#maternity-hospital

#maternity-hospital

"[After] years of holding pain, you become really tight in yourself...you hold yourself tight and you don't want to take up space."

There is a piece of advice given to doctors in moments like this: Check your own pulse. Each person in the room has a role, and we perform it best with steady hands and measured voices.

Since the first IVF baby was born in 1978, technological advancement of reproductive medicine has enabled millions to have children, marking a significant milestone in medical history.

Sofii Lewis described her experience, stating, "I knew I wasn't safe. But I didn't think I was out of control." This highlights the confusion many face with postpartum psychosis.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act protects pregnant employees from workplace discrimination based on your pregnancy. Additionally, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires your employer to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnancy-related conditions. For maternity leave, the Family and Medical Leave Act (federal law) entitles eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave following childbirth if you've worked at your company for at least a year.

Pregnancy is the only condition where Florida courts have ruled that a patient can be forced to undergo unwanted treatment. Even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions.

While noting women 'were treated with kindness and compassion', a 'requires improvement' rating was given. Inspectors said hospital management 'did not always support staff well-being' and 'were not always visible within the service and were sometimes perceived as unsupportive'. Staff reported they were confident to report incidents, however, were not always assured action would be taken.

A Genexa survey of 1,000 U.S. moms found that 70% use their own sick days to stay home when their child is ill, and 58% work from home while caregiving. In other words, many of us are doing the same impossible math: caring for sick kids while trying to keep our work lives moving.

Born and raised in Texas, Dr Crowder left the state to attend Howard University. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in 1982 and her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1986 from Howard University College of Medicine. She returned to Texas to begin practising and later became board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 1994.

We knew he'd be bigger, but we didn't expect this. He's already wearing 3 to 6 month diapers and clothes. It feels like I skipped straight to having a three-month-old.

I attended A&E multiple times complaining of pain, tachycardia (increased heart rate), sickness - I couldn't keep anything down... but they didn't listen. Angel-Kay Mason fell pregnant with her daughter in June 2022 aged 19. Due to a family history of complex pregnancies, she says she was deemed to be high-risk but says she was not referred to a consultant and did not receive any extra scans.

Hamilton makes it very clear that she and her fellow nurses are endlessly grateful for the gifts they have received from patients (like energy drinks, mints, donuts and hair ties). But at the same time, they don't expect them. And most importantly, the service they provide to their patients remains the same regardless of whether or not you give them a gift.

The soft, flexible, robotic probe could dramatically improve safety during fetal surgeries, procedures in which physicians operate on a fetus before birth. Currently, doctors primarily rely on intermittent measurements of fetal heart rate using ultrasound imaging from outside the pregnant person's body. The new device, on the other hand, can be gently inserted through the same narrow port already used in fetal surgeries.

"I remember sitting in the ultrasound room," Mornhineway, 30, tells TODAY.com. "Our hearts dropped. They said there was nothing to be done. Most people terminate."

Anna af Ugglas, chief executive of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and one of the study's authors, said: Nearly 1 million missing midwives means health systems are stretched beyond capacity, midwives are overworked and underpaid, and care becomes rushed and fragmented. Intervention rates rise, and women are more likely to experience poor-quality care or mistreatment, she said. This is not only a workforce issue, it is a quality and safety issue for women and babies.

Lisa Watson suffers the devastating effects of incontinence daily, and believes mid-urethral surgery, otherwise known as vaginal mesh surgery, could change everything. The surgery was paused in Ireland in 2018, and she is calling for the pause to be lifted By anyone's standards, Lisa Watson is a busy woman. During the week, the Wicklow-based mum of two is a credit union risk manager and at weekends she puts on her make-up artist hat.

We'd been working together for years to make my medication regimen-treatment for schizoaffective disorder-safe for potential pregnancy. Under her care, I was tapering off an antidepressant known to cause respiratory distress and hypertension in a newborn. I'd been experiencing wild mood swings, even suicidal thoughts. My beloved doctor's eyes were sad. "I'm saying no to a pregnancy, Meg." Even in the moment, I understood her priority as a physician was to keep me safe. Still, part of me hated her.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I did what most moms do-I started researching. I wanted to make the best possible choices for my baby and myself, and giving birth in a hospital just didn't feel like the safest option. So many women do it, but the more I learned, the more I realized that the reality of hospital birth in the U.S. is even less reassuring than I had thought. I wanted to birth at home.

I just want to talk to whoever has romanticised the idea of being a new mom. When you're in a flurry of diaper changes, following a two-hourly pumping schedule and meticulously cleaning and mixing up bottles while running on less sleep than you've ever had, mommyhood ends up being more of a frenzied checklist of tasks to get done and not enough time snuggling and making babytalk with a babbling infant.

Babies in the Midlands and North of England are more likely to die before, during or shortly after birth than those in the South, a new study has found. Researchers analysed data from 121 maternity services in England to see which centres repeatedly produced outcomes better or worse than the average between 2013 and 2022. The 10 worst-performing centres were in the Midlands and North of England, and the 15 best-performing in the South.

Then, in November 2025, our international shame. The Pan American Health Organization revoked Canada's measles elimination status, following more than a year of sustained transmission of the same strain. We'd eliminated the virus in 1998 and held onto the status for twenty-seven years owing to a safe and effective vaccine, but as vaccine hesitancy grew and vaccination rates dropped, susceptibility to this once-vanquished disease skyrocketed.