Re calls for the funding of postnatal checks for postpartum women, not just their babies (Letters, 14 September). The focus on postnatal baby health means that women who give birth to a baby who has died before viability – for example, in the second trimester of pregnancy – are often excluded from routine postnatal contact with health professionals. In my research, women with retained placentas and infections struggled to get access to healthcare and were systematically excluded from access to mental health services after their traumatic births and bereavements. It is hard to get female-centred care in the NHS if you do not have a living baby.
Aimee Middlemiss
PhD candidate, University of Exeter
• As a taxpayer for the past fortysomething years, I must ask why the Home Office doesn’t itself implement its vile punitive policies so that midwives can focus on their professional work (Midwives call for end of NHS maternity fees for vulnerable migrants, 9 September). Instead of requiring the most vulnerable to apply for exemption (judging by universal credit this will surely be a Kafkaesque process), why not a Home Office sub-office charged with identifying non-British and (for now at least) non-EU new mothers who clearly have the means to pay towards their maternity care? Oh, that’ll probably be for the same reason they’d rather spend a fortune going after benefit fraud than on going after tax evasion: poor/vulnerable = fair game. Not in my name.
Dr Jane Frances
Cambridge
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