Birth Notes: A Memoir of Recovery

Birth Notes is a powerful and courageous tale of forging a self from fragments, speaking for the unvoiced and shining a light on maternal mental health. It is a love story of a mother for her children and a woman for herself.

Format: Hardback
Length: 448 pages
Publication date: 05 May 2022
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

I SAVOURED EVERY WORD
ABI DARÉ
A REDEMPTIVE TALE OF THE POWER AND WISOM OF WOMEN'S BODIES
LEAH HAZARD
MAGNIFICENT: A WORK OF TRUTH
SUSIE ORBACH
FILLED ME WITH HOPE
DR ELINOR CLEGHORN
SO MANY WOMEN WILL FEEL LESS ALONE AFTER READING THIS BOOK
KATIE WARD

Following the birth of her first children, twin boys, Jessica Cornwell collapsed in a fever. Rushed back to the hospital, she was initially dismissed, before a life-threatening infection was diagnosed. Alone, recovering, watching her body bruise and break, a curious thing happened: she stopped feeling.

At home, the numbness remained. Nursing her boys through jaundice, learning to breastfeed, slowly re-emerging into a world where other mothers seemed to cope, Jessica hid her secret - she felt no love, only fear. Worse, vivid memories began to surface, of moments in her past she thought buried.

Jessica began to name, one by one, the shadows that returned to haunt her first year as a mother. And in claiming back the words, she fought to claim back her life and the love she bore her young family.

Birth Notes is the story - luminous, breathtaking, and courageous - of forging a self from fragments. With eloquent rage and searing honesty, it speaks for the unvoiced and shines a light on maternal mental health. It is the love story of a mother for her children and a woman for herself.

Weight: 552g
Dimension: 146 x 224 x 46 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780349014296