Baby love: how pop stars embraced pregnancy

Stars used to keep quiet about their pregnancies, fearing they could ruin their career. Now they are celebrating them – and Cardi B is leading the pack

‘SAD NEWS: I can’t see my vagina any more,” tweeted the record-breaking superstar rapper Cardi B in June. She had revealed her pregnancy to the public while performing on Saturday Night Live in April. Later, she tweeted that the last month of her pregnancy was “hell” and, when daughter Kulture was born, opened up about the baby’s sleeping patterns, her emotions (“I’m in love and I feel like I’m melting”), and, then, that she had “underestimated the whole mommy thing”, cancelling tour dates she had planned for six weeks postpartum. It was unusual to see a pop superstar documenting their experience of pregnancy and early motherhood so publicly. Until recently, pregnancy has been mostly anathema to the pop world.

However, a more positive, accepting attitude has been brewing for a while. In 2011, Beyoncé famously announced her pregnancy to the crowd at the MTV Video Music awards, and those watching at home, by flicking open her jacket, rubbing her bump and grinning. In 2017, a floral, veiled image of her kneeling while pregnant with twins received the highest number of Instagram likes of the year.

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'I got no help from the NHS': a new mother on facing mental illness

Libby Binks says she felt ‘useless’ at her lowest after developing postnatal depression and anxiety

• Revealed: new mothers left to cope alone with mental ill-health

Libby Binks had postnatal depression and anxiety after the birth of her daughter Chloe in December 2014. However, despite telling a GP and a health visitor how she was feeling, Binks received no help from them.

Recalling the time after the birth, she said: “I felt more and more useless, inadequate and a burden on my husband, Adam, who seemed to be so much better at parenthood than me.

Related: Revealed: new mothers left to cope alone with mental ill-health

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Revealed: new mothers left to cope alone with mental ill-health

NHS care too limited to meet needs of pregnant women or those who have given birth

• ‘I got no help from the NHS’: a new mother on facing mental illness

Thousands of women are having to cope alone with mental health problems caused by pregnancy or giving birth because the NHS cannot provide the necessary help, a leaked report has revealed.

While up to one in five mothers have problems such as postnatal depression and post-traumatic stress disorder linked to childbirth, many are going untreated because specialist NHS care for them is so limited and the “gap” in help so wide, the research found.

Related: 'I got no help from the NHS': a new mother on facing mental illness

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My IVF life: let's talk money. At $12,000 out of pocket, it's a bargain

Jean Hannah Edelstein explains why she was lucky to find coverage at work, but many IVF patients are not so fortunate

E and I pay a bit more than $12,000 out of pocket for IVF, and that is a bargain. Most of the $12,000 is for genetic testing, which is the whole reason that we are doing IVF, and which our insurance does not cover. They send us a form letter explaining why: because Lynch syndrome, the genetic issue that we are screening the embryos for, is statistically unlikely to cause cancer in children. Only adults. Hence, the insurance company wouldn’t have to pay for cancer treatment if we have a child born with Lynch, because the child would no longer be our dependent if they got a Lynch-related cancer.

It’s a cruel calculation.

To be a parent or to remain child-free is a choice that seems natural until the natural part is taken away from you

Related: My IVF life: the moody, exhausting, doughy hormones and egg retrievals

Why not just adopt? It’s a complex question, and flippant to suggest it as an easy solution.

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As a fat, pregnant woman, I refuse to panic about my baby’s health | Nanna Arnadottir

Ignore the scaremongering: the risks of being overweight are overplayed. Anxiety, on the other hand, does cause problems

Pregnant women who “allow” themselves to become overweight are “criminal”, and placing needless strain on the healthcare system. That is the verdict of the Finnish TV doctor Eva Orsmond.

“Women who allow themselves to be overweight when pregnant are criminal and are putting their lives and the life of their baby to be put in danger due to serious health complications when in labour,” said Orsmond, who now lives in Dublin.

People like Orsmond, GPs and media outlets don’t have to make complications sound so inevitable

Related: Criminalising pregnant women who drink is a ploy to restrict their freedom | Rebecca Schiller

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Tom Daley: ‘If I hadn’t met Lance, I don’t know if I’d be diving now’

From being objectified at 14 to coming out five years later, the diver has lived his life in public. Still only 24, he talks about his marriage to Lance Black, fatherhood – and why he’s speaking out about gay rights around he world

You could say this about any famous athlete, but Tom Daley more than most: you’re so used to seeing him in some outlandish endeavour – superhuman, ethereal, from such a young age, on such a vast stage, a Peter Pan without the wires – that it is incredibly confusing to see him sitting, like a regular person, in a regular London office (his publisher’s), in regular clothes, talking about mindfulness. He is about to publish Tom’s Daily Goals, subtitled “Never feel hungry or tired again”, which is a bit rum from this beacon of good living, yet of course, hard physical graft for many hours of most days means that he probably knows better than most what hunger and tiredness mean.

“I’ve toned this book towards imagining what my mum would be able to do, and what people would have time to do,” he says. Besides, he says, it’s not like the old days, when he could eat anything and do anything: most mornings, he wakes up and something hurts. He is still recovering from a shin injury, which itself is related to a hip problem, which itself is about a “lack of thoracic mobility. As I’ve gotten older as a diver, I have to really focus on doing everything I can to make my body younger.” He turned 24 in May, but, of course, elite athletes live time differently, do as much to themselves in a year as everyone else does in a decade; yet even leaving aside the brute physical endeavour, he has lived a lot of life; at 14, he was the youngest British competitor in the 2008 Olympics, dragging his sport with him on to the front pages. He still wears a ring of the Olympic rings that his parents got him, in lieu of what he really wanted. “They were, like: ‘We know you’re going to get a tattoo, but you know, we can’t let our 14-year-old get a tattoo. Imagine what your brothers would ask for.’” (He now has them tattooed on the inside of his upper right arm.)

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Maternity units 'could prevent 600 stillbirths a year in England'

NHS says national roll-out of ‘best practice’ could magnify 19 units’ success in saving 160 babies over two years

About 600 stillbirths a year in England could be prevented if maternity units followed national best practice, the health service said.

NHS England said practical steps including reducing smoking in pregnancy, and better monitoring of babies’ growth and movement in pregnancy and subsequently during labour, had already contributed to improved survival rates.

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