’s billionaire best friend wants young people to ‘fear’ childlessness. He’ll be right at home in an incoming administration set on rolling back reproductive rights
Is Elon Musk the dinner party guest from hell? It sure seems that way. Not only is the man desperate for people to laugh at his crass jokes, he reportedly has a weird habit of trying to donate his sperm at every opportunity – including, according to an October New York Times report, an incident where he offered some spermatozoa, as casually as you might pass the salt, to a married couple “he had met socially only a handful of times” during a Silicon Valley dinner party.
Musk has denied offering sperm to strangers over supper. But it would be in keeping with his creepy breeding fetish: Musk is desperate for people in developed countries to have more children and has himself fathered at least 12 children with three women. (One of the children has since sadly died.) He’s become one of the most famous faces of a growing pro-natalist movement – one with an unsettling overlap with eugenics and deeply misogynistic ideas.
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Continue reading...Trump’s billionaire best friend wants young people to ‘fear’ childlessness. He’ll be right at home in an incoming administration set on rolling back reproductive rights
Is Elon Musk the dinner party guest from hell? It sure seems that way. Not only is the man desperate for people to laugh at his crass jokes, he reportedly has a weird habit of trying to donate his sperm at every opportunity – including, according to an October New York Times report, an incident where he offered some spermatozoa, as casually as you might pass the salt, to a married couple “he had met socially only a handful of times” during a Silicon Valley dinner party.
Musk has denied offering sperm to strangers over supper. But it would be in keeping with his creepy breeding fetish: Musk is desperate for people in developed countries to have more children and has himself fathered at least 12 children with three women. He’s become one of the most famous faces of a growing pro-natalist movement – one with an unsettling overlap with eugenics and deeply misogynistic ideas.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...They both had something the other wanted. Could their relationship survive?
The night I first met Lexy, I was supposed to be going on a date. I was 25 and had yet to really make friends since moving to London, so when she asked me for a drink I said yes. The Guardian tended to hire only one young reporter a year in those days, and Lexy was the fresh face for 2006 (I was 2004 – it had been a rather lonely first two years).
Continue reading...Rate in 2023 remains at 10.4% due to chronic conditions, inadequate prenatal care and racial disparities
Premature birth rates in the US remain at a historic high, according to a new report.
On Thursday, March of Dimes, a maternal health nonprofit organization, released its latest findings which say that the national premature birth rate of 2023 remains at 10.4%, largely due to chronic conditions, inadequate prenatal care and racial disparities. In contrast, the premature birth rate 10 years ago was at 9.6%.
Continue reading...Australian women increasingly facing limited choices as private hospitals close maternity wards, obstetricians and gynaecologists warn
Despite paying for private health insurance for the last four years, Jessica* has no idea who will deliver her baby.
The first-time mother felt assured by the policy’s promise of continuity of care and comforted that the doctor who saw her at the beginning of her pregnancy would be there to deliver her baby when her January due date arrived.
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Continue reading...I’d been taking care of myself and the baby. Then the heat came. This is Mariama’s story
Location Burkina Faso
Disaster Heatwave, 2024
Mariama, not her real name, is a Burkinabé musician who lives in Ouagadougou. During the heatwaves earlier this year she went into early labour, and lost her baby.
Continue reading...Australian researchers propose a new model to reduce ‘mum shaming’ over body size, which has negative health outcomes for mother and child
When Ahlia* was waiting to check in for a routine pregnancy appointment, she says a receptionist walked by calling out directions to gestational diabetes education – then looked at her, waiting for Ahlia to follow.
“I’m not here for that,” Ahlia recalls saying in front of the waiting room full of people.
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Continue reading...Rights we have taken for granted can, as we saw with the overturning of Roe v Wade, be suddenly yanked away
“Hello, I’d like a line of credit, please.”
Continue reading...The harm to babies and mothers is one of the warnings being sent to Cop29 decision-makers by leading scientists
Miscarriages, premature babies and harm to mothers caused by the climate crisis are a “blind spot” in action plans, according to a report aimed at the decision-makers who will attend the Cop29 summit in November.
Potential collapse of the Amazon rainforest, vital Atlantic Ocean currents and essential infrastructure in cities are also among the dangers cited by an international group of 80 leading scientists from 45 countries. The report collects the latest insights from physical and social science to inform the negotiations at the UN climate summit in Azerbaijan.
Continue reading...Is it a betrayal to speak the harsh truth that childbirth can cost a mother’s body in ways that will never fully repair? To speak only of the wonderment of a new human?
I thought it was stupendous, giving birth. I felt like an Amazon, pushing out those wonder-children – long and hefty, smooth pudgy skin, so tender under my hand. It was a miracle of world-making to see a whole human unfurl from my womb. But this other shocking reality: torn flesh, lumpy stitches, burning urine, painful pooing. A visceral damage – but one I thought would be short-lived.
When I had my two children over 30 years ago, I was a fan of the policy of the public hospital birthing centre: 24-hours-then-home-you-go. I thought I only needed an overnight or two in hospital before I whizzed home with our newborn. I didn’t see any sense in medicalising birth. It was, after all, a natural process. There was little awareness of or planning for the time a body needed for healing and repair.
Continue reading...Babel Street’s people-tracking service allows customers – including government agencies – to track mobile users
Ever heard of Babel Street? Unless you’re a data and analytics enthusiast, it’s likely you haven’t. The Virginia-based technology company isn’t a household name the way that Google and Facebook are. And yet the company most likely knows a hell of a lot about you and everyone else in your household.
Continue reading...If birth rates are falling it could be down to choosing childlessness, rather than economics or infertility
There are more people dying in the UK every year than there are people being born. It’s a stark news story to read over toast, containing as it does all of life and all of death, and the shape and perfume of ancient fables, so I read it again, with tea. Even after stripping out the numbers of excess deaths during Covid, there were an estimated 16,300 fewer births than deaths in the year to mid-2023, the first time this has happened since the 1970s. A recent Lancet study suggests the world population will fall within decades, for the first time since the Black Death. Elon Musk, who has 11 children (although he might say fewer: he claimed his transgender daughter was figuratively “dead”), has described “population collapse” as “a much bigger risk to civilisation than global warming”, and joins a growing chorus warning of the death of birth.
The statistic sounds dramatic perhaps, but it’s not a huge surprise. As women gain access to contraception (which correlates with higher levels of education and countries becoming more wealthy), they tend to have fewer children. Yet still, every story on the subject is framed in 50 shades of panic, with experts being interviewed about the reasons behind the drop in births in empty playgrounds beside, perhaps, peeling circus posters. The reasons typically given are economic – housing costs, salary stagnation, insecure employment, the weight of student loans, childcare fees and government policies that punish parents – with a marked shift from the conservative messaging of my youth. Where they used to lambast young mothers for their vile irresponsibility, now they’re telling off older childfree women for ruining the world. But while the economic reasons for people not having kids are real and infuriating and sorry, libido-sapping, there is another crucial reason that these experts seem less keen to touch.
Continue reading...From hand-me-downs to second-hand marketplaces, the circular fashion economy has practical, versatile and stylish options for expectant mothers
When Taylor Brydges, a circular economy researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, fell pregnant for the first time, she had clear priorities when it came to her clothes: nothing “obviously maternity” and she wanted her purchases to be thrifted or ethically manufactured.
Above all, she says, “I knew I wanted to be out and about”. Her clothes had to look good, while also being suitable for pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Continue reading...Salty or sweet, nutritional or not – there may be hankerings for unexpected foods when pregnant but beware the old adage of eating for two
Fish burgers. Pineapple iced doughnuts. Spicy beef wonton soup. Vanilla marshmallows. Anchovies. KFC potato and gravy. Cookie dough ice-cream. Lemons. Talcum powder. Ice. Dirt.
These seemingly random – yet strangely specific – sweet, salty, spicy, cold and just out-there freaky tastes are some of the things craved during pregnancies.
Continue reading...The American Society of Plastic Surgeons put their Botoxed heads together and decreed this the ‘ballet body’ era
Ladies, have you been waiting with bated breath for an association of plastic surgeons to tell you what your body should look like this season? Have you lost sleep wondering whether your waist is on trend or not? Are you worried that your hips, which don’t lie, might be a little too 2005?
Continue reading...Experts say sequencing whole genome of newborns will be ‘transformational’ in earlier diagnosis and treatment
The NHS in England is to screen 100,000 newborn babies for more than 200 genetic conditions in a world-first scheme aimed at bolstering early diagnosis and treatment.
All new parents are currently offered a blood spot test for their babies, normally when the child is five days old, to check whether they have any of nine rare but serious conditions. The newborn’s heel is pricked to collect a few drops of blood on a card that is sent away to be tested.
Continue reading...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...Experts call for more research into ‘off-label’ medications, and supply chain alternatives not driven by profit motive
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.
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Continue reading...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...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...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...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...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
Between 3 and 5% of people who received tubal ligation surgeries later reported pregnancies, new study reveals
A new study finds that getting pregnant after a woman gets her “tubes tied” – the colloquial expression for permanent female surgical sterilization – may be surprisingly common.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine Evidence, examined survey data of more than 4,000 women who reported tubal ligations, the formal term for a range of surgeries that clamp or remove fallopian tubes. Researchers found that 3-5% of these women reported pregnancy after surgery.
Continue reading...Rachael Galloway’s partner pays tribute to ‘best person he ever met’
A first-time mother died after complications relating to a caesarean section just 30 minutes after giving birth to twin sons.
Rachael Galloway, 36, died on 1 August at Royal Lancaster Infirmary. The hospital said it was carrying out an internal review, and there was a continuing coroner’s investigation but it did not give any details.
Continue reading...International survey of 250,000 15-year-olds found nearly a third of them did not use a condom or the pill
An alarming decline in condom use is putting young people’s health at risk, the World Health Organization has warned.
The WHO’s survey of nearly 250,000 15-year-olds in 42 countries and regions across Europe and Canada found that between 2014 and 2022, condom use among sexually active adolescents declined significantly, putting them at significant risk of sexually transmitted infections, unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortions.
Continue reading...Readers recall the days when Guinness was recommended after childbirth and during pregnancy
There was more than “a suggestion” that Guinness was good for new mums in the late 60s (Letters, 21 August). In 1976, when my son was born in University College hospital in London, all new mums were offered a daily small glass of Guinness. I told a nurse I couldn’t drink it as I hated the taste, and she said: “Ask your husband to bring in a bottle of sherry – that’ll build you up.” And there began a lifelong devotion to the healing properties of a pre-dinner manzanilla. Or two.
Lillian Adams
Hereford
• When my dad was dying from cancer in hospital in 1990, he kept asking the nurses for a Guinness, who kept refusing. A doctor intervened and wrote on the notes on the end of his bed: “This man is dying. If he asks for a Guinness, for heaven’s sake give him one.” Sure enough, on the bedside table was a can of Guinness with a prescription label on it stating: “Administer orally, as and when requested by patient.”
Pete Lavender
Woodthorpe, Nottingham
Fewer that 1.5% of drugs trials between 1960 and 2013 included expectant women. Now, campaigners and doctors are aiming to change that
When she was pregnant with her second child, Busisiwe Beko was living with HIV, but that didn’t worry her. She had been taking antiretrovirals for years and as an experienced Aids activist in South Africa she knew that as long as she continued to take her pills every day, her second baby would be born free of infection, just like her first.
But another illness was lurking in Beko’s lungs: tuberculosis (TB) had been hiding behind the common signs of pregnancy. The illness turned her pregnancy into a nightmare.
Continue reading...The international players’ union Fifpro has launched a Return to Play guide to help players, club staff and other football stakeholders better understand and manage pregnancy and the return to playing.
The guide takes players from the first steps involved in planning for pregnancy as a professional to a return to high-performance play, with details on regulations, methods of delivery and the effect those can have, the support needed at each stage, and more.
Continue reading...Decline in early prenatal care was accompanied by 5% rise in number of patients who received no prenatal care at all
Fewer women received early and adequate prenatal care in 2023, new data released this week by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows.
The small year-over-year decline comes amid tectonic shifts in women’s rights and access to reproductive healthcare in the US and in spite of a federal government initiative meant to improve prenatal care access. Seventeen states ban abortion at conception or soon after.
Continue reading...Researchers say public health officials not doing enough to share warnings and safety information with health workers
Wildfires pose serious risks to pregnant people and their developing fetuses, including low birth weight and preterm birth. But public health officials are not doing nearly enough to keep these vulnerable populations safe, according to a new report.
“While we know that wildfires are continuing to intensify in the US, and we’re increasingly clear on what damages wildfires represent to maternal and newborn health, we’re still not seeing the kind of response from policymakers and public health officials that we need,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of report’s authors.
Continue reading...The mothers of babies and young children often experience extreme isolation – and all the health problems that accompany it
One of the weirdest experiences for me in early motherhood was a recurrent image or sense, when I was walking down the street, pushing the baby in the pram, that a slight breeze could disintegrate me, dissolve me into fragments or dust.
I imagine some of this was due to the startling (to me) metamorphosis of becoming a mother, psychologically, physically and socially. But looking back, I’m sure it was also to do with loneliness.
Continue reading...The champion runner ‘followed her heart’ to start a family and continue dairy farming in Vermont hours from her team in Boston
Elle St Pierre grew up on a dairy farm in Montgomery, Vermont. When the Olympic 1500m runner graduated college and joined New Balance Boston, a professional running team based in the city, she deeply missed life on the farm. After a few years, she came to a compromise with coach Mark Coogan: she would come to Boston for key workouts, but Vermont – specifically, her high school sweetheart turned husband Jamie St Pierre’s family dairy farm – was home.
“If she puts her mind to something in a race or a workout, she usually gets it done,” says Coogan.
Continue reading...Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau fizz in the Better Things creator’s directorial debut, a rapid-fire riff on pregnancy, motherhood and female friendship
Motherhood changes everything. Or that’s the received wisdom anyway. However, Eden – Ilana Glazer, who also co-wrote the film and rattles out her lines with a flip, crackling energy that veers between the scatological and the screwball – didn’t get that particular memo. A freewheeling, terminally single yoga teacher from Astoria, Queens, she is not about to let an unplanned baby derail her life. Her personality (large, loud, tirelessly hedonistic) is stamped on to every aspect of her pregnancy. Her birth plan features helium balloons and tiaras; she has already compiled a Spotify playlist of party bangers for the delivery room. And holding her hand through it all, Eden assumes, will be her best friend since childhood, Dawn (Michelle Buteau).
But Dawn has a demanding career and family of her own: a newborn whose birth provides the extended comic set piece that opens the film (and sets its forthright tone), and a three-year-old who is dabbling in satanism after Eden’s unorthodox babysitting (she lets him watch The Omen). Dawn is one exploding nappy away from a meltdown. She has, to put it bluntly, more than enough shit to deal with without Eden’s contribution.
Continue reading...Nations are deploying baby bonuses, subsidised childcare and parental leave to try and reverse a rapidly declining fertility rate – largely to no avail
Sophia and her partner have been thinking about having children for about five years. They are concerned about humanity’s impact on biodiversity loss and climate change and worried about what the future holds.
“Our conversation has two parts,” says Sophia, a communications specialist who preferred not to use her full name. “One is: what’s the contribution of a child to the global [climate] crisis? The second one is [about] what would their life be like.
Continue reading...After defining goofy millennial aimlessness with her beloved sitcom Broad City, the writer-actor is facing up to motherhood with new film Babes. But don’t worry: she hasn’t grown up too much
Ilana Glazer is trying to think of films about pregnancy and early parenthood that aren’t told from a man’s perspective. “There’s Knocked Up, but that’s about Seth Rogen. And there’s Nine Months, but that’s about Hugh Grant. Three Men and a Baby cracks me up because it’s like, three?!” says the 37-year-old, with comically perfect levels of incredulity (cracking me up in the process).
Glazer – best known as co-creator of the seminal millennial sitcom Broad City – is making a serious point: there are outrageously few movies about birth and babies that centre on the female experience. The comedian’s attempt to rectify this, however, has taken the form of a distinctly unserious film: in fact, Babes has to be among the most viscerally funny depictions of motherhood ever created.
Continue reading...Women just like me dying disproportionately and unnecessarily in what should be the happiest time of their lives, writes Dr Yasmin Mulji
Black women are four times more likely to die during childbirth than their white counterparts (‘National disgrace’: black mothers in England twice as likely to have NHS birth investigated, 23 July). South Asian women and Muslim women also experience worse maternal health outcomes. If the woman doesn’t speak English, she is 25 times more likely to die. And these shocking statistics are without these characteristics intersecting.
I’m an obstetrician who has worked on labour wards across the south of England. But I am also a woman of mixed Black and South Asian ethnicities, and I’m Muslim. So, these aren’t just tragic statistics to me. These are women just like me dying disproportionately and unnecessarily in what should be the happiest time of their lives.
Continue reading...Prof Linda-Gail Bekker receives ovation at Aids summit after presenting trial results of ‘miracle’ drug lenacapavir
When the doctor behind the trial of a new HIV prevention drug heard the results, she could not contain her emotions. “I literally burst into tears,” said Prof Linda-Gail Bekker.
“I’m 62, I’ve lived through this epidemic … I had family members who died of HIV, as did many, many Africans – many people around the world,” she said.
Continue reading...We are no closer to understanding why some men hate women so viciously – but we can transform how misogyny is policed
Natalie Fleet was only 15 when she got pregnant by an older man. At the time, she says she didn’t really know how to describe what was happening; didn’t see herself as being groomed, or as a child still not legally old enough to consent. If anything, she worried that she might be the one who had done something wrong, given she was the one being called a slag and a slapper. Only now, more than two decades later, does the newly elected Labour MP for Bolsover feel able to say publicly that an experience about which she apparently still has nightmares was statutory rape.
Having met the force of nature that is Fleet five years ago when she first stood unsuccessfully for election, I’m struck but not surprised by her courage in volunteering a story that perfectly illustrates what a complex crime rape can be to investigate, and how horribly common abusive behaviour is – or at least, how common it would look if everyone was as willing to talk this openly about it.
Continue reading...The mortality gap between mothers and infants of different ethnicities reflects the need to tackle discrimination and racism inside and outside healthcare
Childbirth is a vulnerable time for any woman. Black women have particular cause to be anxious. Their labours are almost twice as likely to be investigated for potential NHS failings, the Guardian revealed this week, with the head of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), Gill Walton, blaming institutional racism. For every 1,000 deliveries by black women, there were 2.3 investigations, compared with 1.3 for white women.
Black women are up to six times more likely to experience some of the most serious birth complications as their white counterparts and almost four times as likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum, while Asian women are almost twice as likely to die. Black babies are almost twice as likely to die as white; Asian babies are also at greater risk.
Continue reading...New evidence confirms Black mothers are far more at risk than their white peers. After my own traumatic experience, I’m not surprised
The fact that Black mothers in England are almost twice as likely to have their births investigated for potential NHS safety failings is shocking and unacceptable – but for me, it’s not entirely surprising. As someone who co-founded Five X More after my own distressing birth experience, I find these statistics hit close to home. The higher rates of investigations among Black mothers reflect a grim reality: Black women and their babies in the UK face significantly greater risks during childbirth.
For every 1,000 deliveries by Black women, 2.3 are investigated compared with 1.3 for white women, the Guardian found – figures that highlight the deep-rooted systemic issues in our healthcare system. They are also four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth, and they have severe complications more frequently than their white counterparts. Black babies in England are three times more likely to die than white babies and also more likely to suffer a brain injury. These are not isolated incidents but part of a broader, systemic issue that requires urgent action.
Tinuke Awe is the co-founder of Five X More, an organisation campaigning for Black maternal health outcomes in the UK. This article was co-written by her co-founder, Clotilde Abe
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...Nottingham maternity review finds women were refused interpreters, mocked and treated unkindly
Expectant mothers at a scandal-hit NHS trust have experienced “discriminatory and racist behaviour” including midwives mimicking their accents and refusing to provide interpreters, according to the head of an inquiry into its failings.
As part of the largest inquiry into a single service in the history of the NHS, Donna Ockenden is speaking with more than 1,900 families who have experienced stillbirth, neonatal death, maternal death or babies diagnosed with brain damage at Nottingham University hospitals NHS trust (NUH).
Continue reading...Ayaan Waeys, who had Somali heritage, had shown symptoms of pre-eclampsia and died at St Thomas’ hospital after giving birth to stillborn girl
Ayaan Waeys was 36 when she died at St Thomas’ hospital in London after giving birth to her first child, a girl who was stillborn two months before her due date in 2022.
Her sister, Fowsiyo Ali Waeys, said there had been many signs that she was probably suffering from pre-eclampsia, a pregnancy complication, but she was not seen by a doctor at the hospital appointments she attended in the weeks before her death.
Continue reading...Just because an event is seen as ‘common’ doesn’t mean it is something that is easy to ‘get through’. This is finally being acknowledged for pregnancy loss
Miscarriage is fairly common: it is estimated that approximately one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage – but equally common has been the lack of attention and acknowledgment of its devastating aftermath for so many.
It’s 26 years since our last miscarriage and now at 62 years of age, life continues to remind me of the far-reaching effects of such a traumatic event.
Continue reading...Some women in Gaza have spent the duration of the war pregnant, but the constant bombing, death and chaos have cast a shadow over what should be a time of joy
After a night spent shaking in fear as the roof rattled from explosions, and a long walk along a crowded road, Diana Mahmoud arrived at the hospital where she gave birth to her son, Yaman.
Mahmoud, 22, discovered she was pregnant a week after the outbreak of the war in Gaza and, like other mothers who became pregnant about that time, spent her entire pregnancy fearing for her own safety as well as that of her child. Miscarriages are three times more likely than before the war, according to a February report by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.
Continue reading...There is an increasing focus on clothes worn during pregnancy that celebrate, rather than hide, stomachs
Celebrities from the Italian lakes to the steps of the Metropolitan museum in New York are showing that the pregnancy bump is enjoying its own moment in the spotlight.
When Margot Robbie was photographed on Lake Como earlier this week, a cropped top left uncovered was widely reported as being evidence of the Barbie actor’s pregnancy. The White Lotus actor Alexandra Daddario appeared in Vogue on Thursday drinking tea wearing a Phoebe Philo shirt, undone from the sternum down, baring a bump.
Continue reading...While ultrasound services are normal practice in many countries, software being tested in Uganda will allow a scan without the need for specialists, providing an incentive for pregnant women to visit health services early on
Mothers-to-be have become used to the first glimpse of their baby via the fuzzy black and white ultrasound scan, an image that can be shown to friends and family. But it remains a luxury in many parts of the world. Now AI is being used to develop technology to bring the much-anticipated pregnancy milestone to women who are most in need of the scan’s medical checkup on a baby’s health.
A pilot project in Uganda is using AI software to power ultrasound imaging to not only scan unborn babies but also to encourage women to attend health services at an earlier stage in their pregnancies, helping to reduce stillbirths and complications.
Continue reading...England’s patient safety commissioner says NHS patients raising concerns are dismissed as ‘difficult women’
England’s patient safety commissioner, Henrietta Hughes, has warned that NHS patients raising concerns are too often “gaslighted”, “fobbed off” or dismissed as “difficult women”.
“It shows a very dismissive and very old fashioned, patronising attitude to patients who have identified problems and need to have their voices heard,” she said.
Continue reading...Increasingly, no expense is being spared by the wealthy when it comes to tackling problems such as finding a £3,000 nightdress or brainstorming a name
A poet, a linguist and a marketing guru join forces to come up with the name of an unborn child. The start of a bad joke? The plotline for the next episode of Black Mirror? Neither – rather, it’s one of the jobs a “mummy concierge” to the super-rich can be asked to do.
Baby-proofing a yacht to ensure the plugs fit a breast pump, finding the best potty-training expert in town and reminding prospective mums to pack their facial mist in their overnight bag are just some of the other tasks Tiffany Norris has put in her diary of late.
Continue reading...Research suggests impact of pollution begins before conception by disrupting the development of the egg
Air pollution exposure can significantly decrease the chance of a live birth after IVF treatment, according to research that deepens concern about the health impacts of toxic air on fertility.
Pollutant exposure has previously been linked to increased miscarriage rates and preterm births, and microscopic soot particles have been shown to travel through the bloodstream into the ovaries and the placenta. The latest work suggests that the impact of pollution begins before conception by disrupting the development of eggs.
Continue reading...Doctors may not always agree with their methods, but in Lagos state, traditional birth attendants are helping to connect women and babies with modern maternity treatments
The sound of chanting fills the narrow corridor that serves as a waiting room, as about 30 pregnant women pray for safe deliveries and protection against wizards, witches and other enemies they believe could harm them or their babies.
The women take turns in the small bathroom, where they stand on a rock and use soap, nest-like straw sponges and seeds blessed by a prophet to wash away evil spirits.
Continue reading...As temperatures broil the US, experts share ways to mitigate increased chances of heat illness and heatstroke
Millions of Americans are under a heat advisory as record temperatures scorch much of the country. Pregnant people are among the most at risk – they are more susceptible to heat exhaustion and other ailments. Extreme heat is associated with stillbirth, preterm birth and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. “When we think of heat, a lot of us think of discomfort,” said Blair Wylie, an OB-GYN who leads Columbia University’s Collaborative for Women’s Environmental Health. “For pregnant patients, not only is it uncomfortable, it’s actually risky.”
Public health experts and physicians explain the risks of extreme heat during pregnancy and share ways to stay safe.
Continue reading...Clark made a bit of a wishy-washy statement, but after the shrill rightwing complaints, she should be applauded for speaking up
You don’t need to know anything about basketball to have heard of Caitlin Clark. She’s a record-breaking superstar who has helped take women’s basketball to new heights. Unfortunately, she’s also been shoved into a starring role in the culture wars. An awful lot of conservative men, who don’t ordinarily give a damn about women’s sports, have decided that she provides a very convenient excuse for them to be racist and misogynistic on main. Although, to be fair, they don’t normally need an excuse.
Continue reading...Women should be tested for gestational diabetes before 14 weeks, say academics
Pregnant women should be tested for diabetes much earlier than the current practice of doing so between 24 and 28 weeks, according to research.
Gestational diabetes, a form of the condition that only develops in pregnancy, affects thousands of women in the UK and one in seven pregnancies worldwide. It is the most common medical pregnancy complication and occurs when a hormone made by the placenta stops the body from using insulin effectively, leading to elevated blood glucose levels.
Continue reading...Seat of Labour’s Stella Creasy among those challenged by activists running as independents in the general election
Anti-abortion campaigners are running as independent candidates in the general election against prominent MPs seeking re-election who supported decriminalisation.
The seats of Labour’s Diana Johnson and Stella Creasy and Conservative Caroline Nokes are all being targeted by anti-abortion activists. The three proposed or supported recent amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill which would have stopped prosecutions for anyone ending a pregnancy in England and Wales.
Continue reading...When Grace Campbell decided to terminate her pregnancy, she felt relief at being able to exercise a right so many women had fought for. But nothing prepared her for the depression that came after. Here, the comedian reflects on the physical and emotional toll
There it is,” the doctor said, without warning. I turned, the cold jelly sliding off my stomach, to face the screen he had swivelled towards me. There it is, he said, nonchalantly, like he was pointing at the Eiffel Tower as we walked along the Seine. There it is, like he’d found his car in a festival car park. There it is, as he showed me, apropos of nothing, the foetus I was about to abort.
In December last year, I was at home, stuck in a sour state of depression that no amount of brightly coloured vapes and episodes of Schitt’s Creek could remedy. After an intense seven weeks, post-abortion, the bleeding had finally stopped. But the persistent crying, self-hatred and grief followed me everywhere I went.
Continue reading...The Green party has backtracked on its ‘natural birth’ policy. Demonising C-sections harks back to the bad old days of ‘too posh to push’
Sometimes, when I’m reflecting on how far we’ve come since the 1990s, I think about the phrase “too posh to push”. How disgustingly, physiologically misogynistic that phrase is, and how cavalierly people just … said it, as though how a woman decides to give birth – through her vagina or from an incision in her abdomen – was a matter of public debate. Back then, it really was. The tabloids were full of speculation about whether female celebrities gave birth vaginally or not, and the general public adopted the catchphrase, feeding the (false) impression that many women were choosing to have caesarean sections simply for the sake of convenience.
I’d be shocked, these days, to hear someone roll that out. Yet myths about caesareans are still peddled. Take a policy from the Green party’s website, now hastily deleted after a deserved backlash: “We will work to reduce the number of interventions in childbirth, and change the culture of the NHS so that birth is treated as a normal and non-medical event.” C-sections were described as “expensive and, when not medically required, risky”.
Continue reading...Alarming disparities persist, particularly between white and Black mothers, according to new report by Commonwealth Fund
The US has a far higher rate of maternal mortality than other peer wealthy nations, and an extraordinary disparity between white and Black Americans, according to a new brief released by the Commonwealth Fund.
The American outlier status persisted even as the maternal mortality rate has improved in the post-pandemic era, both in the US and globally.
Continue reading...Growing number are opting for private maternity services as inquiry finds poor childbirth care is common
People are paying thousands of pounds to hire private midwives amid frustration at the poor service many patients face in the NHS, with women left feeling fobbed off and ignored.
Growing numbers are paying up to £8,000 for maternity services, adding to a surge in people going private as the NHS struggles to provide swift and safe care.
Last month MPs found that women in labour had been mocked, ignored and left with permanent damage by NHS midwives and doctors. The UK’s first inquiry into birth trauma found poor childbirth care was so common, and its consequences so damaging, that ministers and NHS bosses needed to push through significant changes.
Continue reading...Research that looked at 53 million births says Black and Hispanic mothers and those in lower socioeconomic groups most at risk
Heatwaves increase rates of preterm births, which can lead to poorer health outcomes for babies and impact their long-term health, a new study found.
Black and Hispanic mothers, as well as those in lower socioeconomic groups, are particularly at risk of delivering early following heat waves.
Continue reading...Report calls for urgent efforts after receiving 4,000 submissions including from patients, doctors, midwives and experts around Australia
For a year after her daughter’s birth, Jessica Santos felt disappointed in herself.
When she arrived at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred hospital to give birth, the midwife who had supported her throughout her pregnancy was not able to help her, despite being on shift that day.
Continue reading...It’s easier than ever for single women to have children on their own ... or so I thought. Then began my $17,000 journey
One night in September 2022, like a kid sticking my finger into the flame of a candle, I Googled “how to buy sperm”.
I’d been thinking about it since splitting with a partner a year earlier. I was about to turn 37, and had started wondering if continuing on the “traditional” path – meeting someone, getting to know them well enough to decide to have children together, attempting to get pregnant – might cost me the chance to have kids.
Continue reading...Amid baby boom reports linked to drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, experts say it would be ‘wise’ to take extra precautions
Claims that “skinny jabs” are fuelling an unexpected baby boom have led experts to warn women to pair their use with effective contraception.
Medications such as Wegovy and Ozempic, both of which contain semaglutide, have become hugely popular, not least because they can help people lose more than 10% of their body weight.
Continue reading...