The wall between what’s private and what’s not is dissolving. Which side am I on? | Hadley Freeman

In our performative age, we’re rewarded for sharing every crisis that happens in our bodies, every thought that passes through our heads

A celebrity story broke last week that gave me, as my fellow young people would say, all the feels. But they were not good feels. In fact, they were pretty much every feel except the good kind: sad for the celebrity, bad about myself, uncertain about the world today.

This story was about Chrissy Teigen, a model and the wife of the singer John Legend, although neither of those descriptors really explains her popularity. Rather, that is down to what is frequently described as her “relatability”, or her willingness to share her personal life with the world. This, according to current thinking, makes this extremely beautiful and wealthy woman more real to the public. Over several days, she posted videos of herself on Twitter and Instagram, talking about how she’d been having heavy bleeding while pregnant. “Chrissy Teigen shares updates from hospital bed as she prepares for second blood transfusion” and “Pregnant Chrissy Teigen’s horror scare as she scrambled to hear baby’s heartbeat” were just two of the newspaper headlines, as if it were totally normal that a woman’s intimate pregnancy issues should be international news.

Related: Barbara Amiel’s memoir is a reminder of the tenacity of Trump and his gilded gang | Hadley Freeman

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Health visitors are crucial for families | Letters

Mental illness such as post-natal depression is helped by home visits from a specialist community public health nurse, writes Woody Caan

I share the concerns of Cheryll Adams that spreading health visitors too thinly across families will lead to missing mental health problems, especially “for new mothers” (Overstretched health visitors caring for up to 2,400 families each, 4 October). When the last Labour government supported our group Regenerating Health Visiting, training and supporting an adequate workforce were central to our plans. I was delighted in 2010 when the coalition agreement included a commitment to training more health visitors, so it is discouraging to see this workforce shrivel in 2020.

Mental health, such as post-natal depression, is helped by home visits from a specialist community public health nurse. Visits during the preschool years are also invaluable in identifying children with disabilities, which means help can be mobilised early and parents navigated through the complex systems for various special needs. My own research suggested that very few children with disabilities (including autism or intellectual disabilities) are picked up before school entry, unless a health visitor is following their development.
Woody Caan
Retired professor of public health, Duxford, Cambridgeshire

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Overstretched health visitors caring for up to 2,400 families each

Exclusive: concerns for mental health and breastfeeding rates owing to already overstretched service in England

• Alone and in pain: one woman’s struggle for support

Overstretched health visitors have been forced to care for up to 2,400 families with newborns at a time, 10 times the recommended number, according to the sector’s most senior figure.

Prompting fears that breastfeeding rates will drop to new lows and a generation of babies could face a troubled future, Cheryll Adams, the chief executive of the Institute of Health Visiting, told the Guardian that as sickness and redeployment struck, some health visitors were having to care for thousands of families.

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f Chrissy Teigen wants to share the agony of losing her baby, let her | Barbara Ellen

No one has the right to tell the model how she should deal with her tragedy

If somebody howls out their pain on social media, do they automatically lose their right to be perceived as a human being?

Model Chrissy Teigen went on Instagram to tell her millions of followers about the loss of her baby, Jack, halfway through pregnancy. Teigen, who’s known as an open social media figure, wrote: “We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before.” Later, Teigen tweeted: “Driving home from the hospital with no baby. How can this be real?”

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'Something has to be done': tackling the UK's Black maternal health problem

As the issue is raised in parliament, two women are campaigning for change within the medical community

Tinuke Awe hadn’t been long at her midwife’s appointment when her pregnancy started spinning out of her control. Despite her body swelling uncomfortably as her baby grew, it was only at that 38-week check-up that preeclampsia was diagnosed. The midwife’s message was stark: go straight to the hospital, your life could be in danger.

Once there she was given a vaginal pessary to induce labour, and told to expect nothing to happen for at least 24 hours. But a few hours later she was in agony. “I kept saying, ‘I’m in pain, I’m in pain’, but I was completely dismissed and fobbed off – no one looked at me,” says Awe.

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I have huge respect for Chrissy Teigen sharing her pregnancy loss when she knew what would happen next | Isabelle Oderberg

The questions and ‘helpful feedback’ from insensitive internet commenters mirror what women face in the real world

When she revealed her pregnancy loss on Twitter and Instagram, Chrissy Teigen knew exactly what was going to happen next.

Of course there was the expected and rightful outpouring of sympathy and empathy for both her loss and sharing her raw pain, a brave gesture, but underlying that nest of support and love, came the questions from insensitive internet commenters.

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Related: Chrissy Teigen and John Legend speak of 'deep pain' of losing baby

October is Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month.

Isabelle Oderberg is a journalist and communications professional working in the non-profit sector. On her journey to have her two children she had seven pregnancy losses. She is now writing a book about miscarriage in Australia, tentatively titled Hard To Bear.

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How egg freezing got rebranded as the ultimate act of self-care

The procedure has gotten a makeover thanks to fertility startups, but some doctors are pushing back on efforts to appeal to younger women

When Valerie Landis underwent her first round of egg freezing in 2015, she was younger than many of the other patients. Landis, a healthcare sales professional, was 33 at the time. Between the pressures of work, which often required traveling internationally for business, and a breakup a few years prior, she was drawn to the idea of buying herself more time to decide if she wanted to become a parent.

Back then, “the lowest age I heard was 37”, Landis said. “Now there are people as young as 25 are freezing their eggs. The whole landscape has shifted.”

Related: The reverse birth tourists: US women seek cheaper countries to have babies

There are people as young as 25 are freezing their eggs. The whole landscape has shifted

I still have my eggs frozen [in storage]...I do want to hold on to them. Who knows what life looks like?

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