Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

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CHILDBIRTH

SOCIAL SCIENCE
  • Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank by Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D..

    • Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

    Amazon Link

    The turning point came in 1817, when Princess Charlotte Augusta, daughter of Princess Caroline and George, prince of Wales (the future George IV), died after a prolonged labor. This was the first highly publicized case to accuse a man-midwife for not using forceps. Afterward, their use increased rapidly.

  • Birth: Three Mothers, Nine Months, and Pregnancy in America by Rebecca Grant.

    • Published by Avid Reader Press, 2023

    Amazon Link

    Parenthood is not a guarantee, and trying hard does not mean it will work out. When it doesn’t, Dr. Janet Jaffe, a clinical psychologist and co-founder of the Center for Reproductive Psychology, said that can lead some people to feel defective and inadequate in a way that poor vison or bad knees do not.

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • Labor Day: Shared Experiences from the Delivery Room Edited by Ann-Marie Giglio.

    • Published by Workman Publishing Company, 1999

    Amazon Link

    Lying in the bathtub, I talked to my baby, telling him that this would probably be a hard day for both of us, but that together we would work it out.

  • “I’ll Never Have Sex with You Again!”: Tales from the Delivery Room by Larry Bleidner and Irene Zutell.

    • Published by Atria Books, 2002

    Amazon Link

    My husband squeezed my hand. “Okay, breathe, honey,” he said. Yeah, as if I hadn’t been doing it on my own for the last thirty years! You’re worthless, I thought. I should be squatting in a field of sunflowers without any husbands, doctors or other variety of men around…

  • Birth: A Literary Companion Edited by Kristin Kovacic and Lynne Barrett.

    • Published by University of Iowa Press, 2002

    Amazon Link

    I keep telling myself that it won’t be long now, that he’ll release me soon, stop crawling around inside me and prodding me when I sit hunched over in chairs. He’ll be in my life forever, but perhaps at a distance I can deal with. Mostly, though, I curse under my breath every woman who perpetuates the lie of blissful fecundity. It’s clear to me through the haze of sleeplessness that wanting a baby is one thing; wanting to HAVE a baby is quite another.

  • Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth Edited by Dede Crane and Lisa Moore.

    • Published by House of Anansi Press, 2008

    Amazon Link

    “She’s pretty uncomfortable,” the first nurse says. Uncomfortable! I have to remember that one next time I teach my class the meaning of the word euphemism.

  • Labor Pains and Birth Stories Edited by Jessica Powers; Introduction by Tina Cassidy.

    • Published by Catalyst Book Press, 2009

    Amazon Link

    It takes time. One of the hardest things we can teach our children is how to live despite grief. But, as a family, we do.

  • Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers Edited by Eleanor Henderson and Anna Solomon.

    • Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014

    Amazon Link

    The thought of childbirth terrified me. Theoretically, I wanted children, of course. I wanted them in the way that I wanted to go to medical school, or live in Morocco, or hike Kilimanjaro. Which is to say, childbirth, for me, felt like overreaching. Like asking for too much. [Thirty Hours by Dani Shapiro]

NOVELS
  • Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens.

    • Published by Tin House Books, 2016

    Amazon Link

    She again has the impulse to ask Franckline about herself but she is tired, she thinks she won’t be able to listen, and besides, stories are too hard, are almost always convoluted and do not tell you the thing you really want to know. What she wants to know is what Franckline does in the moments when she despairs. Does she ever despair?