Birth Pregnancy

Julie Halpern's Maternity Leave tells the profane, profound, and just plain funny story of a professional woman who thinks she's ready for a baby, but her maternity leave proves otherwise. Thirty-six-year-old Annie Schwartz-Jensen is a middle-school teacher on maternity leave - a time she imagined as uninterrupted, blissful bonding with her baby. Instead she is dealing with her body leaking from every possible orifice, a baby who won't sleep, a husband who still wants to have sex with her (is he nuts?), and single friends who are clueless.

Once you're pregnant, the rest is easy, right? No. Knowing parenting wouldn't be easy, Stephanie Thompson never thought too much about how the baby would actually arrive and how that was, in fact, the hardest part of the journey so far. Many women feel foolish for not knowing what they didn't know. They found out the hard way. The Day My Vagina Broke is about breaking the silence on the secret women's code around childbirth and empowering mums-to-be at their most vulnerable time.

In the hills of western North Carolina in the late 1970s, a secret was born that would spread its terror through the lives of many. For friends Anne, Joan, and Meg that secret would mean a life locked away in a haze, death, and questions that would go unanswered. As the women, all on the verge of giving birth, wonder what the future holds for their children, the machinations of others will prove more powerful than even a mother's love. In the present day, the secrets of the past can have consequences and Inga Parr is soon going to find that out.

Pregnancy can be a scary yet exciting feeling at the same time. There are many questions and concerns that soon-to-be mothers address on a daily basis, but where do they get their answers from? There is no better way to prepare yourself for what lies ahead than listening. Individuals have been kind enough to share their knowledge and experience with us, so why not take advantage of that?