The culture of our maternity services has not changed, three years into the national strategy, writes Victoria White

Evelyn Ring Post-natal care for mothers in the country’s maternity hospitals is not up to standard because of staff shortages, a maternity care expert has said .

Post-natal care for mothers in the country's maternity hospitals is not up to standard because of staff shortages, a maternity care expert has claimed.

From podcasts to TV programmes and forums, mums are breaking with tradition and freely talking about the trials of labour. But is this always a good thing, asks Sharon Ní Chonchúir.

It will take at least another two years before ultrasound scans to pick up on foetal anomalies are available to all pregnant women in Ireland — and that’s only if funding is provided to hire one extra sonographer every fortnight.

LATEST:A Government TD has broken ranks to call on Health Minister Simon Harris to consider buying the €300m land on which the new National Maternity Hospital will be built in a bid to end the escalating scandal.

Women who suffer from depression during and after pregnancy are often reluctant to admit to it for fear their baby will be taken into care.

Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion is being used to deny women choice in their maternity care, a campaign group has claimed.

The lives of pregnant women and unborn babies are being gambled with due to a “geographic lottery” when it comes to standards in the country’s maternity services.

The hospital a first-time mum chooses for the delivery of her child is likely to have a huge bearing on whether the infant is born naturally or by caesarean section, according to new birth statistics.

THE Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, August 22, 1949, was an important day for the then Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles Mc Quaid. On that day Mount Carmel Hospital opened in Dublin run by the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary.

A woman’s choice of maternity hospital may dictate the type of labour she has as latest figures show a wide variation in medical intervention rates in the country’s maternity hospitals.

Patients and doctors alike have backed claims that some maternity services are a danger to women.

Pregnant women are being subjected to a “geographic lottery” as a direct result of “outdated, patently unsafe” standards in Ireland’s maternity service.

A maternity care support group is today calling for a review of all pregnancy scanning procedures, not just for the early stages.

THE true scale of the miscarriage misdiagnosis scandal will not be uncovered unless the scope of the investigation is expanded to include the past 10 years, it has been claimed.

THE father of a toddler whose mother was wrongly told she miscarried him has described delays into a long-standing national review as “an absolute scandal”.