pregnancy

الأحد، 11 سبتمبر 2016

Paralysed, pregnant Claire Lomas finishes Great North Run in five days

Wearing bionic suit, former event rider began half-marathon on Wednesday and finished Sunday to raise funds for charity

A paralysed pregnant woman wearing a bionic suit has completed the Great North Run five days after she started it.

Claire Lomas, from Leicestershire, was paralysed from the chest down in a riding accident in 2007, which left her with a fractured neck, dislocated back, fractured ribs, a punctured lung and pneumonia.

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السبت، 10 سبتمبر 2016

'We felt cursed': how altruistic surrogacy can give hope after years of heartbreak

Jessie Thomas says while she would recommend altruistic surrogacy to others, there should be room for some commercialisation of the industry

Giving back is something Jessie and Marty Thomas have done their fair share of. Between them they have volunteered at various roles within their children’s sporting clubs and school environments and they help out where they can in their community of Rockhampton in Queensland.

But it was a news segment Jessie saw in early 2015 about someone’s experience as a surrogate that led her to embark on one of the most selfless acts of all.

It was our third second-trimester loss. We named them all – Pat, Pip and Rose.

As it’s such an emotional issue, people are very private.

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الجمعة، 9 سبتمبر 2016

IVF isn’t working – should I leave my girlfriend to pursue a ‘perfect fantasy’ family?

We are keen to marry but having my own biological children is very important to me. Maybe I should save us both time and move on

My girlfriend and I have been dating for eight months and enjoy a good emotional, intellectual and physical connection. She is 40 and I am 38, and we are keen to marry and start a family. We have started IVF after failing to conceive the natural way. The early medical signs are not encouraging, though, and we may not be able to have children of our own. It is possible that having my own biological children is non-negotiable for me. My girlfriend feels very upset when I express these fears, and feels that I am making a commitment conditional on her bearing my children when it should be about us wanting to be together. I don’t know whether to move ahead or whether to save us both time and take a chance that I could have my “perfect fantasy” family with someone else.

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الأربعاء، 7 سبتمبر 2016

We should not rely on Nicola Sturgeon to break the silence around miscarriage

We are lucky to have women like her speaking out, but we need to challenge the stigma around miscarriage as a society – after all, one in six known pregnancies ends in one

Last Saturday, the Times teased an extract from Nicola Sturgeon’s new book which its sister title the Sunday Times was running the next day, promising that it would “reveal a tantalising secret about her private life”. This “tantalising secret”, it emerged, was the fact that Scottish first minister Sturgeon had experienced a miscarriage in 2011.

To describe a miscarriage in this way is sensationalist and insensitive, but it is also unsurprising: the story is “tantalising” to a press with a deeply gendered view of political women, and had remained a “secret” as a result of the ongoing stigma around miscarriage.

The subject is so rarely discussed that many people are unaware just how common miscarriage is

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الثلاثاء، 6 سبتمبر 2016

Twins delivered at 37 weeks most likely to survive – study

Review of 35,000 births concludes that delivery earlier than 36 weeks is not supported by evidence, while waiting until 38 weeks increases rate of stillbirth

Twins should be delivered at 37 weeks – short of full term but not too short – for the best chance at survival, according to a study that analysed more than 35,000 births.

The evidence did not support routine delivery before 36 weeks from the date of fertilisation, said research published in the BMJ medical journal.

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Babies born by caesarean more likely to be obese as adults, study suggests

The way we are born may have a lasting impact on health, possibly because babies born by C-section miss out on exposure to vital bacteria in the birth canal

Babies born by caesarean section are more likely to be obese as adults, according to a study that suggests the way we are born could have a lasting impact on health.

Birth by caesarean was linked to a 15% higher risk of obesity in children compared with vaginal birth.

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الخميس، 1 سبتمبر 2016

Prevenge review – a mother of a serial-killer film

Sightseers’ Alice Lowe writes, directs and stars in this grisly revenge fantasy, as a woman who believes her unborn child is telling her to kill people

For her writing-directing debut, showing here in Venice in the Critics’ Week sidebar, Alice Lowe returns to the grisly territory of Sightseers, the black comedy she made with Steve Oram for director Ben Wheatley. Only this is a more macabre and explicitly violent serial-killer movie, with a fainter tint of queasy humour. It provides a nightmarish satirical twist on post- and antenatal depression: its tone is bizarre, its pace a remorseless, heavy tread.

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