I’m finding it hard to accept that I may never have a daughter

Try not to dwell on what you feel is missing, but instead focus on the positive relationships and values you can nurture with your sons• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a family-related problem sent in by a reader

I know I want at least one baby. But the more I learn about motherhood, the more terrifying it seems

Even supposedly ‘positive’ birth stories make my heart sink. Am I just going to have to make a leap of faith, asks Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

Our Body review – a brave, unblinking, hospital’s-eye view of women’s health

Documentarist Claire Simon films women, including herself, receiving care in a women’s health, obstetrics and gynaecology ward at a Parisian hospital

How we met: ‘She was in the next hospital bed – and I loved her accent’

Sarah, 36, and Josie, 41, met in hospital in 2021, when they were both having babies and visiting hours were restricted due to Covid

Play outside and sing together: what living in Denmark taught me about raising ‘Viking’ children

Nordic children are out in nature for hours a day – and they top rankings in both education and happiness. So here are seven parenting tips I’ve picked up along the way…

True romance: how to keep the love alive when money is tight

You don’t have to spend a fortune to have fun with someone you adore – especially if you stop measuring yourself against other couples

True romance: how to keep the love alive when your partner is burnt out at work

Your loved one is struggling – and so is your relationship. Time to have a word with their boss?

True romance: how to keep the love alive when sex has gone

Fantasising about other people? Wishing your partner was younger or fitter? It doesn’t have to spell the end of the relationship

Motherhood is saying ‘I can’t do this any more’ – then doing it

What if we reminded each other that our lives are not naturally unbearable but they are made so by the powers that be?

‘At 45, I grieved the idea of motherhood. Then, by pure fluke, I was pregnant’

After miscarriages and IVF, I decided I was done. A few days later, I found out I was expecting, and the beautiful dismantling of my old life began

UK fertility treatment comparison tool featuring IVF data launched

Dashboard allows people to explore data including egg and sperm donors from 1991 onwards

‘My life will be short. So on the days I can, I really live’: 30 dying people explain what really matters

Facing death, these people found a clarity about how to live

Experience: I woke up from a Covid coma with newborn twins

Even when I saw the babies, I thought it was a dream and they weren’t mine

A moment that changed me: My body seemed like a death machine – until I saw those two blue lines

After cancer, chemotherapy and temporary menopause, I didn’t dare imagine having a baby. But all of a sudden my womb was designing a whole new life

‘There is joy, and there is rage’: the new generation of novelists writing about motherhood

From the shock and awe of labour to domestic isolation, a wave of recent novels captures the transformative nature of being a mother