Pregnancy Memoir

Emma loathes her period. Really, she does. But there’s something she loathes even more: not being able to talk about it. Despite women having had periods since the dawn of time, we’ve totally clammed up on anything to do with menstruation. Why, oh why, would we rather say ‘Auntie Flo’ than ‘period’? Why, in the 21st century, are periods still seen as icky? Why are we still so ignorant about such a fundamental bodily process?

After losing four pregnancies with no obvious cause, Jennie Agg set out to understand why miscarriage remains such a profoundly misunderstood, under-researched and under-acknowledged experience. Part-memoir, part-scientific investigation, Life, Almost documents Agg's path to motherhood and her search for answers. Tracing each tentative step of her fifth pregnancy—as her body becomes a creature she does not wish to spook—Agg dismantles the myths that we unquestioningly accept about our reproductive lives.

Until a diagnosis of early menopause in her late twenties, Harriet spent much of her young life feeding neuroses and insecurities with obsessive internet searching (including compulsive googling of exes, prospective partners, and their exes), and indulging in whirlwind ‘parasocial relationships’ (translation: one-sided affairs with celebrities she has never met).

Having been told by doctors that due to Izzy's polycystic ovarian syndrome they would have difficulty conceiving - and after two years of trying - Izzy and Harry turned to IVF. Izzy's aim drawing on her own experience is to break through some of the taboos surrounding miscarriage, IVF and fertility issues. This brutally honest and deeply personal account will acknowledge the struggles that so many couples go through but will ultimately focus on the positive life-changing and remarkable results that IVF can yield.

Kerry Hudson is celebrated for her emotionally and politically powerful writing about growing up in poverty. Her books and journalism have changed the conversation and touched countless lives. In this new book she asks: what next, after a childhood like hers? What hope is there of creating a different life for herself, let alone future generations? We see how Kerry found love, what it took to decide to start a family of her own and how fragile every step of the journey towards parenthood was. All along the way, she faces obstacles that would test the strongest foundations.

This book is about two unlikely friends. One brown, one white; one female, one male; one born in 1970s Britain to Indian immigrant parents, the other arrived from Nazi Germany in 1939, fleeing persecution. This book is about common ground. It is a story of migration, anti-Semitism, racism, family, belonging, grief and resilience. This book is about the past and the present. It is about the mistakes of the 20th century and the uncertain hope of our present moment.

Alongside their personal stories, the writers -decorated novelists, poets, and essayists - address the history of the C-section as well as its risks, social inequities, impact on the body, and psychological aftermath. My Caesarean is a heartfelt meditation, offering much-needed comfort through shared experience.

Amity Reed became a midwife to serve women, but the reality of working in overstretched and underfunded NHS maternity services soon shattered her illusions. She’s not alone - for every 30 midwives that train, 29 will leave the profession. Overdue is both the devastating personal story behind the statistics, and a call for change in the NHS.

Written in intimate, gleefully TMI prose, Knocking Myself Up is the irreverent account of Tea’s route to parenthood—with a group of ride-or-die friends, a generous drag queen, and a whole lot of can-do pluck. Along the way she falls in love with a wholesome genderqueer a decade her junior, attempts biohacking herself a baby with black market fertility meds (and magicking herself an offspring with witch-enchanted honey), learns her eggs are busted, and enters the Fertility Industrial Complex in order to carry her younger lover’s baby.

One in three births is traumatic. It doesn’t have to be that way. Rebecca planned to give birth at the hospital affiliated with her university. But hospital practices and policies that were more than 20 years out of date left her with complications that seemed preventable. Embark on a journey with Rebecca as she exposes the stark realities of institutional care during childbirth and reveals inspirational solutions for parents and professionals alike.

Each time she knelt to "catch" another wriggling baby - nearly 3,000 times during her remarkable career - California midwife Peggy Vincent paid homage to the moment when pain bows to joy and the world makes way for one more. With every birth, she encounters another woman-turned-goddess: Catherine rides out her labor in a car careening down a mountain road. Sofia spends hers trying to keep her hyper doctor-father from burning down the house. Susannah gives birth so quietly that neither husband nor midwife notice until there's a baby in the room.

In 2016, English midwife Indie joined the staff at Attat Hospital in south-western Ethiopia, where Atsede led the midwifery services. It was a meeting that would change their lives. Their close professional relationship, and deep personal friendship, led to them opening a birth centre serving the Gurage women and families of Cheha Woreda, bringing compassionate midwifery care into the heart of traditional communities.

When Chitra Ramaswamy discovered she was pregnant for the first time, she longed to listen to something that went above and beyond a biology book or prescriptive manual; something that, instead, got to the heart of the overwhelming, thrilling, and often misrepresented experience she was embarking on. She couldn’t find one. So, she wrote Expecting. Expecting is a creative memoir. Through nine chapters exploring the nine months of gestation and birth, Ramaswamy takes the listener on a physical, intellectual, emotional, literary, and philosophical journey through the landscape of pregnancy.

Early in her radio career Susie Ferguson became a war correspondent. The only woman among hundreds of soldiers, in a helmet and flak jacket she was one of the boys. None of them knew she was taking fifteen painkillers a day and relying on opioids to stem the burning and stabbing pain in her uterus. Even bloody-minded grit couldn't have prepared Susie for womanhood.

This audiobook contains everything I did in my pregnancy. From how I prevented stretch marks, to the ways I stopped my headaches without pain killers. Recipes to the nutritious meals I made.

An endlessly entertaining collection of wayward autobiographical tales about a search for a richer life thwarted at every turn by beagles, bureaucrats, and ill-advised love affairs. The unlikely story of how a failed dishwasher, tour guide, cabinet maker, bus driver, bookseller and literary journal publisher became one of Australia's hottest humor essayists.

When Chelsey Glasson landed her dream job at Google, she was thrilled to join what she viewed as a progressive and inclusive organization. But from the moment she received her job offer, she began to experience instances of discrimination and harassment—eventually culminating in a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit. Friends, family, and even lawyers told Chelsey to move on, but she knew holding Google accountable was the path to proper healing. Although Google would spend significant resources to discredit and silence her, the truth eventually prevailed.

In this memoir of her 40 weeks and five days in hell, Andrea Askowitz takes an unflinching look at her pregnant life from struggling with hormones to poor body image to a self imposed exile from family to take us on a ride through the turbulence of single lesbian motherhood. Along the way we meet her liberal parents as they struggle with their daughter's choices, the lover she longs to reconnect with who goes M.I.A. before the pregnancy, the friends who turn out to be no help at all and strangers who offer up some unlikely kindness.

A real mum's hilariously honest tales of motherhood, mayhem and mental health. 'You see, pre-motherhood I had this image of the sort of motherhood I was going to have. Happy, confident and in total control, breezing through my perfect new mum life, clad in white linen, with a smiley, easygoing baby attached to my hip. But then, something happened.'

Juniper French was born four months early, at 23 weeks' gestation. She weighed one pound, four ounces, and her twiggy body was the length of a Barbie doll. Her head was smaller than a tennis ball, her skin was nearly translucent, and through her chest you could see her flickering heart. Babies like Juniper, born at the edge of viability, trigger the question: Which is the greater act of love - to save her or to let her go? Kelley and Thomas French chose to fight for Juniper's life, and this is their incredible tale.