Model delivery
A team of dedicated midwives is showing how care for pregnant women and new mothers could better work, reports Caroline Bennett.
Going it alone
Why would anyone choose to give birth without a doctor, midwife or even her partner in attendance? Viv Groskop reports on the growing trend for freebirth.
While women in the developing world are dying in childbirth, why are we fetishising doing it at home?
Catherine Bennett: God is a psychopath as well as a top designer, who chose to punish women for original sin by tearing up an earlier scheme for pain-free birth. Whatever the reason - divine malice, or the evolutionary conflict between big brains and pelvises tilted for walking upright - the consequences for at least 529,000 women a year are fatal.
More than half of women left alone while in labour, survey suggests
· Level of care sees 75,000 a year suffer anxiety · Hewitt to confirm pledge on allocating midwives
Against all odds
Amillia Taylor shouldn't be alive. She was born at less than 22 weeks - in the US, where babies aren't considered 'viable' until 23 weeks. But her desperate mother lied to doctors about how far gone she was, and Amillia is now the most premature baby to have ever survived. Aida Edemariam reports on her extraordinary story and asks: should we be saving such tiny babies?
Pregnant women turned away in midwife crisis
Rising birth rates and a lack of specialists leaves maternity units unable to cope with demand.
Take the hassle (and the fun) out of childbirth
Justine Roberts on the baby planning service that promises to take care of all your pre- and post-pregnancy problems.