I honestly feel like everyone should read this book! The only way to move forward is to educate and I feel this book can do just that. This was a brilliant informative read that enlightens the reader to the tedious and often misunderstood life of the womb.

Having read Hard Pushed years ago (and recommending it to everyone!), I was so excited to hear about this latest book from Hazard. It's truly incredible and will certainly be something I rave about for many years to come. Just brilliant!

This is one of those books which make me grateful to be a book blogger because being honest, I don't know if my book buying budget would have stretched to buying something so far off my usual areas of interest, but it was absolutely fascinating. I spent the first three decades of my life giving my womb very little thought. I hoped very keenly that I would get to use it one day but other than that, my knowledge of its workings was minimal. And then came the closing hours of 2017 when I discovered that I was expecting. In the family way. Bun in the oven. And suddenly my body's workings could not be ignored. I have been confronted repeatedly over the past five years with my own ignorance and so Womb felt like an opportunity to address this. Comprehensive and compelling, Hazard leads a reader on a walk through the world of women's health.

Hazard charts the womb from every angle, starting with its first appearance in infants with that surprising first period experienced by newborn females, taking in periods, conception, pregnancy in all its many iterations and outcomes and then on to illness, menopause and possible future alternatives. It was a fascinating journey and one I found highly educational.

I have been incredibly fortunate in my journey towards motherhood. I have been pregnant twice and now I have two children. But over the past five years, I have had so many conversations with other women whose paths have been trickier. You hear these terms bandied about - hostile womb, irritable uterus, incompetent cervix - and it was eye-opening to realise that not only were many of them lacking in evidence, but they are all invented by men. The world of gynaecology has been colonised by male physicians. The phenomenon of Braxton Hicks was known about for millennia before a man came along and put his own name on it. But these men have not merely planted their flag on our bodies but they have made pronouncements about women's health which have stuck around despite being factually incorrect.

The other frustrating factor in so many of the conversations I have had over the past five years - those fragmented exchanges in toddler groups, playgrounds and cafes, always truncated as our children interrupt us - is how often women just do not get an answer about why they have experienced this or that phenomenon. One of the big reasons why I picked up Womb was in the hopes of finding more information about why I experienced gallbladder issues in the first year of my son's life. Most of the women in my family have had these problems, we have almost all had to have the offending organ removed, myself included. Pregnancy was clearly the catalyst but I was hoping to understand the why. Sadly this was one topic that Hazard skipped over but her book makes clear that I am not the only woman in need of answers.

One aspect of Hazard's writing which prompted introspection was her attempts to use inclusive language. The chapters featuring periods make several references to 'menstruators'. While this may be technically accurate, it left me feeling excluded because it is not a label which currently applies to me. A combination of pregnancy and lactational amenorrhea mean that I have barely had a period over the past five years. But previous to that I had experienced them for almost twenty years and I still feel that the topic is relevant to me. This rather blunt terminology also excludes post-menopausal women who may have experienced hundreds of menstrual cycles and even cancer survivors who may have lost their ability to do so.

Of course, this is all part of the on-going cultural conflict over how far womanhood and biology are entwined. I remember studying Measure for Measure at A level and then later at university and having to dissect the quote where Mariana is told that she is 'nothing then, neither maid, widow nor wife'. We have been defined for centuries in how we relate to men. A friend was recently talking about the etymology of 'woman' and 'midwife'. Both are Anglo-Saxon words but woman means 'with man' while midwife means 'with woman'. In French and Spanish, the words for 'wife' and 'woman' remain interchangeable. Now people are making sincere attempts to change the categories to better encompass people's identities yet by focusing on menstruation or ownership of a womb as a sub-set of womanhood, it still manages to exclude other people. Language is a battleground to which we bring our own baggage and issues but hopefully by opening up the conversation, we may hope to find common ground.

I found it utterly fascinating to discuss this idea of #PeriodsOptional or even about what exactly is a period if you manage it with hormonal contraception. One commentator argued that modern women are having too many periods for their optimal health, given that in centuries previous they would have escaped them through pregnancy and lactation. Because of this, she recommends cessation through hormonal medication. The idea that having a period every month for around thirty to forty years is not biologically advisable was incredibly thought-provoking. I have really appreciated my half decade holiday from periods. But since it came with the background of a rather biologically busy time, I had never seen it as my body getting a break.

However, another commentator argues with equal passion that the hormonal medication causes changes to the body which are best avoided before one has reached physical maturity. So while Researcher A may feel that we should protect our daughters from being on their period while they're doing their exams at school, Researcher B is strongly of the belief that intervening with medication would be a very bad idea for her brain development. Throughout the book, Hazard makes clear that there are no easy answers.


Pregnancy Vectors by Vecteezy
Another area where I confronted my personal ghosts was the chapter around oxytocin. During both my pregnancies, I went way overdue. This is hard in itself. The anticipation. The bag packed in the hallway. The car seat ready for a new occupant. On both occasions, a relative called up to berate me - or so it felt - because my womb's stubborn refusal to contract meant that the convenient dates to come down to meet the baby had now passed. As the days ticked by, I felt like my body was a failure.

With my son, I had to submit to induction. I remember vividly closing the drive gate and getting into the passenger seat of the car as we drove to the hospital. It seemed unreal that we would return with a baby. I felt like an outsider to the whole process. I cried through the stretch and sweeps. I tried not to make a fuss. The drugs left me hyper-stimulated and when the time finally came to push, I was already utterly exhausted. Dragging up the energy to bring him out into the world felt like a superhuman feat.

The birth of my daughter was utterly different. Again, I had tried so hard to kick off labour. Nothing had worked. The induction was booked. And I let go. I accepted the fact that I could not force it to happen. I planned a nice morning with my son and worked out when we would drop him off for his sleepover. Calm and accepting that I was just not someone who had natural labours, I went to bed. And then was woken up in the wee small hours by my regular and unstoppable contractions. The thread of subsequent events was similar but the way I felt about it was utterly different. Free of the hormone drip, my body contracted at its own rhythm and the whole process felt far more immediate. Neither birth was traumatic but I definitely felt more in control on the second occasion.

This is not to speak against inductions. My son needed his badly. There was meconium in my waters and I dread to think of the consequences had we delayed. But Hazard's chapter discussing induction processes gave me greater understanding of my own experiences and helped me sort through some of my feelings around my first delivery.


Uterus Icon Vectors by Vecteezy
But the depressing recurring theme throughout Womb is of question marks. Male researchers expressed disgust at the idea of studying women's 'effluence', or rather the contents of their tampons and sanitary pads. What could one possibly discover there that could not be found via a simple blood test? Well, apparently rather a lot. Time and again with obstetrics, Hazard comes up against a brick wall because nobody has bothered carrying out research into these things. This is most likely why I myself came away disappointed due to the lack of information around the link between gallstones and pregnancy.

I had always vaguely assumed that the womb was an organ which lay quietly dormant when not in use but Womb explains that it is active throughout our lives. Rats with wombs perform better than those without them during cognitive tests. Basically, if you have one and it is healthy, it makes more sense to keep it even if you have no plans to use it to grow babies. The womb is a miraculous thing.

Still, the theme that I noticed across the book was the desire to control women's bodies whether through attempts to manage their menstruation, set the pace of their contractions via induction, police their bodies postpartum (got to 'snap back' ladies!) or even to take over the entire process through caesareans. I had no idea that the rate of caesareans had risen as high as 35% in this country, alarming given that the WHO advises that rates higher than 10% are not associated with reductions in maternal and newborn mortality rates.

Another frightening insight comes from Hazard's description of reprocide, whereby women undergo involuntary sterilisations. While I knew about the phenomenon during the early twentieth century when eugenics was fashionable, I had been unaware of its resurgence in immigrant detention centres. To invade and lay waste to another person's body represents a level of barbarism which I had naively hoped humanity had moved past.

Indeed, even as we marvel at what may be possible via womb transplants and possible synthetic wombs, Hazard shares her unease at how these breakthroughs may limit rather than expanding women's choices. Women already have their behaviour strictly policed through pregnancy. Indeed, a very lovely former neighbour of ours tried to stop me from driving as she was insistent that women were not allowed to do so in third trimester. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't eat soft cheese, don't exercise too much, don't, don't, don't. If a woman refuses to obey these directives, do we really suppose that steps might not be taken to remove her baby from her womb to the 'safe' synthetic option? It makes me think back to Helen Sedgewick's dystopian The Growing Season. Perhaps not so far away after all.

But my reading of Womb was definitely coloured by my own sense of marvel at my body's workings. For various reasons including childhood humiliations during PE lessons and unhealthy family attitudes around weight, I grew up with a negative self-image. The moment they placed my son into my arms was when a lot of that fell away. I could not believe that I had actually completed a physical feat like this successfully. The cherry on the cake was successful lactation. Repeating the trick was no less incredible. My body could actually do this. I am not stupid, I am fully aware that I have been incredibly lucky at every possible stage but still, I have looked on my own body more kindly since it gave me the two things that I had always wanted.

With this in mind, I can only imagine how someone might read Womb if they had had a less fortunate experience. Gender dysphoria, endometriosis, miscarriages, abortions, the list goes on. Having a womb does have its complications. Hazard's closing chapters where she acknowledges that the womb can only be understood via an intersectional approach are crucial. There is such an incredible diversity of experience amongst those who possess a womb. And even amongst each individual, their feelings about their womb are likely to change one the course of their lives. I myself am adjusting to the idea that I am unlikely to use my womb again. Somewhere ahead of me lies menopause and also the prospect of guiding my daughter through periods.

We can manage almost every other aspect of our lives electronically but the one area where miracles still occur is within the womb. The womb is where life begins. The womb reminds us that we are mammals, reproducing in just the same way as the beasts in the field. Perhaps that is why we seek to control its workings, to reassure ourselves that we are set apart.

Womb is not the book to instruct the reader on the workings of the womb but it does give much-needed context to the battleground of women's health. With the recurring theme of women fighting to get their voices heard, to have their experiences believed and their medical issues resolved, Hazard makes clear that my previous default attitude towards my uterus of lackadaisical disinterest is just not smart. Women have to be informed about their own bodies, have to pay attention to what is going on internally and they have to be prepared to self-advocate. A midwife friend once told me of a saying in her training that if you are not a feminist at the beginning of the course, you will definitely be one afterwards. The birth of my feminism came a long time ago but Hazard's stirring call to arms reminded me yet again of the importance of championing women's voices and women's health. Passionate and provocative, Womb is a book which is relevant to all members of society whether or not they possess a womb.

Womb by Leah Hazard is a poignant and thought-provoking memoir that provides a candid and insightful glimpse into the world of midwifery. The book takes readers on a journey through Hazard's career as a midwife, detailing the highs and lows of the job, as well as the challenges and joys that come with helping to bring new life into the world.

Hazard writes with honesty and compassion, sharing her own experiences as well as those of the women and families she has worked with over the years. She provides a detailed and nuanced account of the complex emotions and physical challenges that women face during pregnancy and childbirth, and she also highlights the critical role that midwives play in supporting and guiding them through these experiences.

One of the strengths of Womb is its focus on the human side of midwifery. Hazard's writing is deeply empathetic and respectful of the women and families she works with, and she is able to convey the profound impact that childbirth can have on both the mother and those around her.

The book also addresses some of the systemic issues that plague the healthcare system, such as understaffing and inadequate resources. Hazard does not shy away from these issues, but rather uses her own experiences to highlight the need for greater support and investment in midwifery and maternity care.

Overall, Womb is a powerful and moving memoir that sheds light on an important and often misunderstood profession. It is a must-read for anyone interested in women's health, childbirth, or healthcare in general, and it will leave readers with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the vital work that midwives do.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words some text written has been typed in red and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Loved this book read this author first book and can say this was just as good , loved that is written by a former midwife . Such an informative read .would highly recommend this book.