Leave: A Postpartum Account
by Shayne Terry
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Pub Date Feb 25 2025 | Archive Date Dec 07 2024
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Description
Shayne Terry’s fourth trimester is not going as planned. Instead of bonding with her new baby, she’s stuck on the couch with a third-degree tear, barely able to walk. When the women in her family show up to help, they come bearing family secrets and old wounds that also need repair. Begun as notes on Terry’s phone documenting a parental leave gone awry, Leave examines a healing process complicated by capitalism, intergenerational trauma, and a healthcare system with a long history of devaluing women. This powerful postpartum account treats birth as a portal, one that can connect us to a lineage of pain, joy, death, and life. And at a time when our bodily autonomy is being stripped away, Leave is an urgent exploration of one woman’s experience recovering from birth in America.
Advance Praise
"Leave stitches together, fragment by fragment, a reconstruction of all the ways a woman can be in pain, and all the ways a woman can pay a price, from birthing to living to dying. Shayne Terry offers herself as the reader’s doula, artfully guiding us through the complex tradition of maternal injuries that run through her family line, leaving no stone unturned in her search for truth. Through intimate vignettes, and rippling with astute intergenerational insights, Terry examines injuries that split through the core. Finally, someone asks on behalf of all women: what is normal when it comes to pain?"
— Lexi Kent-Monning, author of The Burden of Joy
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781957392356 |
| PRICE | $18.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 162 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 1445818
Leave: A Postpartum Account by Shayne Terry was a wonderfully written, real-life account about giving birth and the fourth trimester. The book was written in a totally relatable way, even if scenarios written about are not something you personally experienced. Since giving birth myself, I am extremely interested in hearing the stories of others and the circumstances they have faced.
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who has given birth, or may in the future.
This book will be released on February 25, 2025.
Thank you to NetGalley and Autofocus Books for the ARC!
Emily C, Reviewer
An intricate portrayal of the fourth trimester of pregnancy not always discussed in not just media, but life itself.
Terry brings pain, empathy, and understanding to her story and those of the women that come before her that is a wonderful read from start to finish.
Although at times it’s a hard read due to the subject, it is nonetheless a worthwhile read that I will be thinking about going into my own last few weeks of pregnancy and soon motherhood.
Reviewer 1493881
Really enjoyed reading this short book on a postpartum experience. It is brutal and very honest but a conversation that needs to be had more often. It definitely made me terrified to get pregnant and give birth and at the same time, I have been wanting to read about brutally honest birth experiences so I really appreciated it. Highly recommend. Thank you Net Galley and Victory Editing for this e-arc.
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