The First Breath: A Memoir of Motherhood and Medicine

(Paperback)

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What happens when pregnancy and the first few weeks of a baby's life don't go as planned How have advances in modern medicine and perinatal genetics redefined our perceptions of what is possible The First Breath by Olivia Gordon is a powerful medical memoir about the extraordinary fetal and neonatal medicine bringing today's babies into the world. Unveiling the intense patient-doctor relationship at work with every birth, this book reflects on the cutting-edge medicine that has saved a generation of babies, the combination of love and fear a parent feels for a child they haven't yet met and what can happen before a baby's first breath. Olivia Gordon was twenty-nine weeks pregnant when a scan found that her baby was critically ill. Thanks to a risky operation in utero and five months in neonatal care, her son survived. The First Breath is the first popular science book to tell the story of the fast developing fields of fetal and neonatal medicine. It explores motherhood and the female experience of medicine through Olivia's personal story and sensitive, intimate case histories of other mothers' high risk births. The First Breath asks what it means to become the mother of a child who would not have survived birth only a generation ago, showing how doctors and nurses save the most vulnerable lives and how medicine has developed to make it possible for these lives to even begin.

Reviews

Fascinating and moving. -- Adam Kay, Sunday Times bestselling author of This is Going to Hurt
Excellent . . . A serious journalistic investigation into foetal and neonatal medicine . . . reads like a thriller. -- The Times
Heartstopping -- Daily Mail
A triumph of memoir-cum-non-fiction and a love story starring our heroes, the NHS . . . Totally brilliant and touching . . . tender, well researched and unputdownable, the best book I've read in the last twelve months. [The First Breath] moves effortlessly between personal stories of children and cutting edge scientific research . . . [Gordon makes] us feel the great and risky adventure of surviving a difficult childhood and becoming a person: and the linked one of being a parent . . . a wonderful, intelligent writer. -- Maggie Gee BBC Radio 4 A Good Read choice
A touching, insightful and engaging memoir. -- The Lancet
Pacy and accessible . . . It is the female experience of such invasive surgeries that remains the focus here; expectant mothers steeling themselves for needles as long as rulers and learning to navigate a strange form of knowledge about a child that has yet to enter the world. -- Prospect - who named The First Breath one of the best science books of 2019
Part memoir, part analysis of neonatal and postnatal care. Its wonderful. -- Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other and My Wild and Sleepless Nights
Smart, sympathetic -- Sunday Times Style
Very powerfully told. -- Emma Barnett, BBC Radio 5 Live
This touching and hopeful book skilfully interweaves medical history, reporting and most movingly memoir. -- The TLS
A meticulously researched history of fetal medicine and a heartfelt account of parenting preterm babies. -- Leah Hazard, bestselling author of Hard Pushed: A Midwifes Story
We take pregnancy and childbirth for granted. Now please read The First Breath and be thankful for your childrens lives. A compelling and uplifting book. -- Heart surgeon Professor Stephen Westaby, bestselling author of Fragile Lives and The Knifes Edge
A wonderfully well written, brilliant discussion of the evolution of genetics, prenatal diagnosis, fetal and neonatal medicine, ethics and popular prejudice interwoven into a framework of [the authors] own very human story and the other mothers who tell of their experiences so graphically . . . moved me to tears. -- Professor Stuart Campbell, British fetal medicine pioneer
Exceptionally moving . . . a pleasure to read. -- Professor Dame Kay E Davies, Professor of Genetics, University of Oxford
Extraordinary . . . An absorbing and awe-inspiring account of the extraordinary foetal and neonatal medicine that is enabling a new generation of babies to thrive. -- The Bookseller
Genuinely brilliantexceptionally powerful, deep and important. -- Professor Daniel M. Davis, author of The Beautiful Cure and The Compatibility Gene
Absolutely gripping -- Harriett Gilbert BBC Radio 4 A Good Read
A book full of emotion and one that medical practitioners should read -- Jewish Chronicle
A gemSo impressed by the tenderness and science -- Dr Rana Awdish, author of In Shock
This jaw-dropping story of medical discovery is interwoven with Gordons own deeply moving story of her own experience as a new mother with a child in neonatal care. It conveys, brilliantly, the devastating emotional impact of being separated from ones child, and the shock of an unexpected diagnosis. -- Useful Reading, The Birth Trauma Association
Beautifully written -- Stevie Davies

Author Bio

Educated at Cambridge University, Olivia Gordon is a journalist who has written for publications including the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Red and Broadly.