Experience: I carried a twin in each of my wombs

The medical staff had never seen anything like it. They told us the chances were one in 50 million

The day I gave birth, there were 24 people in the room, most of them fascinated medical students. At 10.11am they watched as my daughter, Bonnie, came into the world, and five minutes later they saw Watson emerge, from my other womb.

The twins were not our first children. Our eldest daughter, Agyness, was born two months early, in 2015, but doctors said early labour was “one of those things”. When I became pregnant with Margot, born six weeks early, in 2017, scans revealed a bicornuate uterus, which means it’s heart-shaped. But no one spotted the second one.

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Push it! Are these the best songs to give birth to?

Research has revealed the Top 10 most popular songs for mothers-to-be – and no, Salt-N-Pepa is not on there

Name: Songs to give birth to.

Age: Women have been giving birth since for ever, and presumably some have always chosen to do so to music. But this is about some recent research into the songs and artists most commonly listened to during labour.

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It’s time to face up to colourism | Candice Brathwaite

As I grew up, the majority of black women I saw on TV were fair skinned. Those who looked like me were never cast as the lead

I’ve been building a profile as a writer and broadcaster long enough to know that there will be public storms. Some creep up on you, others you sense brewing, and some have been lingering in the background for a lifetime.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on social media about having “lost out” on hosting a documentary to a lighter-skinned black woman. The subject of the documentary was maternal mortality in the UK, and the harrowing fact that black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. This is something I have campaigned on for several years, wrote about in my book I Am Not Your Baby Mother and experienced first-hand when I almost died a few days after the birth of my first child in 2013.

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Three families, one sperm donor: the day we met our daughter’s sisters

Every year, thousands of British children are conceived with the help of donor sperm. But few ever meet their siblings...

Caroline Pearson, a podcast producer from London, was a few days into her maternity leave when she discovered that her unborn daughter had two sisters. She had visited a website a friend had told her about, which allows recipients of donated sperm (such as her) to search for families who have used the same donor. If they’ve registered with this website, they could be anywhere in the world, since the US sperm bank chosen by Pearson and her husband, Francis, ships internationally, and the website, Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), is also US-based with an international reach. Pearson couldn’t resist, and typed in the donor’s reference number.

“Suddenly, I was overwhelmingly curious,” Pearson says. She didn’t expect to find anything – let alone two families living within a half-hour radius. The first profile was a single mother to a two-year-old girl, living nearby in London. It seemed an extraordinary coincidence. Caroline was “totally giddy”; her partner Francis, a photographer, was cautious. “I tried to rein things in,” he says. “Caroline was pregnant and we were already dealing with becoming parents, and the donor process. But all this other stuff, it was so unknown. I’m practical and you think: yes, that could be amazing – but what if they’re awful people?”

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‘Luxuries I can’t afford’: why fewer women in South Korea are having children

As the population declines, traditional gender roles and careers are leading many to forgo childbirth

The outcry created this month by Seoul city government’s advice for expectant mothers – including tips on how to cater to their husband’s every need while heavily pregnant – has reignited the debate over why so many South Korean women are choosing not to have children.

The guidelines, issued by the city’s pregnancy and childbirth information centre, were taken down in response to online fury, but not before they had provided a telling insight into attitudes towards gender roles in South Korea, one of the world’s most advanced economies.

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‘Women feel they have no option but to give birth alone’: the rise of freebirthing

As Covid infections rose, hospital felt like an increasingly dangerous place to have a baby. But is labouring without midwives or doctors the answer?

On the morning of 3 May, Victoria Johnson prepared to give birth at her home in the Highlands. One by one, her three children came downstairs to where she was labouring in a birthing pool surrounded by fairy lights, the curtains tightly shut against the outside world.

Suddenly, she felt an urge to get out of the pool. “I stood up and it felt as if the weight of the universe crashed from my head to my toes.” Her waters broke – “all over the carpet, which wasn’t ideal” – and the baby started to crown. “Everyone was there, including both grandmothers on video call,” she says. “Once the baby was out, my eight-year-old son came over and said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ And that was everything.”

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Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children – study

Survey of 600 people finds some parents regret having offspring for same reason

People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.

The researchers surveyed 600 people aged 27 to 45 who were already factoring climate concerns into their reproductive choices and found 96% were very or extremely concerned about the wellbeing of their potential future children in a climate-changed world. One 27-year-old woman said: “I feel like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions.”

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Alcoholic anaesthetist jailed for killing Briton during caesarean birth in France

Helga Wauters imprisoned for three years and banned from practising after death of Xynthia Hawke

An alcoholic anaesthetist who botched an emergency caesarean operation leaving a young British mother dead has been sentenced to three years in prison and banned from practising medicine.

Helga Wauters, 51, was found guilty of manslaughter after pushing a breathing tube into 28-year-old Xynthia Hawke’s oesophagus instead of her windpipe. Even after Hawke cried out in pain, vomited, turned blue and went into cardiac arrest, the anaesthetist, who admitted she had an alcohol problem and had been drinking since early morning on the day of the operation, failed to react.

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Third of newborns with Covid infected before or during birth – study

Review of reported neonatal cases finds most babies with virus contract it in hospital

Nearly a third of coronavirus infections in newborn babies are picked up in the womb or from the mother during labour, a review of reported cases has found.

While Covid-19 is rare in newborns, doctors have been keen to understand the potential risks that babies face should tests reveal they have the infection soon after birth.

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Giving birth at home during Covid-19: ‘Black mothers were already scared’ – video

Mekiya Hodges, who is African American and works as a social worker, says that pregnant women of colour often aren’t listened to by doctors. She had a traumatic experience giving birth to her previous children in hospital and, along with the additional risk of coronavirus, decided to have her daughter, Jordan, at home with the help of Natalie Watson, co-founder of Steel City Midwives. Mekiya, 25, lives in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, an area that has a high death rate for new black mothers. Nationally, black women in 2018 were two and half times more likely than white women to die due to complications related to pregnancy or childbirth


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Denied beds, pain relief and contact with their babies: the women giving birth amid Covid-19

Following reports worldwide, experts are warning that pandemic is pushing back progress on prenatal and maternity care

After Denisa’s son was born premature at 26 weeks she was unable to hold him, but spent as much time as possible near his incubator so he could get used to her voice. By the time he was well enough to be held by his mother, a state of emergency had been declared in Slovakia and Denisa was told to vacate her bed and leave the hospital to make way for Covid-19 patients.

The rush of patients never came, but strict rules meant she was unable to see her baby until he was discharged six weeks later. “Instead of a hug, I went home empty-handed only with my head full of questions,” she says. “Each day without my baby was taking away my strength and harming my mental health.”

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Expectant mothers turn to freebirthing after home births cancelled

Maternity rights groups report surge of interest in unassisted childbirth

When Victoria Gianopoulos-Johnson got a call from her midwife to say her home birth would be cancelled, panic took hold. She says she “lost it” for two days, crying constantly, gripped by uncertainty and then anger.

The 33-year-old from the Highlands, whose baby boy is due at the end of April, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after the birth of her first child and wants to avoid a hospital delivery at all costs. Now she has reached the decision to have a free birth, also known as unassisted childbirth.

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‘I asked three times for an epidural’: why are women being denied pain relief during childbirth?

A new report concludes that women are not being given epidurals and not being fully informed about pain relief by NHS trusts. Does a belief in natural births lie behind this?

Giving birth was, for Kate, like going “through a war”. She had repeatedly asked for an epidural; instead, she was allowed only gas and air and two paracetamol. She was “exhausted, dazed, torn, bloody and frightened” by the time her healthy son was placed in her arms.

“I asked three times for an epidural,” Kate says of her 26-hour labour to deliver her baby, who was back to back and breech. “The first time the midwives said I wasn’t far enough along. The second time, they said I didn’t need it. Finally, they said I was too far along.

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Australian women win landmark vaginal mesh class action against Johnson & Johnson

The case was launched on behalf of 700 women who had pelvic mesh and tape products implanted to treat common complications of childbirth

Hundreds of women left in debilitating pain by faulty transvaginal mesh devices have won a landmark case against multinational giant Johnson & Johnson.

The Australian class action against companies owned by Johnson & Johnson – watched closely across the world – was won on behalf of 1,350 women who had mesh and tape products implanted to treat pelvic prolapse or stress urinary incontinence, both common complications of childbirth.

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Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

C-section babies pick up more hospital bacteria than those born vaginally, research shows

Babies born by caesarean section have different gut bacteria to those delivered vaginally, the most comprehensive study to date on the baby microbiome has found.

The study showed that babies born vaginally pick up most of their initial dose of bacteria from their mother, while C-section babies have more bugs linked to hospital environments, including strains that demonstrate antimicrobial resistance. The findings could explain the higher prevalence of asthma, allergies and other immune conditions in babies born by caesarean.

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