4 d. ago My son is turning 18 – and I am inexplicably sad | Zoe Williams

He is now an adult, so I have no right to dictate the state of his hair or his choice of diet. But I hadn’t expected this to be such an emotional wrenchNot counting the many thousands of words I spent complaining about being pregnant, I wrote my first column about my son, T, 18 years ago today, when he was three hours old. Someone said, “Is there some kind of union you could join? Because I’m sure you’re entitled to at least one whole day of maternity leave,” and I was baffled. As far as I was concerned, they should have held the front page – this wasn’t work, this was a dispatch from the frontline of a brave new world.Anyway, some time passed, and T could suddenly talk, and then some further time passed, and he was his own person, out there in the world, and then I blinked, and he was as tall as a tree. People always say to you, “Treasure this time, it goes by in a flash,” right at the moment you have an armful of toddler, puree in your hair and a mouth full of wet wipes because yo...

Politics

6 d. ago When I was 19 when I went to the doctor in crippling pain, he told me to get pregnant... and thousands of women have similar stories to me

Tiffany Summerfield, (pictured) from Cardiff, was diagnosed with endometriosis when she was just 19 years old. She has since been told by doctors that she needs to think about her fertility

Politics

8 d. ago My GP told me I had sciatica, but my agonising back pain was actually caused by a grapefruit

For two years, a young woman was repeatedly told by doctors that her lower back pain was caused by sciatia-but it was deadly cancer.

Events

1 week ago Trump's 'tough it out' advice to expectant moms is the latest example of men opining on women's pain

President Donald Trump has become the latest in a long line of men to opine on women's pain when he told expectant moms to “tough it out” without Tylenol

Politics

1 week ago 'I had excruciating periods every month but doctors never took my pain seriously'

Why are so many women still told their pain is 'just periods'? Lori Harvey's story is sparking up the same conversation - and women across the world say they've had enough

Politics

1 week ago Woman dies as docs find gigantic liver twice the size of human hand inside her

The woman was rushed to hospital, thinking her pain was something minor, only to be told that she unwittingly has a liver twice the size of a human hand inside of her

Events

2 w. ago 'I hate my husband, but he's got MS. I can never leave': TRACEY COX reveals horror stories from women trapped in marriages with 'no way out'

According to UK-based relationship expert Tracey Cox, there are circumstances that make leaving a marriage - even an extremely unhappy one - very difficult.

Events

2 w. ago Autism in children linked to common condition in pregnancy affecting nearly half a million US pregnancies a year

A health condition impacting hundreds of thousands of pregnant women each year may be associated with long-term cognitive risks for the mother and developmental conditions in her children.

Politics

3 w. ago Teen who died of meningitis 'failed' after ambulance didn't take her to hospital

Zara Cheesman, 15, died of meningitis in December last year after being discharged from A&E being told her vomiting and neck pain were most likely a case of norovirus

Events

3 w. ago As the Epstein case shows, Trump’s Maga faithful care about only one kind of sex

E Jean Carroll won her case, but in Trumpland the only sex offences that matter are committed by paedophiles with links to DemocratsOn Monday, Donald Trump appeared in two, unrelated stories involving the sexual abuse of women. The first was a ruling by the US federal court of appeals, upholding an earlier judgment in which the president was found liable for $83.3m in damages for defaming the writer E Jean Carroll – a woman whom, it was ruled in civil court in 2023, had been sexually abused by Trump. On the same day, Trump’s alleged contribution to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s “birthday book” was shared by Democrats on social media in the form of a lewd drawing the president denied having made. The E Jean Carroll news caused no public inconvenience for Trump; the Epstein story went up like a mushroom cloud in what has become the most politically dangerous episode of his presidency.What, exactly, is the difference then between the sexual abuse of E Jean Carroll, for which ...

Politics

3 w. ago No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes review – a thrilling take on the Golden Fleece myth

Medea tells her side of the story in a reimagining of the ancient Greek stories that puts women centre stageThe women of myth have been talking – and they’re pointing the finger at us. Myths are “mirrors of us”, writes Natalie Haynes in Pandora’s Jar, her book of essays on the women of Greek mythology. “Which version of a story we choose to tell, which characters we place in the foreground, which ones we allow to fade into the shadows: these reflect both the teller and the reader, as much as they show the characters of the myth.”Considerations of culture and bias have been central to the recent wave of mythic retellings focused on women, from Madeline Miller’s Circe and Pat Barker’s Iliad trilogy to Haynes’s own triad of novels set within the classical Greek world (The Children of Jocasta, A Thousand Ships and Stone Blind). This latest is a reimagining of the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece and, true to form, it centres the women. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago ‘If something goes wrong in childbirth, how will I know?’ The unflinching film about parenting with deafness

Giving birth is gruelling enough for mothers with hearing – but as the sisters behind gripping new drama Deaf explain, for disabled women labour can be brutal and traumaticEva Libertad spent months researching the script of Deaf, speaking to deaf women about pregnancy and parenthood for her drama about motherhood and identity. Almost immediately, the Spanish director knew the film needed a labour scene. “For all the women, giving birth had been a very traumatic event,” she says. She heard stories about women in labour not being informed of procedures, or having their hearing partners removed from the room, depriving them of an interpreter as well as support. “I left out some of the most difficult experiences.”Her film gives us a frighteningly realistic birth scene. “Push, push hard,” shouts a doctor behind a face mask at the end of a long, drawn-out labour. The woman giving birth is Ángela, who is deaf and can’t read the doctor’s lips because of their face mask. Frightened and alone...

Society

last month Paedophile I believe is behind Jade Goody's missing money: I saw his disgusting behaviour up close, says KATIE HIND. Friends tell me they fear he hastened her death

'She was in pain,' a friend of Jade Goody's told KATIE HIND. 'She was worried about her kids and she knew she was going to die. It was pretty awful to watch.'

Events