Type “pregnancy” into any internet search engine today, and you’ll literally get a billion results. This plethora of information at […]
Over-the-Counter Anxiety: Selling the Home Pregnancy Test
Walk through the aisles of any American drugstore, and you’ll eventually encounter the home pregnancy test section. Because of the […]
A Tale of Two Midwives across Four Centuries
What happens when the person who delivers most of the babies in her community is arrested? This is a tale […]
How I Met My Mother: The Story of an Unexpected Pregnancy
I was born seven weeks after my mother found out she was pregnant. I was not a medical miracle — […]
This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-Death
Last week at a Vatican conference on abortion, Pope Francis “argued that children who were not expected to live long […]
Openness and Authority in Pregnancy: Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves
I began reading Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos on my own due date, desperately trying to keep busy […]
Labor, Birth, and Superstitions
On the morning that my daughter-in-law went into labor, a small bird crashed into our apartment window and lay dead […]
From Hospital to Home: Wendy Kline’s Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth
Wendy Kline has delivered a new addition to the history of childbirth in America. In her engaging and well-researched book, […]
For Keeps: Teenage Girls and Anxiety around Sex during the 1990s
In 1995, I was sixteen and experiencing the excitement of my first real love. As if out of a 1990s […]
The (Historical) Body in Pain
For the last decade, I’ve been reading and writing about other women’s pain. Contractions lasting 72 hours. Feverish deliriums after […]