Women Pregnancy

Doula Beccy Hands and midwife Alexis Stickland know what a challenge it can be to balance self-care with motherhood. In The Little Book of Support for New Moms, they bring together decades of experience to share invaluable tips and tricks to boost confidence and calm frazzled nerves - plus answers to all those questions new moms may be too embarrassed to ask. Here are instructions for creating cooling breast pads with chamomile tea, quick stretches for relieving aching muscles, and tips for reducing swelling.

Written with a blend of wit, snark, and raw intimacy, Belabored is an impassioned and irreverent defense of the autonomy, rights, and dignity of pregnant people.

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.

For thirty years Liz has perfectly played the part of Mrs. Thomas Lightsey, exemplary pastor’s wife and mother. But maintaining appearances for the congregation and catering to her demanding husband takes a toll, and she’s lost herself in meeting the expectations of others. When Thomas suddenly dies, Liz feels shock, grief, and, to her surprise, the siren song of freedom. Dare she dream of a life to call her own?

A heart gripping True Life story about Adora and her struggle with "Eclampsia", a pregnancy related complication. Don't stay ignorant, pre-eclampsia can truncate a beautiful love journey if not detected and treated.

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.

This book takes women on a journey to understand their pelvic health from childhood to their older days. It will discuss the taboo topics everyone wants to understand more about and empower women to help themselves with practical advice. Practical and helpful, offering solutions from lifestyle changes to exercises, and advice on what help is available, when to seek further professional help and how to ask for it, Strong Foundations provides much-needed solutions and hope for women in all stages of life through an expert and friendly tone.

Close to one in four American women experience the silent grief of pregnancy loss. Loved Baby offers much-needed support to women in the middle of psychological and physiological grief as a result of losing an unborn child through miscarriage, stillbirth, or ectopic pregnancy loss. In Loved Baby, author Sarah Philpott gently walks alongside women as they experience the misguided shame, isolation, and crushing despair that accompany the turmoil of loss.

Pregnancy is a profound journey. Navigating it while working—from figuring out how to tell your boss you’re pregnant to squeezing in doctors’ appointments between meetings, all while working even harder to prove yourself—can be a push and pull between a desire for privacy and the need for support. The good news is, it’s possible to thrive in both spaces. Carry Strong offers a new approach that will transform your pregnancy years at work from something to “get through” into a career opportunity to embrace with confidence.

With pregnancy comes a flood of emotions as you anticipate the birth of your little one. Your mind wonders immensely about the various stages, what to expect, and how to do all the right things to have a safe and healthy pregnancy. The goal of this book is to help you stay healthy, find support, locate excellent prenatal care, learn about your nutritional options, understand the importance of maternal care, and give you advice that reflects your preferences and helps you prioritize your baby.

More than 90 percent of sexually active women have only been given a very limited amount of information about how birth control works, often right at the beginning when they start their first pill or patch. Not all of us enjoy biology lessons, and figuring out the complexities of hormones, cycles, and our bodies can feel a little too much. But it doesn’t need to be rocket science. Getting a better insight into how your body really works can empower you and open up choices and possibilities so that you make the best decisions for yourself. After all, this is your body!

Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income White women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.

In the years before Roe v. Wade, women seeking to end their unwanted pregnancies had limited options - many of them dangerous, even potentially fatal, and nearly all of them illegal. This groundbreaking work by sociologist Nancy Howell Lee, first published in 1969, takes an intimate look at the entire abortion process - from the initial decision to terminate a pregnancy through the procedure itself and the aftermath - providing an incomparable view of what is still one of the most controversial and divisive issues in America.

It’s 1943. The war rages. The newly launched WASP program is recruiting. And barnstormer fan Georgeanne “George” Ector’s dream is to take to the skies. Grit is what she inherited from her mother, an Oklahoma farm girl at the turn of the century who preferred taking apart an engine to stitching linens for a hope chest. She taught her daughter well. George isn’t the only woman about to follow her calling.

As a soon to be mom, whether this is your first pregnancy or your fourth, these scriptures will bless you and give you peace. The scriptures in this audiobook are powerful and God-breathed. By praying and meditating on these scriptures you can build faith and strength for this pregnancy. These scriptures are centered around, peace, love, protection, and provision. Allow the promises in these scriptures to wash over you and your unborn child. They will help you to pray in the right way when certain circumstances arise. Life throws many challenges our way.

Aileen Weintraub has been running away from commitment her entire life, hopping from one job and one relationship to the next. When her father suddenly dies, she flees her Jewish Brooklyn community for the wilds of the country, where she unexpectedly falls in love with a man who knows a lot about produce, tractors, and how to take a person down in one jiu-jitsu move. Within months of saying "I do," she's pregnant, life is on track, and then wham! Her doctor slaps a high-risk label on her uterus and sends her to bed for five months.

High school teacher Kristin Caine has a black belt in settling for less and a dying mother who doesn't mince words when it comes to voicing how disappointed this makes her. But when Kristin's status quo is rocked by an unexpected pregnancy and the consequent breakup with her less-than-enthusiastic boyfriend, things change. Suddenly, agreeing to help her overbearing mother complete a bucket list before the big C wins seems not the worst thing in the world-despite their many differences and Kristin's fear of traveling.

Two years after the death of their mother, Jada and Maddy Battle both navigate unplanned pregnancies. Jada, a thirty-one-year-old psychology PhD student living in Pittsburgh, quietly obtains an abortion without telling her husband, but the secret causes turmoil in her already shaky marriage. Back home in rural Pennsylvania, nineteen-year-old Maddy, who spends her time caring for birds at a wildlife rehabilitation center, is paid off by the man who got her pregnant to get an abortion. But an unsettling visit to a crisis pregnancy center adds to her doubts about whether to go through with it.

Starting in the 1970s, small groups of feminist activists met regularly to study anatomy, practice pelvic exams on each other, and learn how to safely perform a procedure known as menstrual extraction, which can end a pregnancy, using equipment that can be easily bought and assembled at home. This "self-help" movement grew into a robust national and international collaboration of activists and health workers determined to ensure access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, at all costs.

In a quiet North Carolina town in 1968, a seventeen-year-old girl’s life is forever changed when a summer romance leads to an unplanned pregnancy. She is sent to an abusive “maternity home,” where she is shamed and deceived into signing adoption papers.