Pregnancy Memoir

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.

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 But hospital practices and policies that were more than 20 years out of date left her with complications that seemed preventable.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

In this harrowing and intimate memoir, Harriet Alida Lye explores how, at just 15 years old, she was diagnosed with a form of leukemia called Natural Killer, named "the rarest and worst malignancy". The average survival time of patients with this diagnosis is 58 days. There are no known survivors. There were no known survivors. Fifteen years after Harriet's diagnosis, she became pregnant, despite having been told that her chemotherapy treatment would likely make conception impossible. To be a mother is to make a death, as death is bound up in life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Infertility is a battle that women have been fighting for centuries, but the seemingly taboo subject is rarely discussed openly. Here, Bailey Henry describes her journey with infertility, including four miscarriages, marriage, grief, love, and the chance she was never properly potty-trained. With raw honesty, heartbreak, and a bit of humor, Bailey discusses the trials of being pregnant but never having a baby. If you've known the devastating loss of a child, or if your life simply hasn't turned out the way you thought it would, this one is for you.

When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir, Catherine reconstructs her sense of self.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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.