Latest news with #pregnancy
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Climate disasters inflict outsized harm on pregnant and young families
The howling winds of a tornado jolted Jelessica Monard awake in the early morning hours last fall. She was five months pregnant with her first child when Hurricane Helene struck her rural Georgian town of Swainsboro. Along with devastating flooding and mudslides, the storm had been spinning up tornadoes throughout the Southeast that morning and knocked out power in her neighborhood. 'I opened up the door and I couldn't see my hand,' Monard said. 'You hear things breaking outside or lifting up and banging into something else.' After the storm passed, the power remained out and no one had cell reception. Food spoiled within a few days without refrigeration. 'I had a food stamp card and had loaded up the house,' Monard said. 'I had to throw a lot of that stuff out.' Pregnant people and their unborn children face some of the sharpest health risks as atmospheric pollution raises temperatures, fueling more destructive storms, floods, wildfires and other climate disasters. Lower-income families are particularly vulnerable—as are rural communities, which can lack sufficient access to health care even in the best of times. Not having food available exacerbated Monard's pregnancy-induced nausea. And without a phone, she couldn't call for help. 'I was hungry, I was pregnant,' Monard said. 'And then if I wasn't eating enough, I would throw up.' To add to her stress, Monard's pregnancy was considered high risk because she'd suffered a pulmonary embolism, or blood clot, in her lung. To monitor the condition, Monard had to travel twice a week from her home in Swainsboro to a medical center in Savannah throughout her pregnancy, about a two-hour round trip. 'Things started getting hard with the bills and keeping gas in the car,' Monard said. 'It was just a whole trickle down spiral.' Pregnant people and parents of infants across the American Southeast experienced domino effects like these after Helene cut its ruinous path, destroying homes and businesses, laying waste to infrastructure, knocking out power to millions of homes and killing more than 200 people. Maternal care providers in storm-damaged communities in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia said they've seen an uptick in postpartum depression among their patients. Though anecdotal, these observations are consistent with an emerging body of research indicating that surviving a severe flood catastrophe heightens the risk and severity of maternal mental health struggles, which in turn can impact the health and development of infants. Helene crossed into Georgia from its southern border as a Category 2 hurricane. Before making landfall near Perry, Florida, it had intensified to a Category 4 storm under the influence of warm Gulf waters. A Climate Central forensic analysis showed that such marine heat in the Gulf has become at least six times more likely at that time of year because of the warming effects of greenhouse gas pollution. Even in the best of circumstances, the hormonal and physiological changes that women go through during pregnancy and the months after giving birth can strain mental health. Postpartum depression and other mental health conditions are the most common complication of childbirth, afflicting about 1 in 8 people, only half of whom are diagnosed. These problems are the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, and contribute to the extraordinarily high maternal mortality rate in the U.S. During the past decade, the federal government made significant investments in preventing and treating maternal mental health problems. Congress has funded outreach programs, a hotline for struggling parents, and an array of research on the topic. However, recent federal cuts to health care have jeopardized some of those programs. Monard wasn't diagnosed with a mental health disorder as the stressors piled up after the storm, but she became scared for herself and for her baby's well-being. 'I just know that if I go down, my baby goes down,' Monard said. In August 2005, epidemiologist Emily Harville had just moved to New Orleans for a job at Tulane University when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. Her graduate research had focused on the impact of stress during the perinatal period—the months before and after giving birth—so in Katrina's aftermath, she began visiting hospitals in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. She and her colleagues ultimately interviewed hundreds of women who were pregnant when Katrina hit or who became pregnant soon thereafter. Many had faced a life-threatening situation, lost a loved one to the storm, or had their property demolished. Those who had suffered at least two serious hardships had a 77% higher rate of postpartum depression and a 268% higher chance of post-traumatic stress disorder than those who had not. Researchers have since found the same phenomenon among pregnant people who survived the 2008 Iowa floods and megastorms in other countries. Other studies have pinpointed developmental and health impacts on children who were in utero during the Iowa floods, 2012 Hurricane Sandy along the eastern seaboard and 2018 Hurricane Michael in Florida. Those results aren't entirely surprising, Harville said. The risk of depression and trauma goes up after a storm no matter who you are, but the effect is stronger in nonwhite women and parents, as well as those with lower socioeconomic statuses; new moms disproportionately fall into those categories. A new mom disabled by depression is not the only one who struggles. 'When a mother is depressed, she's less able to bond with and take care of her baby,' Harville said. This can affect her infants' development and stymie her ability to care for other children. Since mothers carry a disproportionate amount of the burden of household management, when they are affected by a mental health disorder, she said, 'the family doesn't work as well.' Perinatal health care practitioners in the hardest-hit parts of the Southeast said they've been watching this phenomenon play out in their communities since Helene. Before the storm, Heather Herman, a perinatal psychiatric nurse practitioner in West Jefferson, North Carolina, already had a full schedule of patients who were navigating depression and other challenges. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, many abruptly stopped reaching out for help. When she finally got ahold of them again, they said their lives were too chaotic to worry about their mental health. Families lost childcare when schools and daycares closed for weeks. Many lost cars to the floods, limiting their transportation options. With so much to repair or replace and lost wages, many families' financial stability faltered. 'When there's a storm like this, everybody is going to prioritize basic needs first, that's just part of the human condition,' Herman said. 'Parents are going to prioritize their kids and put themselves last. Unfortunately, that has a negative impact on the kids as well.' In some cases, parents struggled to even feed their infants. Parts of western North Carolina went nearly two months on a boil water notice because the floodwaters had contaminated drinking water. Some parents had no clean water to add to formula, said Katherine Hyde-Hensley, a perinatal psychologist who sees clients in and around Asheville. There are few greater stressors for new parents than not being able to safely feed their infant, she said. Hyde-Hensley said some clients evacuated to homes of friends and family elsewhere, but that didn't protect them from weeks of instability and chaos as they tried to return home. 'They were trying to figure out, 'Can I come back?'' Hyde-Hensley said. ''Can I wash bottles? Can I wash dishes? Can I wash diapers? How am I going to bathe my baby?'' Allison Rollans, a doula, childbirth educator, infant specialist, and owner of High Country Doulas, serves clients in eastern Tennessee, northwestern North Carolina, and southwestern Virginia, all of which sustained major damage in the storm. She said many of her clients have yet to fully grasp the stress of what they've lived through. 'When you're in it, you're just sort of going through it, you're in survival mode,' Rollans said. 'It will take years of reflecting on this to see the real impact of it.' As temperatures rise and as neighborhoods continue to be built and expand in vulnerable places, weather disasters are striking more frequently and with more ferocity. Helene was one of 27 disasters across the U.S. to cause at least $1 billion in damage last year. This number is starkly higher than the long-term average number of billion-dollar weather events since 1980, which is nine. The growing risks are not lost on new parents, said epidemiologist Jennifer Barkin, a professor at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia. Maternal mental health has always been a focus of Barkin's research. Recently, she's begun to focus on the impact of climate disasters. In one study, Barkin's team surveyed 101 postpartum women in Australia about their levels of distress. Unsurprisingly, the more aware the women were of the growing risk of climate catastrophes, and the more vulnerable they expected to be when one struck their community, the higher their rates of anxiety and distress. Days after her team submitted the Australian paper for publication last fall, Helene arrived in southern Georgia. Although the storm didn't hit Barkin's home in Macon directly, it caused widespread flooding and power outages in the rural counties south of town, where Barkin's research team works with pregnant and postpartum women. 'I don't think that area had ever seen a storm like that before,' Barkin said. 'We weren't able to conduct business as usual because [my team] didn't have access to gas or electricity.' In the months since, her team interviewed 24 new moms in Georgia, including Monard, about their experiences and their feelings of ongoing safety. Hyde-Hensley said the planet's environmental future has come up again and again in her conversations with clients. Even before the storms, many new parents felt profoundly worried about 'what their child is going to have to deal with for the next 60 to 80 years,' she said. The storm made that threat tangible, and plunged some into anxiety about future storms. That fear is rational, because stakes get higher as more climate disasters strike a community, Barkin said. 'You're more resilient if it's not chronic. When an area is getting flooded over and over, the community can't bounce back the same way,' she said. 'It was pitch black and you couldn't see anything, but all you could hear was the storm, the trees just literally snapping, sounding like popsicle sticks breaking off into the distance,' said Allyson Byrd, whose son was three months old when Hurricane Helene hit. 'That was such an eerie, kind of an ominous type feeling.' Byrd, who has three older children from ages 6 to 9, said the storm took a mental toll on her. Byrd lives with her four children and her parents in her hometown of Swainsboro, Georgia. 'It was hard to keep [my children] afloat and myself afloat mentally,' she said. Even Byrd's older children were too young to fully understand what was happening, why the lights were out for so long, and why there was nothing else to keep them busy except each other's company. 'That was a lot mentally for me to try to balance,' Byrd said. 'I needed to stay stable myself while keeping the kids mentally stable and not let them see me fall apart.' There was also the stress of trying to figure out how to store breast milk at a safe temperature without a working refrigerator. When the storm made landfall in South Georgia, Byrd was trying to make the transition from breast milk to formula with her new baby. But it was hard to locate ice to keep the milk from spoiling. 'Once people were able to get some type of cellular service they were making social media posts to get cans of milk from people,' Byrd said. Despite the hardship, Byrd said it was encouraging to see her community come together to support each other during the storm. 'Economic status and where you stood as far as salary level, all of that just got put in the background,' Byrd said. 'It didn't matter.' Herman, the psychiatric nurse practitioner in West Jefferson, has observed that both giving and receiving this kind of community support has served her clients. 'It's so helpful to us, as humans, to be able to extend help to one another, and I think that was protective to people who had that opportunity.' Research by Harville's team and others has confirmed that social support can shield pregnant people from the worst mental health outcomes of a disaster. Among other things, Harville's team found that people who had sustained major intangible losses—family stability, feelings of closeness and companionship with loved ones, a daily routine, and time for sleep—suffered far more depression than those whose losses were mainly tangible—cars, homes, possessions, even access to food. This critical support can come from a trusted maternal health provider. After experiencing major floods in Queensland, Australia, a study published in 2018 found women who had a strong and continuous relationship with their midwife throughout the disaster had fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression than those who didn't. Birth doulas, whose roles include helping postpartum mothers meet their emotional and physical needs, may have played a similar role for their clients during and after Helene. 'As a birth doula, we have very close contact with our clients personally before labor and after labor,' said Emily Bohannon, executive director of the Birth Circle Community, a nonprofit organization aimed at empowering families through efforts like birth preparation classes and postpartum social support in Statesboro, Georgia. When Helene hit, the group amped up their support for families with new babies, organizing a supply drive for clean water, formula, and diapers. The community support was overwhelming; at the end of the drive, the Birth Circle Community ended up with double the amount of items they started with. 'Within a week, we were able to get hundreds of items from local people and nonprofits and business owners,' Bohannon said. 'The day of the supply drive, we had dozens of families show up and get their items that they needed.' Social support can also come from public programs. Harville's team compared Katrina-affected pregnant women who had standard prenatal care to those who also received services from Healthy Start New Orleans. Healthy Start, a federal program started in 1991, provides services to families in 115 American communities, from pregnancy until the child reaches 18 months old. Healthy Start outreach workers provide prenatal care and education, help families navigate housing and food services, promote fathers' involvement, and facilitate mental health screenings and referrals. Harville's team found that compared to the women who received standard prenatal care, those in Healthy Start were disproportionately young, low-income, unpartnered, and Black, had suffered worse experiences in the storm, and had more symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress than their better-resourced peers outside of the program—all factors associated with worse birth outcomes. Through Healthy Start, women received mental health counseling and prenatal education, and their birth outcomes were no different than those of their peers with more resources. Awareness of postpartum depression has exploded over the last decade, said Wendy Davis, president and CEO of Postpartum Support International, a nonprofit that provides support to new parents struggling with their mental health and trains health care professionals on the issue. Compared to 10 years ago, more providers are educated about postpartum depression, some states require insurance companies to cover it, the screening rate has increased, and there are better services for those who suffer. At the end of President Donald Trump's first term, he signed a bill creating the Maternal Mental Health Hotline, whose counselors answer calls and texts 24 hours a day in English and Spanish. The hotline is operated by PSI, whose counselors provide a listening ear, advice, and connections to local therapists and support groups for parents struggling with their mental health. Davis said that use of the hotline has steadily climbed since it launched on Mothers Day 2022, and it now receives thousands of calls and messages every month. Davis said that outreach to the hotline spikes after hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires. The Biden-Harris administration also embraced the issue, releasing a blueprint for lowering the country's sky-high levels of maternal mortality, which is highest for Black mothers. It's unclear if these new investments in the wellbeing of young families will remain intact under Trump's second administration, which has pursued sweeping cuts to health services and research. Within weeks of Trump's inauguration, the administration paused the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, an annual survey of maternal and infant health widely considered the gold-standard for maternity mental health data. At the end of March, the entire staff overseeing the survey was placed on administrative leave. The administration has also revoked billions in grants that had already been given to state health departments, including some that had funded maternal mental health services. Research on maternal and infant mortality has also been affected. Much of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health, which studies maternal health, was shuttered, as was its Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. More than a dozen research centers designed to investigate and improve maternal health were established in 2023 through a $168 million initiative by the National Institutes of Health; the funding of which is now in question. Harville says her current disaster research is not federally funded, but she has other grants she's 'keeping a nervous eye on.' Healthy Start was among the programs whose funding was briefly suspended by a Trump executive order in January before a federal judge blocked the move. Late last year, some versions of the Republican-proposed House budget bill sought to eliminate funding for Healthy Start. The administration is also reported to be considering deep cuts to Medicaid, which finances at least 42% of all births in the country. Davis said the hotline seems to be safe for now. The federal workers who provided administrative oversight of the Maternal Mental Health Hotline were laid off as part of the Department of Government Efficiency workforce reduction, Davis said, but other agency officials have stepped in to do that work, and the hotline remains operational and well supported. She said PSI's contract was recently reupped for three years, which she hopes will protect them from cuts. But she said it is painful to see other funding setbacks, which could slice into the real progress made on the issue over the last decade. 'It's been so promising to see state and health care policy start to focus on this very vulnerable and important time,' she said. In February 2025, five months after Hurricane Helene made landfall, the Swainsboro resident, Jelessica Monard, gave birth to a healthy baby girl. With power restored and her fridge back up and running, Monard's fiance visited for several weeks in February and into March, taking time off from his job in New Jersey to help with their daughter. 'I could get some sleep. I could pump. I had a schedule,' Monard said. 'It was easier.' This story was produced through a collaboration between Daily Yonder and Climate Central. Climate Central scientist Daniel Gilford contributed data reporting. This story was produced by The Daily Yonder and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
News.com.au
11 hours ago
- General
- News.com.au
‘Falling apart': Huge issue 1 in 6 Australians are battling
Many women expect that bringing a child into the world will be one of the happiest times of their entire lives. While that might be true for some, the pivotal life experience can illicit a whole range of unexpected emotions that go against the norm of what society says new parents are meant to feel. For mum Jaimi, while she was over the moon to become a mother, she never anticipated the psychological rollercoaster she was about to embark on. The 31-year-old from Sydney explained that for as long as she could remember, she had felt like she was simply an 'anxious person' and did not realise it could be a mental health issue. Australia is in the grips of a mental health crisis, and people are struggling to know who to turn to, especially our younger generations. Can We Talk? is a News Corp awareness campaign, in partnership with Medibank, equipping Aussies with the skills needs to have the most important conversation of their life. Diagnosed with anxiety and depression at 16, she went on medication for a while which helped, but was re-diagnosed when she 22 and living in London. Despite these low points, Jaimi never felt like it was taking over her entire life. That is, until she fell pregnant. What was once something that came in waves and she felt she could manage soon transformed into a debilitating illness that impacted every facet of her life. 'While pregnant with my son, I was hospitalised twice due to anxiety around my pregnancy.' the small business owner told 'I was incredibly scared that he wasn't okay and kept having intrusive thoughts that I had miscarried. 'It was traumatising and incredibly scary. I had panic attacks and was so overwhelmed with fear that I couldn't shake the feelings I had or try to calm myself. 'It certainly didn't help that we were in lockdown at the time.' After giving birth to her son in 2022, the feelings only intensified, and she was diagnosed with postnatal depression and anxiety. 'I was incredibly overwhelmed and worried about my son,' she recalled. 'Checking on him constantly to see if he was breathing, completely consumed by how much he was eating and constantly stressed to the point of tears that he wasn't eating enough. 'I was really struggling and having a baby made my anxiety so much worse than it had ever been. 'I could no longer ignore it or pass it off as fears of a new mother. It was debilitating and affecting my relationship with my husband and son. 'It was prolonged and didn't go away or get better. My son's eating was a really big part of my anxiety as I was incredibly stressed about him putting on weight and being healthy. 'I had a lot of issues with breastfeeding and this was a massive trigger for me and definitely contributed to my anxiety. 'I was an emotional wreck and so consumed with guilt and worry that I was just falling apart.' The experience of being a new mum paired with crippling anxiety and postnatal depression was one of the most difficult times of Jaimi's life. She explained that it felt like a constant 'heavy weight' that she just could not shake. 'For me, it just felt like a heavy weight, weighing me down constantly,' she revealed. 'I couldn't get rid of this really heavy feeling. It is so debilitating and you feel like no one else around you understands. 'I couldn't explain my fears or feelings properly which only made things more difficult. I didn't know what I was feeling as this was a totally overwhelming situation that I hadn't ever faced. 'I just felt like everything was dark and heavy, even when people were there, the world around me felt isolating and dark.' Thankfully, Jaimi's GP caught on that something wasn't quite right when she went in for her newborn's immunisations and requested a follow up appointment. It was then she was officially diagnosed with postnatal depression and anxiety. Thanks to her doctor picking up on the signs, she was able to get the help she needed. 'I was put on medication which was a tremendous help,' she said. 'I've been medicated ever since and it is an incredible help and relief. I later saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with ADHD, which often has depression and anxiety attached as symptoms. 'This is something I didn't know and wish more people understood.' The mum is currently pregnant with her second child and thankfully, it has been smooth-sailing. 'The medication helped tremendously and I feel like I have my symptoms under control, even now while I'm pregnant,' she said. 'Pregnancy was a huge source of anxiety for me and this pregnancy has been so much better in terms of my anxiety. 'I feel a lot lighter, I'm more calm and I am feeling excited about it this time around.' Jaimi is sharing her story to help raise awareness for PND and anxiety and hopes that it can help others feel less alone in their struggles. 'People think of mental health as a 'buzzword' rather than a debilitating disease that affects far more people than it seems,' she added. 'Anxiety can be completely overwhelming and consuming and can seriously affect a person and their loved ones lives. 'I want people to understand that they're not alone. There is support and you can find a community of people who will help you, even when others won't. 'You shouldn't live in a constant state of anxiety, worry and isolation.'
The Sun
13 hours ago
- General
- The Sun
If I'd ignored a sudden itch so intense I was left bleeding trying to ease it with a FORK, my baby and I might be dead
WHEN mum Dayna Persaud was suddenly struck by an extreme and uncontrollable itch while she was pregnant, she thought little of it. It was her third pregnancy and the fact her first two had passed with nothing to worry about, she assumed it was nothing to do with her due date looming. 7 7 But when the itching grew worse, so intense she was forced to use a wooden fork from a takeaway to try to relieve it, she sought help. Yet, despite the fact she was left bleeding from her attempts to relieve the itch, it took medics weeks to realise she was suffering a life-threatening condition, putting both her life, and that of her unborn son at risk. A fortnight before her due date on February 7, 2024, the 36-year-old was whisked into theatre for an emergency C-section and woke up with no idea what happened. Mum-of-three Dayna later discovered she had acute fatty liver in pregnancy (AFLP), which can be fatal. It's a rare condition affecting about one in 20,000 pregnancies, and is more common in first pregnancies. Symptoms include fatigue, nausea and vomiting, as well as itching – something Dayna suffered to the extreme. Dayna, who is mum to Kayden, nine, Kiara, three, and Kylan, one, tells Sun Health: 'It's a miracle I am here. 'Every day I am grateful to be alive. If I'd ignored the itching much longer I might not be here.' Dayna, a primary school teacher and lives with partner Kevon, 40, in Rainham, East London, was two weeks from the due date of her third child when she started itching uncontrollably. Her previous pregnancies had been fine so she had no reason to suspect anything dangerous was going on. 'Healthy' woman, 35, died just three days after doctors 'dismissed' three red-flag symptoms of killer disease But the itching grew more intense. 'It got worse and worse,' she says. 'It was on the soles of my feet, my legs, my back. 'My nails would not deliver relief when I scratched so I took a little wooden fork from a local takeaway cafe and would scratch myself with that for hours. 'I was going mad with itching and the hard material was the only thing reliving it. I was also excessively thirsty.' She told her midwife, who did blood tests, but these always 'came back fine'. 'There seemed to be no reason and nothing wrong showing up,' she says. Dayna carried on itching and continued scratching herself with a fork. 'I bled from the ferocity of my scratching,' she says. 'I just hoped it would all stop once I had the baby. 7 7 'Meanwhile, I was still looking after two other young children. I was exhausted.' Then Dayna had a routine blood test but felt very unwell during the procedure. 'I thought it was just general pregnancy tiredness as I was nearing my due date,' she recalls. When she got home, she had just sat down when her nurse rang to say: 'Get to hospital now. You need to have the baby.' Dayna says: 'I was so shocked. I'd just got in and my older two kids were at school and nursery. 'I had to quickly call Kevon to get childcare sorted and then my sister rushed me to hospital without even a hospital bag.' When she arrived at Whittington Hospital in Archway on January 24, Dayna began to feel even worse. 'I felt dizzy and just incredibly unwell,' she says. Her last memory is getting into the car. Then everything went blank. 'When I came to, I was in intensive care, tubes snaking out of me and my tummy was flatter,' Dayna says. 'I vaguely recalled I'd been pregnant and taken to theatre. "But my baby wasn't at my side. I was confused, and cried asking what had happened.' Doctors explained she had had her son by emergency caesarean section while unconscious, and she had had AFLP. 'I had had two babies and that's why midwives never suspected it, even though I was furiously itching,' she says. At her bedside, Dayna's partner revealed that she had developed sepsis - a life-threatening response to an infection - and been given a 50/50 chance of survival. Doctors had saved her life and the baby's, and given her strong intravenous antibiotics just in time. When she was well enough, Dayna was wheeled to meet her baby, who was in neonatal intensive care. He was healthy and weighed 5lbs 6oz. She named him Kylan. 7 'He looked so small yet so strong,' Dayna says. 'He was being tube fed but I insisted on trying to feed him myself. Thankfully he did take to feeding.' For 10 days Dayna remained in hospital recovering with Kylan. 'It was so intense,' she says. 'I was trying to feed and get to know my baby but I was being monitored 24/7, was on drips, having blood tests as well as intravenous antibiotics. 'I was on blood thinners too. I also got jaundice and had a blood transfusion.' Finally, after almost two weeks, she was well enough to go home. It then took months to feel like herself again. 'Recovery was months mentally, physically and emotionally,' Dayna says. 'Having two other children was the most challenging part as I didn't have time to think about myself. 'I just got on with everyday life, dropping my kids to school, cooking, and cleaning.' Now, Dayna is raising awareness of AFLP so other mums know the risk. 'I didn't even know what AFLP is, let alone that it could happen after two healthy pregnancies,' she says. 'I want to tell my story to make other women aware that if they are itching like I was, they need to seek a second opinion. 'I am even being used for a medical conference for doctors, proving it can happen to anyone and even in third pregnancies.' Her son Kylan has just celebrated turning one. 'It was a big celebration because there was a moment both of us might not have made it,' she says. But he is now undergoing testing and the youngster has also started itching. 'I fear I may have passed it on to him,' Dayna says. 7
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Francesca Eastwood pregnant with second child
Francesca Eastwood is pregnant. The 31-year-old daughter of Clint Eastwood, 94, and Frances Fisher, 72, took to Instagram to reveal that she is expecting her second child. She shared some photographs of herself wearing the white dress her mother wore to an awards ceremony when she was pregnant with Francesca and wrote: 'wearing the same dress my mom wore [when] pregnant with me.' Francesca already has son Titan, six, with Alexander Wraith and her son appears in one of the photographs with her. She did not reveal the identity of her unborn baby's father but she and Wraith attended an event together days before the pregnancy announcement. The pregnancy news comes months after Francesca was arrested for domestic violence after a fight with Wraith. The pair were driving around Beverly Hills in October when they got into a "verbal argument" before she allegedly got physical, law enforcement explained to TMZ. Sources told the outlet that Alexander,45, "called the cops and police advised him to drive to the Safety Zone" and after police noticed that he had signs of "visible injuries", she was arrested for felony domestic violence. TMZ also reported that Alexander "refused medical aid" and online records revealed that the former reality star posted $50,000 bail and was released from custody. However, the following month, friends insisted the couple were in a good place. A source told 'They are a couple, they never broke up, and are working through whatever issues they have - they are very much a normal couple with ups and downs. 'They have been talking a lot and are fine. They have a close community around them that they can lean on. And they are very much in love.'
The Guardian
16 hours ago
- Health
- The Guardian
‘I asked Queen Elizabeth II if she had any advice for me': Jacinda Ardern on her time as a pregnant prime minister
There was one cheerful and imperfect baby blanket that stood out when it arrived in the post. It was made up of 24 squares, bright blocks of colour, each crafted with simple, uneven purl stitches. Looking at it, I could imagine the small hands still learning to master their needles and could almost hear the adult voice leading them. 'The prime minister is having a baby. Shall our class make a gift for her family?' The response to the announcement about my pregnancy in January 2018 was almost overwhelming. It began with so many emails. In the 24 hours after the news broke, the person who managed correspondence for me said she'd never seen such an influx. Handmade gifts arrived at the office, too. The correspondence team created a display table, and within days it overflowed. I had braced for the worst. I was a public figure, used to judgment and scrutiny. Now I was pregnant and unwed. I was also new to the job. If people wanted to have a go at me, they had plenty of reason to. But I hadn't considered a fundamental truth: that politicians are humans first, and perhaps the public hadn't lost sight of that. And so maybe in the beautiful country of New Zealand, the happy news of a baby could be just that: happy. But for all this support, my pregnancy added a new kind of pressure. I was only the second world leader in history to have a baby in office. The first was Benazir Bhutto. She was the first woman to lead Pakistan, and in 1990, two years into her first term in office she had a baby girl. I didn't think the world's eyes were on me, but I did think naysayers' were. Those who might be waiting to say: See, you can't do a demanding job like that and be a mother. Not long after I'd made my announcement, I was at an event, speaking with a woman who'd had an impressive career in the corporate sector. While we were talking, I'd forgotten something minor – a word, or a name, perhaps – and I'd laughed off my memory lapse. 'Baby brain,' I said. She hadn't laughed. Her eyes were serious, her voice firm. 'You absolutely cannot say that.' She was warning me: if you give your opponents any opening whatsoever, they will use your pregnancy to say that you – or any woman – shouldn't be given a position of authority. I knew this, but suddenly I was reminded how easy such a lapse could be. From then on, I treated my pregnancy like a test, a set of hurdles to get through without breaking a sweat. By March, I was six months pregnant on a Pacific mission with a group of delegates to Tonga, Samoa, Niue and the Cook Islands. The goal was to position New Zealand as the Pacific nation we were, shifting the relationship with these countries away from a donor and recipient dynamic toward one of partnership. The media were with us around the clock. They travelled on the plane with me. They were on the ground with me, at every event, meeting and meal. I decided that if they were going to be my constant companions, then I would show them, pregnancy or not, that I had stamina. The air was sweltering throughout the tour, and at one press conference I could see streaks of sweat trickling down journalists' faces. I was dressed modestly, my arms and knees covered, and before long my feet began to swell, and my shoes dug into my skin painfully. Rather than wrap things up, I kept going until there were no more questions, long after the time available had passed. Only then, when I was certain I hadn't been the one to cave, I hobbled away to shove my feet into a cold bath. A month later, now seven months pregnant, I picked up a letter from my obstetrician confirming, should an airline ask, that I was fit to fly so late in my pregnancy. The Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) was being held in London. Queen Elizabeth II, our head of state, would preside over it. We gathered at Buckingham Palace for the opening session and a formal photo. Before the leaders filed into the room with its bright red carpet, white and gold pillars framing the royal ensign that hung as a backdrop, ushers ordered us into lines. I jokingly asked whether the lines would be organised 'boy, girl, boy, girl'. They looked at me for a moment, perhaps trying to decide whether to take the comment seriously, before moving on to the next leader. Of course I hadn't been serious. There were 53 leaders at the meeting. Only five of us were women. My partner, Clarke, meanwhile, was having the inverse experience, as one of very few men in the group of international leaders' spouses, and he was relishing it. He enthusiastically joined the formal spousal programme, which included afternoon teas and garden tours. He made a studious effort to get to know 'the wives'. One night, I told Clarke I needed to have a conversation with a leader I had been struggling to connect with. 'Well, if it helps,' he told me, 'his wife has an extensive orchid collection.' The opening night for the meeting was a formal affair. To accommodate my bump, I'd had a gown specially made by a New Zealand designer, Juliette Hogan – a flowy mustard number, which I wore with a kākahu, a traditional Māori cloak woven from flax and covered with feathers. Next to me, Clarke, who hadn't even owned a suit when we first met, looked handsome in his tuxedo. As we walked through the halls of Buckingham Palace, we marvelled at the beauty and the history of everything we saw. I looked over at him. He was every bit the statesman, but just 20 minutes earlier he'd been standing in front of a mirror and screaming blue murder at the person back in New Zealand who told him a freestyle bow tie was a good idea. That was life in those first few months: incredible, unreal moments, mixed in with the daily reality of having a job to do. Like any job, there was a tremendous amount to get done: papers to sign, press conferences, events, shoes to strap on, bow ties that won't do up. It was all still life – just a very different one. While in London, we met Queen Elizabeth. She had, of course, raised children in the public eye, so in our private meeting I asked if she had any advice. 'You just get on with it,' she said simply. She sounded so matter of fact, just as my grandma Margaret might have. I squeezed the package I was holding, a gift for the queen. It was a framed image of her during a royal tour to New Zealand in 1953, her head back in a full relaxed laugh. You just get on with it. Of course you do. This is an edited extract from A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern, published globally on 3 June by Pan Macmillan in the UK; Crown in the US (a division of Penguin Random House LLC); Penguin Random House NZ; and Penguin Random House Australia. 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