Women Pregnancy

Your guide to the emotions of pregnancy and early motherhood, from two of America’s top reproductive psychiatrists. With a combined 30 years of counseling new and expectant mothers, Dr. Sacks and Dr. Birndorf have seen firsthand how the pressure to be perfect, and perfectly happy, leaves women feeling confused and even ashamed of the emotions that can bubble up during pregnancy. Now, in What No One Tells You, the two psychiatrists show why it’s natural for “matrescence” - the birth of a mother - to be as stressful and transformative a period as adolescence.

People have started moving to Buffalo Valley, North Dakota - people like Lindsay Snyder, who came as a teacher and stayed, marrying local farmer Gage Sinclair. And now Lindsay's best friend, Maddy Washburn, has decided to pull up stakes and join her in Buffalo Valley, hoping for the same kind of satisfaction. And the same kind of love.

In this timely and necessary book, New York Times opinion writer Jessica Grose dismantles two hundred years of unrealistic parenting expectations and empowers today’s mothers to make choices that actually serve themselves, their children, and their communities.

Pregnancy is not just a trek from one medical appointment to another but a journey of the heart. Here at last is a guidebook through its sacred terrain. For each week, Orthodox doula Laura Jansson provides a new reflection on a theme specific to the ground covered at that stage. From one milestone to the next, she helps us unearth the spiritual treasures buried within the physical experiences of childbearing. These are gifts of love from a merciful God who reaches out to us, making a perilous expedition into a path of salvation.

Midwife Kim Osterholzer ushers listeners behind the doors of Amish homes as she recounts her adventures answering God's call to the craft of midwifery. Kim chronicles her nine-year apprenticeship grappling with the nuances and idiosyncrasies of homebirth. She recounts the beauty and painstaking effort of those early years spent catching babies by the light of crackling woodstoves, oil lamps, and lanterns. Every birth enthralled her, whether it involved halting hemorrhages, sharing breath with tiny lungs, or bouncing through wild rides in ambulances.

Ten million people each year suffer - often in private shame and pain - because they’ve been told that they can never conceive children of their own as a couple (literally billions of dollars are spent each year on fertility cures); or because they’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s normal to struggle through a painful and difficult pregnancy; or because they fear whether they have what it takes to be affirming, joyful parents.

Catherine Sterling thinks she knows her mother. Ruth Sterling is quiet, hardworking, and lives for her daughter. All her life, it's been just the two of them against the world. But now, Catherine is ready to spread her wings, move from home, and begin a new career. And Ruth Sterling will do anything to prevent that from happening.

Too many women put up with pelvic floor discomfort, thinking their symptoms are “just part of motherhood and aging.” And for far too long, the American health care system has normalized pelvic problems, leaving women feeling hopeless, ashamed and suffering in silence. Board-certified pelvic floor physical therapist Dr. Sara Reardon helps women prevent and overcome common pelvic floor issues so they can trust and enjoy their bodies again.

In Courageously Expecting, author Jenny Albers meets you in this difficult season as someone who has also experienced the worst and cautiously hoped for the best. She invites you on a thirty-day journey through the complicated and often contradictory emotions that accompany pregnancy after a loss.

After a night of fun back in 1992, Abby is responsible for a car crash that kills her beloved brother. It's a mistake she can never forgive, so she pushes away Liam, the man she loves most, knowing that he would eventually hate her for what she's done, the same way she hates herself. Twenty years later, Abby's husband, Nate, is also living with a deep sense of guilt. He was the driver who first came upon the scene of Abby's accident, the man who could not save her brother in time. It's this guilt, this regret, that binds them together. Then, Liam moves into the neighborhood....

Pregnancy is undoubtedly a beautiful and exciting time for any woman - while simultaneously stressful, worrying, and bewildering! What if I told you that just by listening to this book, you are significantly more likely to have a fun, safe, calm, healthy, and stress-free pregnancy experience? Perhaps this is your first pregnancy. Or maybe you have experienced a particularly tough pregnancy in the past, and you are keen to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. Or maybe you aren’t actually pregnant right now, but you are planning for the future.

When your baby dies, you find yourself in a life you never expected. And even though pregnancy and infant loss are common, they're not common to you. Instead, you feel like a stranger in your own body, surrounded by well-meaning people who often don't know how to support you. In Unexpecting, bereaved mom Rachel Lewis is the friend you never knew you'd need, walking you through the unique grief of baby loss. When nothing about life after loss makes sense...this book will.

Ovaries. Most women have two; journalist Natalie Lampert has only one. Then, in her early twenties, she almost lost it, along with her ability to ever have biological children. Doctors urged her to freeze her eggs, and Lampert started asking questions. The Big Freeze is the story of Lampert’s personal quest to investigate egg freezing, as well as the multibillion-dollar femtech industry, in order to decide the best way to preserve her own fertility.

The second edition of this pathbreaking, widely taught book offers five new chapters, on breastfeeding and Black infant health; Black birthing during COVID; Black doulas rethinking birthing practices; the recent buildup of a US national movement; and expanding the global movement for sexual and reproductive wellbeing. Other chapters are updated throughout. Birthing Justice puts black women's voices at the center of the debate on what should be done to fix the broken maternal care system.

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.

"I'm not picking up a heartbeat." These are the most dreaded words an expectant mother can hear. As joy and anticipation dissolve into confusion and grief, painful questions refuse to go away: Why me? Did I do something wrong? How will this affect my ability to have a family? What do I say to my children without scaring them? With the warmth and compassion of a Licensed Professional Counselor and writing as a mother who has suffered the loss of a baby and a 16-year-old son, Pam Vredevelt offers sound answers and advice.

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.

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).

Strengthening your own foundation is one of the very best beginnings you can give your child. In The Mindful Mom-to-Be, doula and pregnancy coach Lori Bregman guides you in your journey toward motherhood by empowering you to find what works best for you and your baby. In addition to concrete, prescriptive health information, including nutritional advice, natural remedies, developmental milestones, and techniques for labor, she offers simple and enjoyable spiritual and emotional exercises to help you prepare for motherhood.

Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother—who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons—the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.