One in four women gives birth in private hospitals. The collapse of private obstetrics will have huge flow-on effects for the public system.
It’s a loss that triggers contradictory emotions:how to square the happiness that one survived with an enduring sadness that the other didn’t?
I remember the abject fear of the operating theatre. Lying there,so close to having my miracle baby,I felt like I was floating in a bubble of terror.
It’s only now – 24 years later – that I am able to discuss it,and I still cry. Birth trauma is still vastly overlooked,but its impacts can last a lifetime.
Every year,about 400 babies are born with physical and intellectual disabilities caused by a virus many pregnant women don’t know about.
I’ve had three babies and none were born of an act of altruism. Every time I had a child I did so for me.
The Baruahs know how torturous infertility treatment can be,having spent seven years enduring it. But when they finally held their son,“everything changed.”
Now that researchers understand the cause of the ailment,some are working to eradicate it.
When members of multiple birth clubs learn a local family is joining them in the chaos of having twins,triplets or even more new arrivals,they mobilise.
Motherhood is overwhelming in its abundance – an abundance of love so powerful it can break down doors and an abundance of fear that any number of things could go wrong.
Pregnant bodies have been in the spotlight,thanks to celebrities such as Rihanna,but postpartum figures have yet to experience the same treatment.