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OUR core physiology relies on subtle organic timers: disrupt them, and effects range from jet lag to schizophrenia. Exactly how and when life began keeping time is unclear, but a candidate for the original biological clock may solve the mystery. Biological clocks are ubiquitous in nature, so the first clock should pre-date the evolutionary parting [...]

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She is a former Miss World, a successful Bollywood star and married to the son of one of India’s best-loved stars. She found international fame in the Hollywood film Bride and Prejudice, and Julia Roberts billed her as the world’s most beautiful woman. Thanks to the notoriety such fame and fortune has brought her, Aishwarya [...]

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A mother whose baby died after being deprived of oxygen when he was born has told an inquest that she is “tortured” by the memory of his birth. Noah Tyler died 10 months after suffering irreversible brain damage at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, a pathologist said. A midwife admitted making “catastrophic mistakes” [...]

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Mothers will receive one-to-one care from a named midwife during labour and birth as part of government plans to combat postnatal depression. Women who have a miscarriage or stillbirth and parents who are forced to cope with the death of a baby will also be offered increased support from the NHS. Under the plans, health [...]

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The global mortality rate for women giving birth has fallen by half over the past two decades, a UN report released today said. While there has been considerable progress, more work remains because a woman dies of pregnancy-related complications every two minutes, the report said. The report from the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s [...]

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Men’s sperm count could be reduced by exposure to chemicals in the environment, according to research. A rise in IVF treatments could be down to the effect of chemicals such as cosmetics, detergents and pollutants. Researchers from the University of Glasgow, in collaboration with academics in Edinburgh, the James Hutton Institute, the University of Aberdeen [...]

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In January she had a modest baby bump but what a difference four months can make. Chris Evans and his wife Natasha Shishman proudly showed off her heavily pregnant shape at the Sony Radio Awards. The Radio presenter, 46, was every inch the proud father-to-be as pointed enthusiastically at his wife’s baby bump, not that [...]

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As Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, prepares to outline a package of measures aimed at improving care in pregnancy and the early stages of motherhood, Annie Francis, chief executive of a local midwifery service says women benefit from having a dedicated midwife.   Neighbourhood Midwives, is a NHS-funded social enterprise based in Wandsworth, south London, [...]

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Aishwarya Rai is no stranger to Cannes. The Bollywood actor and former Miss World has attended the film festival 10 times, but her appearance on the red carpet next week is set to be her most talked about. The cause of a controversy raging in India lies not with her latest film – Rai is [...]

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A young couple delivered their baby in a bathroom after a labour lasting just eight minutes. Joshua Courtney, advised by a midwife over the phone, helped Natalie Dunleavy give birth after her waters broke at their home in Tingley, Wakefield. Miss Dunleavy, 22, said: “It was so quick it was unbelievable. Josh was amazing. It [...]

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She says she has lost two stone since being pregnant, but Una Healy insists that she is still all ‘soft’ and ‘squidgy’ following the birth of baby girl Aoife Belle two months ago. That is hard to believe though, looking at the pictures of the super svelte singer making her way through Heathrow today. Una, [...]

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When Daniella Jackson was diagnosed with cancer at five months pregnant her doctors quickly advised her to have an abortion. They said she needed a termination to allow her lung tumour to be removed before it killed her. But the 21-year-old, who is a devout Roman Catholic, refused, saying she felt too close to her [...]

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After giving birth to her third child last summer, one could forgive Claudia Winkleman for wanting to take it easy. However, the Strictly Come Dancing presenter tells Mandrake the new child has made her so broody her husband has had to impose a baby ban.   “I’d like another baby but my husband has banned [...]

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The survey also found that one in five women were not offered a choice of where to have their baby, despite this being a key pledge in maternity care. The Royal College of Midwives said the findings highlighted the shortage of midwives and called for 5,000 more to be appointed.   The Coalition has been accused [...]

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Were you breastfed as a baby and if so, do love or hate your mother? Do you have children of your own and if so, do you or did you breastfeed them? And for how long? And if it was a long time ago, do they still speak to you? And did you ever do [...]

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Model Sasha Pivovarova has given birth to a baby girl just two days after posting the first picture of her pregnant bump. The Russian-born 26-year-old, who has yet to reveal her new baby’s name, announced the birth via Twitter yesterday, telling her fans: ‘It’s a beautiful baby girl… ’ It is a first baby for [...]

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A lesbian couple desperate for one child have given birth to four – two sets of twins who arrived a few weeks apart. Laura Calvin and Sheri Green, from Naples, Florida, defied the odds when they both became pregnant through artificial insemination and were amazed to discover later that they were both expecting twins. The [...]

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Overweight mothers-to-be could be condemning their unborn children to decades of ill health. Babies whose mothers were carrying extra pounds when pregnant are more likely to be fat and unhealthy  as adults, researchers say. While it is well known that overweight mothers-to-be risk having big babies who grow into overweight children, this study is one [...]

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These days, work stress, postnatal depression and anxiety are addressed with compassion. But just a few generations ago, the women who suffered from these conditions, were confined to an asylum. The compelling portraits shown here, taken by Victorian photographer Henry Hering in the mid-19th century, have a haunting quality. But apart from the women’s pensive [...]

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One in four women do not have  a midwife present during the crucial moments of giving birth, according to a new study. The research, for the Royal College of Midwives, reveals that women across the country are being let down by under-staffed maternity services. On average, a quarter of women said they did not have  [...]

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Her sense of style is coveted by many but now Kourtney Kardashian has influenced the world of parenting. While Jacob has been found to be the most popular name for boys for the 13th year straight, Mason has come in at second place according to a list made by the U.S. Social Security Administration. The [...]

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Women approaching their mid-thirties who aren’t ready to have children are not the only ones worrying about their reproductive futures. Reports from fertility centres around the country are showing the increase of parental contribution as adult women opt to freeze their eggs. For many would-be-grandparents, helping to cover the cost of the expensive oocyte cryopreservation [...]

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Depending on your view of the world, the name Jacob either makes you think of the third patriarch of the Hebrew people, ancestor of the tribes of Israel, or it makes you think of a certain sexy werewolf. But one thing is clear: the name Jacob is on a lot of minds. It is, in [...]

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Japan’s people could become extinct in 1,000 years because of declining birth rates, academics say. The population of Japanese children aged up to 14, currently stands at 16.6million in the country but is shrinking at a rate of one every 100 seconds, researchers in Sendai said. They warned that at the current rate, Japan would [...]

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A mother from Wandsworth who has been charged with the murder of her two children suffered a tragedy four years earlier, it has emerged. Felicia Boots’ brother Scott Sinclair committed suicide after suffering severe depression. On Saturday the 34-year-old banker’s wife, appeared at South Western Magistrates’ Court, in Battersea, charged with the murders of her [...]

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A controversial fertility doctor has raked in £25million in a single year. Mohamed Taranissi and his wife received the colossal sum through their IVF clinic, giving fresh evidence to critics who say that the creation of human life has become a multi-million pound industry. On Saturday the Daily Mail revealed that a human egg agency [...]

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When seven-year-old Chloe Dennis’ mother went into labour, she didn’t call the midwife… she did the job herself. The youngster was awoken by mother Rachael’s screams as contractions began in the middle of the night. With nobody else around, she leapt into action and grabbed a towel to keep her newborn sister clean and warm. [...]

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IVF procedures widely used in the UK are posing a ‘serious health risk’, healthcare experts have warned. Clinics are using ‘aggressive’ practices that improve success rates but have led to treatments becoming one of the biggest causes of maternal deaths in England and Wales, they said. There is increasing evidence that the most common treatment, [...]

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IVF clinics in the UK are practising aggressive fertility treatments that are putting women and children at unjustified risk, experts say. The commercially driven industry uses unnecessary procedures, high doses of powerful drugs and risky interventions to help desperate couples spending thousands of pounds to conceive. But a milder, safer approach to IVF could provide [...]

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According to statistics, thousands of women are using the service to terminate unwanted foetuses; in some cases up to nine times. The abortions are understood to cost up to £1,000 every time, with five out of every six repeat terminations being requested by a woman who is unmarried.   In 2010, 189,000 terminations took place, with [...]

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Felicia Boots’ brother Scott Sinclair committed suicide in his apartment in Toronto, Canada four years ago, neighbours of Mrs Boots’s parents told the Telegraph. On Saturday, Mrs Boots, 34, appeared at Lavender Hill Magistrates Court, in Battersea, London, charged with the murders of her 10-week-old son Mason and 14-month-old daughter Lily. She was remanded in [...]

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My gorgeous little girl Heidi was born on April 22 – weighing a healthy 7lb 6oz – blissfully unaware of the furore of which she would soon be the focus. The reaction to my article about jogging while pregnant, published in last week’s Mail on Sunday, has been overwhelming. Twitter has been awash with people [...]

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The father of a six-week-old baby girl has been arrested, along with the child’s uncle, on suspicion of attempted murder after allegedly trying to bury her alive in the belief it would protect his other children from illness. A worker at a burial ground in Pilkhuwa, 100km south-west of New Delhi, alerted police after he [...]

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Zoe Clark-Coates remembers the moment a scan showed that her second pregnancy, like her first, had ended. “I’ll never forget the midwife’s face as she looked at the screen. She fell completely silent and I started screaming – a terrible, almost primal reaction over which I had no control. Looking back, I feel sorry for [...]

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Jamie Lynne Grumet has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, looking fetching in a vest and skinnies, and staring into the camera as her three-year-old child sucks at her breast. She aims to publicise “attachment parenting”, although she also says: “There seems to be a war going on between conventional parenting and attachment parenting. That’s what [...]

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The latest cover of Time magazine has caused outrage. Under the headline “Are you mom enough?”, a young woman is pictured having her left breast suckled by a boy who appears way beyond usual breastfeeding age. The woman, it turns out, is Jamie Lynne Grumet, a 26-year old mother from Los Angeles, and the boy [...]

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Babies in special care units may soon be able to stay close to their mothers thanks to a revolutionary incubator design. The hi-tech BabyBloom can be fitted across the bed of a new mother allowing her to bond with her baby even as it needs to be in the special environment of an incubator. Such [...]

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The case of a baby girl who was allegedly buried alive in the state of Uttar Pradesh has shocked many Indians, as the BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder reports. Inside a filthy paediatric ward at a government hospital in Meerut, a short drive from Delhi, two-month old Radhika lies quietly on a bed. Incredibly frail and weak, [...]

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Police have been extra 24-hours to continue questioning Felicia Boots about the deaths of her 10-week-old son Tej and 14-month-old daughter Lily-Syke, whose lifeless bodies were discovered by their father Jeffrey at their £1.2 million London home on Wednesday evening. But friends said the 34-year-old jewellery designer had been in a “bad way” after her first [...]

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A controversial non-profit group is giving thousands of drug-addicted women money to be sterilised. The group hangs stark adverts in clinics and homeless shelters in North Carolina, which read, ‘Don’t let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit,’ and ‘She has her daddy’s eyes… and her mommy’s heroin addiction.’ Project Prevention founder Barbara Harris, 59, said [...]

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A young mother-to-be who was told she would never become pregnant due to a rare condition has decided to keep her miracle baby even though the birth could leave her experiencing labour-like pains forever. Seven months pregnant Debbie Mills, 23, was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) in October 2009. CRPS is a chronic [...]

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He became a father for the fourth time just a few weeks ago. And now Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming has given his fans a first glimpse of their baby daughter. The model has posted an adorable photo on Twitter of the Hollywood actor cuddling little Mabel Ray in his arms. How adorable! Bruce Willis’ [...]

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A mother of two has told of how she breastfeeds her two sons who are aged three and five. Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, has appeared on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her three-year-old Aram as he stands on a small seat to reach her. The Los Angeles mother has spoken about how she applies [...]

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Two in five new mothers have struggled to cope with the demands of parenting during the first few weeks after birth, with a similar amount admitting getting ‘angry’ with their baby, according to a poll. A further one in five were frequently very upset at their child’s crying during the first eight weeks, a survey [...]

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What every mother wants for Mother’s Day: healthy children. A free mobile service called Text4Baby sends breaking health information to new and expecting mothers. Participants in the program receive between one and three text messages each week informing them of health alerts or offering advice for breastfeeding, labor or other prenatal issues. The alerts also [...]

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Babies born after labour is induced have less risk of dying but a higher risk of admission to a special-care unit, a study suggests. The British Medical Journal analysis of 1.2m births in Scotland between 1981 and 2007 also found no increased chance of a Caesarean section – contrary to previous findings. The study looked [...]

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Her eyes wide with fear and pain, Théthé – who is haemorrhaging and has a fever – groans and pushes as she lies on a brown vinyl mattress, slick with blood and amniotic fluid, in one of the worst places in the world to be a mother (pdf). After a final push, a nurse holds [...]

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Tania Mirmothari was worried sick. The previous night, the 19-year-old from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, had had yet another drunken one-night stand. Carefree at the time, the following morning she’d woken with a thumping hangover, horrified at the realisation she might be pregnant. There was only one thing for it: Tania went to her local walk-in [...]

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Police in northern India have arrested a baby girl’s father and uncle for allegedly trying to bury her alive. The two-month-old baby’s father said he had been advised by a spiritual guru to bury her to help secure the good health of his next child, police allege. Baby Radhika has acute malnutrition and is receiving [...]

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Eleven-year-old Courtney Barnes shows me the patchwork of scars that criss-cross her midriff, pushing her tummy button several inches out of place. Her mother, Juliet, smiles proudly. ‘Brave, isn’t she?’ she says, kissing her daughter on the forehead. Next to her, another mum shows me a picture of her one-day-old son, Leon, lying on his [...]

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