A study carried out at the University of Granada monitored 108 women from the first weeks of pregnancy through to delivery.

The only inpatient unit of its kind has been set up in Wales to offer multidisciplinary mental health care to women from 32 weeks of pregnancy until babies are one year old.

This retrospective cohort study used routinely collected electronic data from 2015-16 to ascertain the proportion of births recorded as having occurred in water, the characteristics of women who experienced water birth and the odds of key maternal and neonatal complications associated with giving birth in water. 46,088 women in 35 English NHS Trusts were included in the study.

The UK government has just published its Start for Life review, led by Andrea Leadsom, MP and Early Years Advisor.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in women being denied support from their chosen birth partners during labour.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a preventable permanent disability. A Senate committee in Australia has found that FASD is still not well understood or recognised and has highlighted a critical need for prevalence data and a robust study of its economic and social impact. 

In 2018, one in three Australian women had a caesarean section (CS). This study, from Queensland, of nearly 100,000 women who were having their first baby or a baby after a previous vaginal birth, used routinely collected hospital data to analyse the main reasons for a primary CS. The top two were: ‘abnormal fetal heart rate’ (23%) and ’primary inadequate contractions’ (23%).

The Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA) in the UK has explored how the pandemic has challenged women’s perinatal mental health and the services that support families across the transition to parenthood.

This cohort study from Denmark aimed to identify risk factors for severe postpartum haemorrhage (PPH - loss of ≥1000 ml). Women included in the study gave birth to a single baby vaginally at term from 1^st January 2004 to 31^st December, 2012.

This national learning report from the UK reviews the 20 maternal deaths (defined as death during pregnancy/childbirth or shortly after the end of a pregnancy) that occurred between 1^st March and the 31^st May, 2020 – the period of the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

A study from Wurzburg University in Germany has shown how the complexity of babies’ vocalisations increases rapidly during the first months of life.

An important question during the pandemic has been whether mother-to-infant SARS-CoV-2 transmission can occur during breastfeeding and, if so, whether the benefits of breastfeeding outweigh the risk.