Last modified on Sun 20 Dec 2020 03.17 EST
Women’s rights and breastfeeding organisations are challenging government and NHS guidance that the groups say forces mothers to choose between feeding their infants in the way that they choose and protecting themselves from Covid by being vaccinated.
The NHS website advises lactating mothers to wait until they have stopped breastfeeding before having the Covid-19 vaccine. It adds: “There’s no evidence it’s unsafe if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding. But more evidence is needed before you can be offered the vaccine.”
The UK government website repeats the advice, saying it was “precautionary until additional evidence is available to support the use of this vaccine in pregnancy and breastfeeding”. There have been no trials of Covid vaccines on breastfeeding women.
Support partners will now be allowed to be present at all times Credit: PA
Pregnant women will be allowed to have their partner present during scans, labour and birth, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, under new plans announced by the NHS.
The new guidance issued this week means mothers-to-be in England will be permitted to have one person beside them “at all stages of her maternity journey” and attend appointments as long as the support partner is not showing any Covid-19 symptoms.
Previously, it had been left to individual health trusts to draw up their own rules on whether a partner could be present, with many opting to ban partners or any other person from attending any appointments relating to pregnancy as well as the birth of the child.
Nearly 2,500 women have given birth alone since the start of October as hospitals flout Government guidance, a shocking new report has shown.
The Mail on Sunday is campaigning for all hospitals to allow partners to be present and end the trauma of women attending scans and labour alone.
NHS England has said all but one hospital trust allow partners to attend active births, which refers to the final stage of labour.
However, today s study of more than 4,100 births over October and November in England and Wales has shown this is not happening on the ground.
Of the roughly half of hospital births that are not induced, seven per cent are being subjected to lone births. The majority were across all regions of England.
From NHS nurses on the frontline to Kate Garraway, the women who made a difference in 2020
Rosie Gizauskas
Updated: 17 Dec 2020, 16:57
WHEN York nurse Dawn Bilbrough got into her car in March this year, she broke down.
On the way home from her fourth gruelling 12-hour shift in a row on the critical care wards in the middle of the pandemic, she’d expected to be able to pick up some fresh fruit and veg to feed her family. But when she got into the supermarket, it had been ransacked by shoppers needlessly stockpiling.
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Critical care nurse Dawn Bilbrough has been one of the fearless frontline women to be remembered in 2020Credit: Mark Hayman