Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

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PREGNANCY

SOCIAL SCIENCE
  • Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes.

    • Published by Harper Wave, 2018

    Amazon Link

    The truth is that birth is both a normal, everyday occurrence and a significant medical event. It can be many things at once. It is, for some women, a spiritual experience that connects them with a sense of the divine. For others, the sheer feat of mental and physical fortitude offers a profound sense of bodily power and accomplishment and for others, it is scary and psychologically devastating. Birth is also, even at its smoothest and easiest, physically traumatic.

  • High Risk: Stories of Pregnancy, Birth, and the Unexpected by Chavi Eve Karkowsky, MD.

    • Published by Liveright, 2020

    Amazon Link

    But for other successes, the definition should be more complicated: did you decrease the suffering of the human before you? Part of what makes this success hard is that nobody can know the answer without asking that human who is before you, right now, what she thinks and what she wants and what she feels. Nobody asks, “Did we save enough of your life?”

  • Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz.

    • Published by Bold Type Books, 2020

    Amazon Link

    I didn’t know how to walk. I didn’t know how to move. I was completely possessed by another human in a way that felt both deeply magical and sinister.

GRAPHIC
  • Crescendo by Paola Quintavalle; Illustrations by Alessandro Sanna.

    • Published by Enchanted Lion Books, 2019

    Amazon Link
  • Be Pregnant: An Illustrated Companion for Moms-to-Be by Eugenia Viti.

    • Published by Voracious, 2022

    Amazon Link
ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir by Alice Eve Cohen.

    • Published by Penguin Books, 2009

    Amazon Link
  • Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother by Beth Ann Fennelly.

    • Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2006

    Amazon Link

    There are two other things that help. One is to gamble on yourself as an investment that will pay off. It isn’t always easy to have this kind of confidence. Sometimes when Claire was very young I’d hire a babysitter to come to the house so I could write. Then I’d be at my desk thinking, Is this poem worth $6.50 an hour? At that thought, whatever little seedling poem I was trying to trellis would shrivel and die. Women aren’t normally encouraged to provide themselves time and resources, especially if doing so requires sacrifices from others. But it’s a skill we need to practice. So start by faking a confidence in your talents, and after a while you might have the results to justify the confidence.

  • Oh, Baby!: True Stories about Conception, Adoption, Surrogacy, Pregnancy, Labor, and Love Edited by Lee Gutkind and Alice Bradley with an Introduction by Lisa Belkin.

    • Published by In Fact Books, 2015

    Amazon Link

    Our mistake was in thinking each of our lives would retain what we loved about them when we were childless: sleep, exercise, solitude, clean hair. Who knew that those things would become points of compromise and negotiation? Who knew that the sight of Chris showered and dressed for work, with small gold earrings in her ears, and a diver’s watch around her wrist, would fill me with a rage and loneliness like none I had ever felt? We made the mistake of thinking that when we became parents, we would maintain our perch at the top of Maslow’s triangle. Instead, the baby abruptly dropped us to the triangle’s wide base, where we both desperately wanted a list of things we used to have and had never thought to want, things we now wanted – impossibly – from each other. [The Dune at Night by Erin White]

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – GRAPHIC
  • Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley.

    • Published by First Second, 2019

    Amazon Link

    The word “gossip” originated from when birth attendants were referred to as “God’s siblings” (God’s Sibs). The female attendants would usually discuss their mutual friends in the intimacy of the birthing room, and so “gossips” came about.

  • My Body Created a Human: A Love Story by Emma Ahlqvist.

    • Published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2022

    Amazon Link
ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS – QUEER
  • Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor by Harlyn Aizley.

    • Published by Alyson Books, 2003

    Amazon Link

    In the world of trying-to-conceive news, your LH surge is first runner-up to the crowning moment when you find out you’re pregnant. It’s the next best thing, the prerequisite. It’s renewed hope and the beginning of two more weeks during which you actually might be pregnant, as opposed to those two weeks when you know for a fact that you are not. It’s optimism and control and a sign that there’s every reason in the world to believe your body is in full working order and that this time will be the one.

  • Love Song for Baby X: How I Stayed (Almost) Sane on the Rocky Road to Parenthood by Cheryl Dumesnil.

    • Published by Ig Publishing, 2013

    Amazon Link

    If thoughts truly do create reactions in my body, then, sweet maybe, you probably already know that when I think about you I feel a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Excitement: could be, could be, could be; then anxiety: what if, what if, what if.

  • One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir by Suzy Becker.

    • Published by Bloomsbury USA, 2013

    Amazon Link
  • Small: On Motherhoods by Claire Lynch.

    • Published by Brazen, 2021

    Amazon Link

    In the waiting room of the fertility clinic, Beth and I sit among strangers, bound by a shared dilemma: the thing we want most is the thing we cannot have.

  • The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage.

    • Published by Dutton Adult, 1999

    Amazon Link

    Having a deal but no book maybe isn’t the deepest pit in writing hell, but it’s close, and anyway hell isn’t a contest. In hell everyone suffers.

  • Mommy Man: How I Went From Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad by Jerry Mahoney.

    • Published by Taylor Trade Publishing, 2014

    Amazon Link

    Unlike adoption, as amazing and generous as that can be, with surrogacy we’d actually be creating a life. Our baby would exist only because, against all odds, Drew and I met and fell in love. It just seemed so beautifully ordinary.

NOVELS
  • The Baby Trap by Sibel Hodge.

    • Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

    Amazon Link

    ‘For once, can’t we have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around having a baby?’ I tutted. What else was there to talk about? This was the most important thing in the world.

  • The Baby Plan: A Novel by Kate Rorick.

    • Published by William Morrow Paperbacks, 2018

    Amazon Link

    So far, Lyndi felt like she was dealing with these new restrictions like any sane person would – whining reluctance.

  • The Long Answer by Anna Hogeland.

    • Published by Riverhead Books, 2022

    Amazon Link

    It was a hail Mary, they understood, but my parents didn’t have to discuss it. They were not worried about their high hopes being shattered; they were more worried that they’d already lost their capacity to have high hopes at all.