Pregnancy Memoir

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.

Carrying Hope is the heartfelt and deeply vulnerable story of a pregnancy destined to end in death by the medical world, but for which God had other plans. At a routine scan for Beth’s third child, critical concerns were raised about the baby’s health, and further tests signalled a life-limiting genetic condition. Consultants diagnosed a series of devastating abnormalities and considered the baby too small to survive outside the womb, confronting Beth and her husband with a series of heart-breaking decisions.

Beth McRae’s 40 years as a midwife have been packed full of unforgettable moments, from the terrifying experience of witnessing her first birth as a naïve student nurse—in the days when the words birth plan were unheard of and what women wanted was a long way from being part of any plan—to working in one of the most isolated corners of Australia.

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).

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.

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.

After nearly forty years of marriage, church ministry, and homeschooling a family of 10, Kendana lost Johnny to a sudden illness. This audio holds the lessons their lives unleashed in a way that feels like The Notebook meets The Shack. Listen to her beautiful, simple words, as Kendana tells of her enduring romance with a farmer boy, their journey through heartbreak, their fierce passion for community, and the surprisingly healing embrace of covenants honored.

"No me ha bajado la regla. Hace dos semanas salí a tomar algo, me lie con las copas y terminé escribiendo a mi ex italiano... ¿Cómo iba yo a saber que unos chupitos de Jäger me pondrían la vida patas arriba?" Así comienza la historia de Valeria. Mientras todo el mundo se volvía loco por encontrar un test covid, ella corría a la farmacia a pedir uno de embarazo. Y luego otro. Para matar el mono, pero también porque no podía creerse que fuera positivo. ¿Puede una llegar a ser buena madre cuando aún no sabe cuidar ni de sí misma?

Though Michelle Miller was an award-winning broadcast journalist for CBS News, few people in her life knew the painful secret she carried: her mother had abandoned her at birth. Los Angeles in 1967 was deeply segregated, and her mother—a Chicana hospital administrator who presented as white, had kept her affair with Michelle’s father, Dr. Ross Miller, a married trauma surgeon and Compton’s first Black city councilman—hidden, along with the unplanned pregnancy. Raised largely by her father and her paternal grandmother, Michelle had no knowledge of the woman whose genes she shared. Then, fate intervened when Michelle was twenty-two. As her father lay stricken with cancer, he told her, “Go and find your mother.”

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 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.

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography In this searing and uplifting memoir, a young Black queer woman fresh out of college adopts her baby brother after their incarcerated mother dies, determined to create the kind of family she never had. Growing up, Nikkya...

Everyone loves babies - and pregnant women - so TV and radio personality Teresa Strasser decided to use this obsession to her advantage. She came up with a way to provide for her newfound family and help other mommies-to-be with this down- and-dirty memoir about first-time pregnancy.

Teen pregnancy is never easy. When it is the result of pregnancy through rape, the public shame becomes even more unbearable. World-class lifestyle coach and visionary Michelle Graham overcame her fear of the unknown and of those shaming her by holding onto her faith in dark times.

‘Fascinating and moving.' - Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt A BBC Radio 4 A Good Read choice This is a story about the cutting-edge medicine that has saved a generation of babies. It's about the love and fear a parent feels for a child they haven’t yet met. It's about doctors...

For young single women, every night is Ladies' Night. For Brett Paesel and her friends, Friday happy hour is all they get, if they can wrangle the babysitting. Like most mommies, they support each other through pregnancies, sleep deprivation, and the need to talk about it all. Instead of meeting at the playground, they convene at the local watering hole while sipping Black and Tans and flirting with the cute bartender.

At 53, Kevin Nealon thought he had it all: a massive international celebrity with legions of loyal fans; a fabulous modeling career; hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank; and the most recognizable face on the planet. Nealon had accomplished the impossible: a 30-year career in show business with only limited trips to rehab. But just like every other celebrity, he felt that was not enough. The perpetually insatiable Nealon wanted more, and for him "more" meant a little addition that drooled, burped, and pooped (no, not a Pomeranian).

Like many women her age, 34-year-old Rebecca Walker was brought up to be skeptical of motherhood. As an adult she longed for a baby but feared losing her independence. In this very smart memoir, Walker explores some of the larger sociological trends of her generation while delivering her own story about the emotional and intellectual transformation that led her to motherhood.

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.