The journey no one can prepare you for
You're not the only one on it. Real voices from the road to motherhood.
Ten years of the Fear Free Childbirth podcast, gathered into nine chapters. Women describing what they actually felt about deciding whether to try, about being pregnant and frightened, about a birth that went nowhere near the plan, and about the person they became afterwards. Not advice. Not a birth plan. Voices.
Nine chapters · about an evening's reading · free
Where should we send it?
The book arrives by email. That also puts you on the Fear Free Childbirth list, which is how new pieces and episodes reach you – you can leave it whenever you like.
What's inside
One chapter for each stretch of the road. You do not have to read them in order, and most women don't – they go straight to the one that is theirs.
The job only you can do
Why this particular fear sits where it does, and why nobody else can carry it for you.
Deciding
Whether to have children at all. Three women, three routes, and the question underneath: whose voice is making this choice?
The worry that moves in
Anxiety in pregnancy, including from an anxiety researcher who got pregnant and found her expertise made no difference.
When it's bigger than nerves
Tokophobia. What it is, how it shows up, and what changes the moment it has a name.
Who's the CEO of your birth?
Where fear gets manufactured, what a good clinician sounds like, and how women take the decisions back.
When every fear came true
A birth where the plan fell apart entirely – told by the woman it happened to, who came out the other side loving it.
When it hurts
Loss, trauma and grief, held carefully. What helped the women who have been through it.
Becoming
Matrescence: the identity shift after birth that nobody warns you about, and what is happening in your brain and body while it goes on.
For the one watching
A short chapter for the partner, who is usually left to work it out alone.
If you're a midwife, doula, therapist or antenatal educator looking for something free and safe to put in a client's hands, this is written to be exactly that. Pass it on as widely as you like.
There's a box on the form to say that's who you are. Ticking it changes nothing about what you receive – it just means we know the book is reaching women this way, and who to talk to as more gets built for the people doing the recommending.
Some of the voices in it
Every quote in the book is a real woman, from a real conversation on the podcast, in her own words.
It was like this weight was lifted, and I was like, I am not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not weird. There is a name for this.A therapist, on the day her own therapist named it · Chapter 4
It doesn't matter how much I know about anxiety – there's always going to be that human side of you that takes over.Dr Megan Barnard, anxiety researcher · Chapter 3
I think I can cut a $3 million deal, no problem. But having a baby? I was not born for that.A doula, on what she hears from her clients · Chapter 2
We're not vessels carrying babies, we're women. And as our babies are born, so are we born into our motherhood.Mars Lord, doula and mother of five · Chapter 5
Is this you?
I want children one day, but the thought of giving birth terrifies me – and I haven't told anyone.Chapters 2 and 4
I'm pregnant, and the worry is louder than the excitement everyone expects me to feel.Chapter 3
Something happened last time, and I don't know whether I can go near any of it again.Chapters 6 and 7
I've had my baby, and I don't recognise the person I've become.Chapter 8
It has a name, and you are one of many on this road
That is the whole reason the book exists. Nine chapters, an evening's reading, and the sense that someone has been here before you – because they have, and they said so out loud.
Where should we send it?
The book arrives by email. That also puts you on the Fear Free Childbirth list – you can leave it whenever you like.