Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

Closeup of books stacked on a bookshelf
Return to All Categories

MISCARRIAGE/STILLBIRTH

SOCIAL SCIENCE
  • Life, Almost: Miscarriage, misconceptions and a search for answers from the brink of motherhood by Jennie Agg.

    • Published by Torva, 2023

    Amazon Link
GUIDE
  • The Worst Girl Gang Ever: A Survival Guide for Navigating Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss by Bex Gunn & Laura Buckingham.

    • Published by HQ, 2022

    Amazon Link

    But why wouldn’t we ‘try hard’ when we want something so desperately? We are told to try our hardest in every other area of life in order to achieve what we want, so it’s hard to tell ourselves not to try when we are desperate to do all we can to make a baby happen.

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope Edited by Jessica Berger Gross.

    • Published by Plume, 2006

    Amazon Link

    I felt apologetic, as though I’d tried something extravagant (look at me, I’m married, I’m having a baby!) and failed. There were things I couldn’t explain to her, things she didn’t know, and there was no way I could go back to a time when I didn’t know them, either. [Misconceptions by Andrea J. Buchanan]

  • An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken.

    • Published by Back Bay Books, 2010

    Amazon Link

    Time had bent again. Time had developed a serious kink. Our old life – the one where we planned our existence around the son we were expecting – had ended, but our new life – the one where we tried to figure out how to live without him – couldn’t start yet. We were stuck in a chronological bubble.

  • Knocked Up Knocked Down: Postcards of Miscarriage and Other Misadventures from the Brink of Parenthood by Monica Murphy LeMoine.

    • Published by Catalyst Book Press, 2010

    Amazon Link

    What I really want, I finally come to realize, is my baby, the one who isn’t here – a mysterious fact which still perplexes me to no end. There is no substitute model, no quick fix, no swapping tofu for chicken and not noticing it, no buying a K-mart brand handbag and slapping a Gucci label on it.

  • Vessels: A Love Story by Daniel Raeburn.

    • Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2016

    Amazon Link

    Everyone outside this room seemed to think that having another kid would somehow negate the loss of this one. That death was some kind of math problem you could solve with procreation. People were being supportive, but they were all secretly hoping that it would get better, that things would go back to normal, as if normal were an option, as if normal even existed anymore. If one more person told us to put it – it! – behind us, we might lose it.

  • Landon’s Legacy: The Power of a Brief Life by Amelia Kathryn Barnes.

    • Published by Blurb, 2016

    Amazon Link

    It’s so hard moving forward when you would give anything to go back, even if just for a moment.

  • Expecting Sunshine: A Journey of Grief, Healing, and Pregnancy After Loss by Alexis Marie Chute.

    • Published by She Writes Press, 2017

    Amazon Link

    My naivety and trust that everything will be okay did not survive Zachary; it passed forever along with my son. Certainty followed my child to the grave.

  • Through, Not Around: Stories of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss Edited by Allison McDonald Ace, Ariel Ng Bourbonnais, Caroline Starr.

    • Published by Dundurn Press, 2019

    Amazon Link

    Sometimes I forget myself and chime in about the nuisance of morning sickness with other mothers. If I’m then not able to answer what brand of diapers I use, I feel as though I’ve been caught trying to sneak into a club. It’s as if the experience of pregnancy disappears if you don’t give birth.

  • Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood by Emma Hansen.

    • Published by Greystone Books, 2020

    Amazon Link

    Knowing I need to get pregnant again and knowing what I will do once I am actually pregnant again are two very different things, though. All the articles I’ve read on parental grief say not to get pregnant again until you no longer want the child you lost back. I still want Reid back. And I want another child. I refuse to believe those two truths can’t coexist.

  • It Will Happen: A Heart-Breaking Journey to Motherhood Through Recurrent Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss by Laura Buckingham.

    • Published by Austin Macauley, 2020

    Amazon Link

    What was hurting me the most during these times was the thought of my life without any babies. I was grieving for the loss of motherhood.

  • Unimaginable: Life After Baby Loss by Brooke D. Taylor.

    • Published by Brooke D. Taylor, 2021

    Amazon Link

    Jealousy wasn’t about hating other people. I didn’t wish them ill. I didn’t want their babies to die. I just wanted a piece of what they had. I wanted their innocence. I wanted their self-assurance. I wanted my heart to feel light and easy again. I wanted pictures of my mom holding my baby. More than anything, I wanted my own baby in my arms. Instead, it seemed as though everyone else was getting what I wanted, and I was stuck on the outside looking in, my arms aching to hold my baby girl.

  • Adrift: Fieldnotes from Almost-Motherhood by Miranda Ward.

    • Published by W&N, 2021

    Amazon Link

    How can you not know? I want to shout at every doctor who shrugs at me – but I’m equally frightened, if I’m honest, of an unequivocal answer, a definitely this, a prescription, a path, a trap, a never. So I stay here, adrift in the land of almost, of maybe, and part of me is not entirely unhappy to be here, part of me is in fact afraid of asking the right questions, even while I’m drowning in the silence of my own body.

  • I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, A Movement by Jessica Zucker.

    • Published by The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2021

    Amazon Link

    Jason tried assuaging my fear by telling me we’d make it through this. “We’ll have another baby,” he’d say. He assured me that when we did, things would be different. But I had a tough time believing in visions of some hopeful future that lay on the horizon. The concept of having another baby was no consolation at all, really. This was apples and oranges. The conception of another baby would in no way release the trauma of how things unfolded, and what was more, this loss was mire I had to wade through before I could even begin again.

  • If You Really Knew Me: A Memoir of Miscarriage and Motherhood by Mary Purdie.

    • Published by Mary Purdie, 2021

    Amazon Link

    Somewhere inside myself, buried underneath the auto-pilot affirmations and stories from internet strangers, I was aware of the lie I was telling myself – the circus act I was performing to delay being crushed by the familiar weight of loss. I was utterly dependent on this act, though, tossing back toxic positivity like shots of tequila, anything to keep the high going.

  • A Womb in the Shape of a Heart: My Story of Miscarriage and Motherhood by Joanne Gallant.

    • Published by Nimbus Publishing Limited, 2021

    Amazon Link

    I’m given a useless pamphlet about the physical symptoms to expect during a miscarriage, and no instructions on how to live with a baby that will not.

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – GRAPHIC – QUEER
  • Waves by Written by Ingrid Chabbert; Illustrated by Carole Maurel; Translated by Edward Gauvin; Lettered by Deron Bennett.

    • Published by Archaia, 2019

    Amazon Link

ABORTION

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies.

    • Published by Mariner Books, 2021

    Amazon Link

    “And you act like it happened to you! You were just there. It happened to me!” It happened to us, he wants to say. It happened to you, yes, of course, but it also happened to me, because I love you. Wants to say, but can’t because for a moment it isn’t true.

  • Larger Than an Orange by Lucy Burns.

    • Published by Chatto & Windus, 2021

    Amazon Link

    He’s tired, and he doesn’t want you to be upset, and he’s not very good at talking about this sort of thing, and he doesn’t know what to say, and he’s with his friends at the pub, and he’s just on his way out, and he can’t begin to understand what you’ve been through, and actually, as a man, wouldn’t it be wrong of him to pretend to understand, because he can’t, and he doesn’t, and last month you did say that you were feeling better, and fucking hell can you just not, for one second.