Pregnancy Memoir

Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.

You're having a baby! Or at least your partner is which means you are too. Not literally of course, but you’ll be in the middle of nine months of flying hormones, back rubs, and excitement, anticipation and nervousness the like of which you’ve never experienced before. You’re in for the ride of your life. And you're going to be a dad. Fatherhood is just around the corner and it’s ace – but are you ready? Most pregnancy books are for the mother but this one is just for you, the new father.

A 360-degree guide to pregnancy for first-time parents—demystify your doubts and make healthy choices for yourself and your baby. From the wild surprise that brings tears of joy to a gradual, somewhat anxious, realization that things are going to change, pregnancy is a roller-coaster of emotions, expectations, and the promise of a new life.

Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes - she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance.

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 But hospital practices and policies that were more than 20 years out of date left her with complications that seemed preventable.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.

When Brooke Shields welcomed her newborn daughter, Rowan Francis Henchy, into the world, something unexpected followed: a crippling depression. Now, for the first time, Brooke talks about the trials, tribulations, and finally the triumphs that occurred before, during, and after the birth of her daughter.

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.

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.

A six-year journey: six losses and three beautiful angels. After losing her son Jude in August 2020, a spark was ignited in Carmen Grover as she read through every diary that she kept for each of her babies. Rather than have them remain stacked, Carmen decided that her journals would make a difference. The result has been an honest and poignant compilation of the ups and downs of Carmen’s experience with pregnancy loss, from rolling in the grass and convulsing on the kitchen floor in her cycle of grief, to seeing the strength she could gain in the signs and special moments all around her.

Ghostbelly is Elizabeth Heineman’s personal account of a home birth that goes tragically wrong—ending in a stillbirth—and the harrowing process of grief and questioning that follows. It’s also Heineman’s unexpected tale of the loss of a newborn: before burial, she brings the baby home for overnight stays.

Jenny Mollen is a writer and actress living in New York. Until two years ago, her life was exciting, sexy, a little eccentric, and 100 percent impulsive. She had a husband who embraced her crazy - who understood her need to occasionally stalk around the house in his ex-girlfriend's old beach caftans and to invite their drug dealer to Passover seder (so he wouldn't feel like they were using him only for drugs). Then they had their son, Sid, and overnight Jenny was forced to grow up: to be responsible, to brush her hair, to listen to her voice mail.

Maya Angelou, one of the best-loved authors of our time, shares the wisdom of a remarkable life in this best-selling spiritual classic. This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to be treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power of spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou’s latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth in every minute.

Impossible Motherhood is a heartrending and ultimately triumphant testimonial told by a writer looking back on her history of addiction. Abortion has never offered any honest person easy answers. Vilar's dark journey through self-inflicted wounds, compulsive patterns, and historical hauntings is a powerful story of loss and mourning that bravely delves into selfhood, national identity, reproductive freedom, family responsibility, and finally motherhood itself - today, Vilar is the mother of two beautiful children.

The heart of many hospitals is the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It is a place where humanity, ethics, and science collide in dramatic and deeply personal ways as parents, doctors, and nurses grapple with sometimes unanswerable questions: When does life begin? When and how should life end? And what does it mean to be human? Nearly 20 years ago, Dr. John D. Lantos wrote The Lazarus Case, a seminal work on ethical dilemmas in neonatology. He described the NICU as “a strong, strange, powerful place”. The

Inferno is the riveting memoir of a young mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when she's involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in New Jersey after a harrowing bout of postpartum psychosis. This program is read by the author. When Catherine Cho and her husband set off...

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.

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.

Whether offering insight into the rise in home births, the alarming rise in America’s maternal mortality rate, or the history of involuntary sterilization, Karkowsky offers a window into all that pregnancy, labor, and birth can entail - birth and joy, but also challenge and loss - illustrating the complexity of reproductive life and the systems that surround it. With historical insight and journalistic verve, Karkowsky unpacks what is involved for women, for a family, and for us as a society; and explores what’s at risk when these aspects of medicine remain clouded in mystery and misinformation.

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.

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.