Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

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NEW MOTHERHOOD

GUIDE – POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
  • Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts: A Healing Guide to the Secret Fears of New Mothers by Karen Kleinman, MSW; Illustrations by Molly McIntyre.

    • Published by Familius, 2019

    Amazon Link
ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
  • Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression by Brooke Shields.

    • Published by Hachette Books, 2006

    Amazon Link

    Imagining the three of us taking a stroll or all snuggling in bed together was a far cry from the reality of an infant screaming at three A.M. with a 104-degree fever. When I claimed to be someone’s mother, I didn’t factor in the devasting fatigue, the loss of personal freedom, and the overwhelming fear that are part of being a parent, not to mention the heartache.

  • Adventures with Postpartum Depression: A Memoir by Courtney Henning Novak.

    • Published by Independently published, 2018

    Amazon Link

    [To her husband] “I just feel like I have done something wrong. Like I’ve disappointed you. This should be one of the happiest times of our life. We have a baby and she’s beautiful and healthy and so much fun but I still got postpartum depression.”

  • Post Pardon Me: A fickle woman’s spiral into postpartum depression and anxiety and how the hell she found her way out of it. (Sort of.) by Suzanne Yatim Aslam.

    • Published by Suzanne Yatim Aslam, 2021

    Amazon Link

    So, I’m not crazy about my kid. But you’re not allowed to say that to people. As evidenced by Nicholas, there is definitely only one way you are supposed to feel – yes, mothers are like goddesses, but goddesses were fierce and pissy and emotional. It’s not easy goddessing.

  • The Ballast Seed: A Story of Motherhood, of Growing Up and Growing Plants by Rosie Kinchen.

    • Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022

    Amazon Link

    While the toddler played, a kind woman with a furrowed expression sat in my sitting room and asked about hallucinations, politely enquiring about violent urges towards my own child. I sipped my tea and shook my head. ‘No,’ I told her and smiled. I didn’t have the energy to explain the mass of shifting darkness that had settled over me, or even to try to make sense of it myself. I was not happy. I was not sad. I wasn’t really there at all.

  • Birth Notes: A Memoir of Recovery by Jessica Cornwell.

    • Published by Virago, 2022

    Amazon Link

    The motif of the unkempt cupboard, which Grace used often to describe traumatic events, vexed me. ‘My mind,’ I said to her, ‘is not a wardrobe: it is a vast, opaque maelstrom.’ My problems don’t have boundaries. Neat beginning, middle, ends. They are not stackable, foldable, cleanable. The things that I remember – the fragments that hurt me – are chaotic and inconclusive and elliptical: they are not piles of moth-eaten knitwear, made lovingly by distant relatives, which could easily be sorted and thrown away – Marie Kondo style – with a gleeful invocation of minimalism.

  • Milk: On Motherhood and Madness by Alice Kinsella.

    • Published by Picador, 2023

    Amazon Link

    An advocate, you’ll need an advocate, I’m told again. The implication is clear: don’t expect to be listened to.

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION – GRAPHIC
  • Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression by Teresa Wong.

    • Published by Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019

    Amazon Link

    Animals are never blamed for mistreating their offspring, even if they reject their babies altogether. Human mothers must put our babies first, or we might be seen as monsters

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – POSTPARTUM PSYCHOSIS
  • What Have I Done?: Motherhood, Mental Illness & Me by Laura Dockrill.

    • Published by Square Peg, 2020

    Amazon Link

    ‘Did you feel like this when you had your baby?’ I asked her. ‘I was so young I just…kind of…got on with it,’ she replied. Why couldn’t I get on with it?

  • Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho.

    • Published by Henry Holt and Co., 2020

    Amazon Link

    I had never heard of postpartum psychosis before my own diagnosis. Pregnancy had brought a list of worries – episiotomies, prolapse, preeclampsia. I was so preoccupied with the idea of losing my body, it had never occurred to me that I might lose my mind.