This is an important memoir that women facing miscarriage will relate to. Lauren Christiansen's story weaves her Chinese-American heritage, her love of family, and her devotion to Simone, her child who is in utero and develops complications that are incompatible with life. In this moving story, the heartache is palpable, and her emotions are raw as she figures out that she will not be able to safely carry her baby to term.

This is a book that pro-life and pro-choice women will see themselves in, as Christensen is carrying a very-much wanted baby. The choice between her life or her life and her baby's is no choice at all, yet she continues to hold onto hope. I couldn't put this book down, and hope that women who have suffered a loss will find solace in this book.

Highly recommended for libraries and book clubs.

Full disclosure: I experienced a similar loss as this author and underwent a similar excruciating procedure. This book, to me, is an important document as well as a beautiful memoir. I have read many accounts of the experience of losing a child before birth and this is the most complete, detailed and heartfully accurate of them all. Reading it was incredibly comforting to me. It validated my experience in a way that nothing else has. Ms. Christensen's account is very personal and particular, but in her description of the details I found that we shared so much. Only other women who have experienced this know what it feels like, and no one but this author has been able to convey it so completely and beautifully. I am incredibly grateful for this book and I hope it finds an audience among the doctors, nurses, and grief counselors who serve women at one of the most difficult times of their lives.

Firstborn is a beautifully heart-wrenching memoir of a thirty-three year old first time mother. Lauren Christensen intimately details her life - from falling in love with her husband, her upbringing with an absent father and working mother, to the experience of deciding to have a child. Christensen writes in a way that allows you into her life and inside her head as she experiences the decline of her beloved grandfather and the eventual demise of her pregnancy with her daughter Simone.

This is so much more than a story of loss. I found myself crying often while reading this, not just because I am 23 weeks pregnant, but because it was so easy to empathize with the thought processes and experiences which Christensen so eloquently shared. She is able to honor her own experiences while letting the world know just how much her daughter meant to her. I loved the rawness presented in Firstborn. Christensen is unfiltered in her emotions and was candid about feeling the need for her mom as a grown woman. This is such a relatable feeling when you are a woman of childbearing age, especially when being pregnant and giving birth.

I was happy to see a name not previously mentioned, Noah, in the acknowledgments. I hope that this means she was able to have a future successful pregnancy after her loss of Simone on February 1st, 2023. I think that many women who have experienced loss will find this memoir both comforting and empowering. Unfortunately, pregnancy and life do not always go as planned and it can be helpful to know you are not alone. I would highly recommend this book to any woman who has experienced a TFMR (termination for medical reasons), as this is so often a type of loss that is not talked about enough. There is so much love in this book and I think that is what makes it memorable as a reader.

Thank you to NetGalley, PENGUIN GROUP The Penguin Press, Penguin Press, and the author Lauren Christensen for an ARC of Firstborn in exchange for an honest review!

Really loved this book--and the subject matter is so important. Graceful writing and a poignant narrative. I appreciated the writer's candid honesty and willingness to dive deep into writing about challenging subject matter.