Alcohol advice for pregnant women | Letters

Leigh Lewis and Elaine Hindal of Drinkaware and Hubert Sacy of Éduc’alcool respond to a report on research that criticised the advice their organisations give

Your article (Pregnant women encouraged to drink by alcohol industry, researchers claim, 14 October) suggests that Drinkaware has published information saying “light drinking” in pregnancy is safe. Nowhere on our website are there any such statements. On the contrary, we advise unequivocally that the safest approach is not to drink at all during pregnancy or while trying to conceive, and we refer clearly to the chief medical officers’ guidelines. We also set out in detail on our website the risks of foetal alcohol syndrome. It is suggested that our information “confuses matters by adding: ‘How a baby will be affected depends on how much its mother drinks’”; far from confusing matters, this is simply a statement of fact. We urge anybody in doubt to visit our website to view what we say: www.drinkaware.co.uk
Leigh Lewis Chairman, Drinkaware
Elaine Hindal CEO, Drinkaware

• Your article claims that Éduc’alcool “maintains that ‘[the] risk to the foetus is reduced considerably if you have only one drink every now and then’”. This is actually an excerpt from a joint publication by the Quebec College of Physicians and Éduc’alcool – part of the answer to a very specific question: “Does limited drinking endanger the foetus in the same way [as heavy drinking]?” And the answer continues: “The effects of alcohol are proportional to the amount you drink and how frequently you drink. That’s why abstaining from drinking throughout your pregnancy is the safest choice.”

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'She made me brave': Kristina Keneally demands paid leave for parents of stillborn babies

Labor senator will move a cross-party motion in the Senate to recognise the loss of stillbirth and the coming national action plan

It might seem like a regular Tuesday, but for millions of parents around Australia, it represents beloved children’s birthdays they didn’t live to celebrate.

International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day commemorates the death of a newborn, serving as a day to remember fluttering heartbeats which suddenly stopped.

Related: Stillbirths: Australia's health policies 'failing these babies and their families'

Hi Kristina, we're committed to supporting our people, through all personal circumstances. In addition to our paid leave options we offer a range of additional support mechanisms for people experiencing loss and grief, including miscarriage and stillbirth. Best, ^Matt

Related: The tragedy of stillbirth: 'An unfathomable amount of heartbreak'

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Share your experiences of pregnancy and giving birth while in prison

Whether you or someone you know has been pregnant or given birth behind bars, we would like to hear from you

The death of a newborn baby after a woman gave birth alone in her cell last month has prompted a wave of concern from MPs, medical professionals and those working with prisoners. Since the Guardian’s initial report on the case, 11 separate investigations have been announced aimed at uncovering how this tragedy came about. A central question is how the woman had come to be without medical or emotional support during her labour and the birth of her baby at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, Europe’s largest female prison.

There are an estimated 600 pregnant women held in prisons in England and Wales, and about 100 babies are born there each year.

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Alcohol industry 'puts pregnant women at risk', researchers say

Firms and bodies are casting doubt on health advice for expecting women to abstain from drinking

Alcohol firms and bodies they fund are encouraging women to drink in pregnancy – putting their unborn child in danger – by publishing false and misleading information about the risks involved, new research claims.

The alcohol industry is ignoring scientific evidence as part of a drive to “nudge” mothers-to-be into drinking as part of a deliberate strategy to ensure women keep consuming their products because young people are turning away from them, researchers say.

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How can every mind matter in a broken mental health system? | Letters

Readers respond to the launch of the NHS Every Mind Matters campaign and share their thoughts on other mental health issues

Congratulations to Suzanne Moore for highlighting those who are forgotten in campaigns such as Every Mind Matters (Telling people to jog will not solve this mental health crisis, 8 October). When Jeremy Hunt spoke of the biggest expansion of mental health services in Europe, he referred to expanded provision for people with mild to moderate problems. Those with serious mental heath problems have found that there is no therapy for them, specialist services like assertive outreach have disappeared, and their community mental health teams are too busy managing crises to support them.

I work with people who regularly self-harm and feel suicidal. Because the NHS has a tendency to keep them out of services and ignore NICE guidelines aimed at helping them, they find themselves the subjects of reports such as “No Longer A Diagnosis of Exclusion” and “The Patients Psychiatrists Dislike”. As they are turned away while seeking help and reading “If you feel that life is not worth living, you’re harming yourself or have thought about self-harm, it’s important to tell someone” on the Every Mind Matters website they will rightly feel gaslighted. We are building awareness of difficulties for which there is no help. We are encouraging people to talk while leaving them alone. Despite this, the insult of being manipulative and deceitful is thrown at the people wanting help, not those who promise the earth but whose words are dust. It’s clear that some minds don’t matter as much as others.
Keir Harding
Wrexham, Clwyd

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Kaz Cooke: women were in the dark about their pregnancies. Now there’s too much advice

In 20 years, Up the Duff has sold almost half a million copies – in that time the science of pregnancy has changed, but people haven’t

A woman with bird’s nest hair plonked down next to me in a cafe last year, holding a tiny baby with dark chocolate eyes and a fluffball of black hair. She launched into a graphic description of her baby’s recent birth. “… and then Aunty Helen* barged right into the room holding up her phone, taking photos of my hoo-hars”.

I had never seen this woman before, wasn’t aware the word hoo-har could be a plural, and couldn’t have picked Aunty Helen out of a lineup for a cash prize. But somehow she knew I had written the pregnancy book she’d read. In her mind, I’d been through the pregnancy with her, so she was just giving me the exit report. It was lovely.

Related: Pregnancy is the ultimate endurance test. If a man says it, it must be true | Suzanne Moore

Related: We’re a queer couple trying for a baby. Stop asking ‘How does that work?’ | Kat Patrick

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The 12-week pregnancy rule makes the pain of miscarriage worse | Katy Lindemann

The secrecy around early pregnancy means that many women grieve in private, weighed down by feelings of guilt and failure

Most of us will be familiar with the “12-week” rule – the longstanding social convention that dictates that women mustn’t tell anyone they’re pregnant before the 12-week mark, “in case something happens”. It’s time to talk about the insidious effect it has on women who suffer a miscarriage early in their pregnancy.

An estimated 650 babies are miscarried every day in the UK, with the vast majority occurring during the first trimester. Most of these losses will be suffered in silence, because it’s considered so socially unacceptable to reveal that you’re pregnant before 12 weeks – let alone that you were pregnant, but now you’re not. It’s baffling that in 2019 we seem so wedded to an anachronistic superstition about tempting fate that shames women into keeping quiet and heaps blame on the woman who dares to “tell” and subsequently loses her baby – as though we were still in a bygone era where the stigma of miscarrying could mark you out as cursed. Social mores around the 12-week rule are brimming with contradictions: it’s fine to broadcast the minutiae of our daily lives on Instagram, yet disclosing that we’re pregnant, even just to close friends and family, is somehow transgressive.

Related: How a pioneering study of child health has influenced a generation of parents | Juliet Rix

The 12-week rule perpetuates the notion that early pregnancy loss is something to hide and we shouldn’t make a fuss.

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