My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After

Editor Fields (Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir, coeditor) and poet Moritz (Sweet Velocity), present a collection of thoughtful essays from women who, like themselves, gave birth via caesarean section, seeking to address what they perceive as a lack of literature dealing with the process. Some contributors still reckon with the unplanned, unwelcome necessity of their C-sections (“It took me just over a year to fully understand that my son’s birth was not a test I needed to pass,” Sara Bates writes); others chose the surgery (“I am confident that I would’ve gotten over the pain of a vaginal birth. But why should I have to?” Tyrese Coleman states). The unpleasant details are all here—unkind doctors, scars, and judgmental “natural-birth” advocates among them. But while regrets and questions remain for the contributors, most have made peace with their C-sections, with Jacinda Townsend finding that “birth is one moment in a lifetime of parenting, and might even be the least of all the moments.” The cumulative sum of these stories is an enlightening reading experience for both those who’ve had C-sections and those who may. Agent: Jennifer Thompson, Nordleyset Literary Agency. (May)