Social impact: the top five stories of 2014
This year’s top social impact stories featured electric cars, breastfeeding versus baby formula and the lack of diversity in British Vogue
Symphysiotomy – Ireland’s brutal alternative to caesareans
Homa Khaleeli: Symphysiotomy has left many Irish mothers with serious long-term health problems. So did religious dogma trump the women’s best interests?
Should I have a home birth?
Studies show that, for healthy women, they are safe and, largely, free of complications. But the choice between home and hospital is still up to you
So the NHS is keen on home births? Well, it is cheaper…
Catherine Bennett: Home births and midwife-led units are put forward as the best options. But the NHS needs to make hospital deliveries a good and safe experience too
Childbirth is as awful as it is magical, thanks to our postnatal ‘care’
Marina Hyde: Giving birth in hospital these days is a hallucinatorily exhausting experience – and the cuts mean it’s about to get even worse
Call us, say midwives, as they back home birth advice
Midwives at St George’s hospital in London say outcomes are better for women giving birth in midwife-led centres and at home
Should pregnant women be encouraged to shun hospital labour wards?
Milli Hill, Ellie Gibson, Joseph Harker: Nice guidelines now suggest that 45% of births are unsuitable for hospital wards but does this chime with out writers’ experiences?
Low-risk pregnant women urged to avoid hospital births
NHS guidance from National Institute for Health and Care Excellence suggests 45% of births ‘unsuitable’ for labour wards
An Aviary of Small Birds review – a beautiful, painful, pitch-perfect debut
The stillbirth of Karen McCarthy Woolf’s son is the powerful emotional core of this deft, unsentimental collection, writes Kate Kellaway
Do men really need to feel the pain of childbirth to empathise with women?
Emma Beddington: The pursuit of empathy is all very well, but delivering electric shocks doesn’t necessarily help fathers understand what labour is like