I’m giving birth as a battle rages over maternity care in Ireland. We shouldn’t have to pay to feel safe | Caelainn Hogan

An unfair two-tier system is, at last, giving way to universal state care. But private interests and highly paid doctors are resisting

There were no chandeliers in the public ward where I spent my first days as a mother, at the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world. The room echoed with cries, the well-worn floor bouncing under footsteps, the windows looking out on Dublin’s city centre.

Now the Rotunda hospital, where I’m due to give birth again soon, is counting down to its 1 millionth baby. It is also at the centre of a bitter debate over plans to reform Ireland’s two-tier state healthcare system, so that those who pay to “go private” in public hospitals no longer gain an unfair advantage over those who don’t.

Caelainn Hogan is a journalist and the author of Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘Fallen Women’ and Their Children

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‘There’s no place to go’: providers see more abortions later in pregnancy as bans spread in US

Patients are showing up ‘later and sicker’ for abortion care as more US states adopt bans and significant restrictions

Providers are seeing more patients in need of abortions later in pregnancy as abortion bans and restrictions proliferate in US states, all while access to insurance falls.

Those bans and restrictions have also meant that later abortion care access has grown over the past decade in a handful of haven states and cities.

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What is postpartum psychosis, the condition central to the trial of Lindsay Clancy?

Clancy’s defense team argues she killed her three children under the condition, and should not be convicted of murder

Postpartum psychosis, a rare and severe mental health illness, is central to the trial of Lindsay Clancy, who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. Her defense team argues that she killed her three children while experiencing the condition, which can cause hallucinations, delusions and rapid mood changes.

While the outcome of the trial may hinge on a determination of Clancy’s mental state, women who have experienced postpartum psychosis say the attention surrounding the case could help raise awareness about the need for better support, including more research and improved medical training.

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Queensland woman gave birth to twins with different parents after surrogacy coincides with natural pregnancy

Both children were born on same day in November 2025 in situation so rare it had not been contemplated by state surrogacy laws

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A Queensland woman gave birth to twin children with separate sets of biological parents last year, in what is believed to be an Australian first situation so rare it had not been contemplated by state surrogacy laws.

The woman, anonymised in a court judgment, conceived an unplanned natural pregnancy about the same time as she received an IVF embryo transfer under a surrogacy arrangement with another couple.

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‘My ability to cope was unravelling’: how I navigated ADHD and childbirth – and seven things I learned

Neurodivergence can make an already challenging process far trickier — and in the UK support isn’t automatically available. A new book aims to help mothers prepare

It’s 7am in a postnatal ward. I’ve been brought here having given birth around four hours earlier. I’m hot and have not slept since arriving at the hospital at 9pm for an induction, only to go into labour spontaneously before it could begin. All around me is incandescent hospital light and the sound of crying newborns. This would be challenging enough for someone who isn’t neurodivergent, but coupled with my attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) I could feel my ability to cope unravelling.

I remember looking around, crying, unable to shut off the noise in my brain. “What if I don’t ever sleep again,” the little voice asked. I shut my eyes and the noise grew. Then there was my newborn son, lying next to me in a cot, and the fact that I had absolutely no idea how to look after him. I pressed the emergency buzzer and told the midwife who arrived that I could not breathe and needed to be discharged immediately. She said they couldn’t do that because I was under the mental health team and needed to speak to them first. I cried more.

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John Oliver on fetal personhood: ‘It effectively treats women as incubators’

The host discussed problems with giving fetuses equivalent rights to humans after the overturning of Roe v Wade

On his HBO show on Sunday night, John Oliver discussed the debate over fetal personhood and how the topic has become central to the anti-abortion movement in the US.

About a third of US states have established fetal personhood by law, giving legal rights and protections to fetuses and in some cases embryos. As a result, hundreds of women have lost custody to their children for reasons related to their pregnancies.

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Nothing less than radical whole-system change is required to fix the NHS's maternity services | Julia Sanders

It’s vital that Yvette Cooper’s taskforce acts on the Amos and Ockenden reports – and puts the needs of women and families at the heart of maternity services

It is hard to find the words to describe the agony for those who have experienced preventable baby loss, injury or maternal death. Understandably, families who have been through this have campaigned relentlessly for local and national investigations. Every family deserves to know what caused their loss or trauma, but current and past reviews have failed to deliver on resolution and accountability.

The vital debate about how to ensure safe maternity care has intensified since the publication of two reports, led by Valerie Amos and Donna Ockenden, and the appointment of Yvette Cooper as secretary of state for health and social care, offering a golden opportunity for system-wide change. “I want to make it a personal crusade to put the cradle back at the heart of the NHS,” Cooper told the Guardian last week, adding that she was committed to introducing a new national maternity commissioner.

Julia Sanders is professor of clinical midwifery at Cardiff University and was an expert adviser to the national maternity and neonatal investigation led by Valerie Amos

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How surrogacy helped my sister and friends | Letters

Hazel Davis responds to a letter about the regulation and ethics of surrogacy

I wish to respond to Lexi Ellingsworth’s letter (Regulation cannot eliminate surrogacy risks, 23 July). I gave birth to a baby for my friends in January. While the baby is living with its parents, my husband and I are the legal parents. We are waiting for our family court date in September to recognise the baby’s biological parents as legal parents.

My surrogacy story started when my sister suffered complications following the birth of her first child. After a second difficult birth, the doctors told her that it wouldn’t be safe for her to carry any more children. I became an auntie via surrogacy when my sister’s friend carried her third child. Now my niece is a determined five‑year-old, just as much a part of the family as her older siblings, and I see no evidence that her origins have any impact.

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AOC’s public egg-freezing shouldn’t feel radical. But in today’s US, it does

The congresswoman’s decision is an assertion of women’s freedom and dignity at a time when our status is rapidly eroding

“Don’t be weird about this,” representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star and rumored 2028 presidential contender, said on her live video broadcast as she raised her shirt to angle the syringe into her abdomen. Then, with resignation, “even though I know all of you will be.”

The New York Democrat is 36 years old, and this week, she revealed that she is beginning the process of freezing her eggs during Congress’ August recess. In the video, Ocasio-Cortez said that she was seeking to destigmatize the realities of women’s lives as they navigate the conflicting demands of professional aspiration and family building; she explained to viewers the process of the hormonal injections she was administering to herself, showing them the drugs and injector she was using arrayed on a paper towel, beside a disinfecting towelette. The procedure, Ocasio-Cortez explained, was not covered by her insurance, and she would be paying “100% out of pocket”. She had been saving to afford it for some time. “This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” she said, going on to assert her hope that transparency about such questions will destigmatize women’s reproductive lives and promote their dignity.

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I thought having a second baby would be easier – but, from food to teeth to poos, I’ve forgotten so much | Bim Adewunmi

My mum has been a huge help with the practical stuff. She’s also stirred up memories of my own blissfully bored childhood

I gave birth to a second child a few months ago. I don’t think I will ever get over the fact that this is the way people come into the world. It’s a ridiculous endeavour, from start to finish.

My first pregnancy was almost comically miserable for the first 20 weeks, then glorious for 10 weeks, then scary and stressful for the remainder. And this time? More intense in every way, but with added toddler. Which is to say: no breaks, suck it up, keep on moving.

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The culture surrounding ‘ideal’ childbirth has to evolve | Letters

Molly O’Brien responds to an article by Natalie Morris about her five-day labour, while an NHS doctor shares her personal experience of feeling ‘othered’

It is not clear whether Natalie Morris’s labour began spontaneously or was induced (By day five of my labour, I didn’t want an ‘ideal birth’. I only wanted to survive, 6 August). Nevertheless, what is described is not a debate about “ideal birth”, but an account of undiagnosed labour dystocia.

By day four she had contractions but no cervical dilatation, was exhausted, unable to sit down, and knew instinctively she needed help. These are features of pathophysiology that should have prompted reassessment. That failure was not ideology. It was a lack of education and training among both midwives and doctors in recognising difficult labour, also known as labour dystocia. This same issue, with tragic consequences, was highlighted in the Nottingham maternity review. That system’s failure receives far less attention than the “culture wars” surrounding birth.

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Let’s all get on board with travel etiquette | Letters

Readers add to a guide for handling tricky situations on public transport

Re your article on travel etiquette (The ultimate guide to travel etiquette: how to handle 36 tricky situations, from manspreaders to smelly armpits, 4 August), it’s totally wrong to advise people not to give up seats for a woman any more. Women could be menstruating, in the first trimester of pregnancy (the most exhausting time, and not one you advertise with badges saying “Baby on board”), perimenopausal, menopausal or have endometriosis (excruciating pain). Women live with a level of pain and discomfort as routine, for much of their lives. Yes, of course men can be suffering with specific ailments at specific times, but it is not part and parcel of being a man. Gentlemen, please just do it.
Helen Walker
London

• To your list of dubious travel behaviours, I’d like to add constant sniffing and its more guttural and nauseating relation, snorting. It seems that handkerchiefs, tissues and even the concept of blowing your nose have gone out of fashion. I am frequently nauseated by this on planes and trains, and if I don’t have headphones with me I have to resort to blocking my ears. I have not yet had the courage to speak to a culprit (although I have often been tempted to pass them a tissue).
Judith Milburn
Hartlepool, County Durham

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By day five of my labour, I didn’t want an ‘ideal birth’. I only wanted to survive | Natalie Morris

Yvette Cooper’s maternity reforms must change a system that too often fails women when they’re at their most vulnerable

On the third day of being in labour with my first child, I entered a new state of being. It was time to dig deep. This is what I had learned in all the childbirth classes. As long as I remained calm, breathed as instructed, moaned through the pain, things would happen as they were meant to. My body knew what it was doing. Only, it didn’t.

On the fourth day, I started to beg. This wasn’t right. Despite contraction after relentless contraction, I wasn’t dilating. I hadn’t slept, I couldn’t even sit down. I needed help. And still, they waited. For what, I never understood.

Natalie Morris is the author of Mixed/Other: Explorations of Multiraciality in Modern Britain

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.

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A Child of My Own review – barely believable true crime tale of desperation and delusion

Candy-coloured recreations of one woman’s pregnancy unravel as dark truths are revealed in Maite Alberdi’s intimate docudrama

This cheekily inquisitive docudrama by Chilean director Maite Alberdi features a unique variation on the long con, and one with a precise duration: nine months. After suffering three miscarriages and under pressure from her husband and in-laws to give them a child, Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza (aka Ale, and played by Ana Celeste in re-enactments) decides to fake her next pregnancy. She is determined to have something to show at the end of it: after meeting single mother Mayra, who wants to abort her second pregnancy, at the hospital where she works, Ale agrees to take her baby once it is born.

The details are hardly believable: eating copiously to gain weight, Ale manages to convince husband Arturo (Armando Espitia) and his family that this pregnancy is on track for her entire term. She reflexively tenses her muscles while he strokes her baby bump and smiles through a swirl of conflicting thoughts at her baby shower. While most con artists must dupe themselves on some level, it is true down to a physiological level in Ale’s case: a judge later testifies that her desperation to bear children may have resulted in a pseudo-pregnancy. How else to explain that the doctor signing off her maternity leave appears to hear the baby’s heartbeat?

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Women must not feel pressure to have ‘ideal birth’, says Yvette Cooper

Exclusive: New health secretary promises root-and-branch reform after damning maternity scandals

Women should not feel pressurised into experiencing an “ideal birth”, the new health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said, promising a root-and-branch reform of standards after several damning maternity scandals.

Cooper, who returns to the department 27 years after she was the minister for public health under Tony Blair, said maternity and child health would be a major focus in the role, where she will also be expected to implement significant reforms to social care.

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