The days after my first miscarriage were among the loneliest and darkest of my life. I never want other women to feel so isolated in such a common experience, which is why I’m sharing with you some of the best books about miscarriage.
This collection was a community effort to create. It not only includes books that helped me personally, but also those that Undefining Motherhood’s readers specifically loved and recommend. It’s clear that after miscarriage, books can bring us a sense of community in a time that otherwise feels intensely lonely.
We hope this list of books to read after miscarriage will bring you healing, solace, and a sense that you’re part of a strong community of women who have warriored their way through the pregnancy loss journey.
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Best Books About Miscarriage
These books will help you navigate the miscarriage process, understand what to expect, and provide advice for helping you cope.
(1) The Miscarriage Map by Dr. Sunita Osborn
It’s no wonder this book was the third most highly recommended by our readers. The Miscarriage Map takes a unique approach to the subject of miscarriage, as it combines the author’s personal and clinical experiences.
Dr. Sunita Osborn is both a miscarriage warrior and a clinical psychologist.
She holds nothing back in this book, “offer[ing] women, their partners, and loved ones” all the “nitty gritty realities of miscarriage, the accompanying emotional roller coaster, and specific steps to take to help them get through this loss.”
(2) What God Is Honored Here? Writings on Miscarriage by and for Native Women and Women of Color, edited by Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang
I cannot possibly describe this book in terms that touch its own summary. So I will use that summary!
A collection of stories and essays from a variety of genres, What God is Honored Here? “is a literary collection of voices of Indigenous women and women of color who have undergone miscarriage and infant loss, experiences that disproportionately affect women who have often been cast toward the margins in the United States of America.
From the story of dashed cultural expectations in an interracial marriage to poems that speak of loss across generations, from harrowing accounts of misdiagnoses, ectopic pregnancies, and late-term stillbirths to the poignant chronicles of miscarriages and mysterious infant deaths, What God Is Honored Here? brings women together to speak to one another about the traumas and tragedies of womanhood.”
(3) The Brink of Being: Talking About Miscarriage by Julia Bueno
Written by psychotherapist Julia Bueno, the book is a comprehensive look at all aspects of miscarriage: “psychological, emotional, medical, and cultural.”
It’s aim: to break the silence around pregnancy loss.
(4) Not Broken: An Approachable Guide to Miscarriage and Recurrent Pregnancy Loss by Lora Shahine, MD
This is the most highly recommended book by Undefining Motherhood readers that it is not a memoir. Why? It’s empowering and comprehensive.
This research-based guide is written by a medical doctor, but it uses approachable language and ideas to help empower miscarriage patients to be their own best advocates.
It considers medical, emotional, and lifestyle factors surrounding the subject of pregnancy loss, and while based in Western medicine, it also considers Eastern approaches to loss. Our readers love the open-minded, all-encompassing, inclusive nature of Not Broken.
Miscarriage Books About Personal Experiences
These books are memoirs, or they contain individual essays, in which a pregnancy loss warrior recounts her experience struggling through loss and coping with life after miscarriage. These books will help ease your sense of isolation and show real-world experiences of living with grief.
(5) Saying Goodbye: A Personal Story of Baby Loss and 90 Days of Support to Walk You Through Grief by Zoe Clark-Coates
A combination memoir and grief support guide, the author recounts the story of her 5 miscarriages and provides grieving readers with careful, guided support through their grief journeys.
This was the most frequently recommended book by readers of Undefining Motherhood, and it receives rave reviews from both critics and readers.
(6) Kid Gloves: 9 Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley
A beautifully unique approach to a pregnancy loss book, this graphic novel tells the author’s own story of infertility and miscarriage.
Trigger warning and spoiler alert: it ultimately ends with a successful birth, but only following a tumultuous, traumatic pregnancy and childbirth experience.
(7) The Twentieth Year: A Memoir of Miscarriage by Maureen Pollard
The Kindle-only memoir recounts the author’s journey through recurrent pregnancy loss, with one successful live birth breaking up the cycle of grief.
It also provides resources for grieving parents and their support networks.
(8) An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
This award-winning 2010 memoir is not for the faint of heart (or currently pregnant), but its warmth makes many Undefining Motherhood readers feel loved and understood.
The books tells the author’s story of losing her son during her ninth month of pregnancy. With honest brutality, McCracken talks about love, loss, and grief: “She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.”
Christian Books on Miscarriage
All of the above books are specifically not religious in nature. But some women search desperately for books that help them use their faith to walk through miscarriage grief. These pregnancy loss books are written specifically for those women.
(9) It’s Not Supposed to be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength when Disappointment Leaves You Shattered by Lysa TerKuerst
Recommended by many of our readers, this book, while not about miscarriage specifically, provides a Christian-based approach to overcoming grief.
In this book, the author tells her own story, but also challenges readers to accept unexpected encounters with grief as the “divine appointments our souls really need to radically encounter God.”
Conception and Pregnancy After Miscarriage
There are myriad medical causes of miscarriage, many of which we don’t yet know.
Each of the books in this section is written for an everyday reader, tackling one of the causes that have been either proven or theorized.
(10) It Starts with the Egg by Rebecca Fett
Perhaps the most famous book in the infertility community, It Starts with the Egg works under the premise that recurrent miscarriage, or miscarriage among women of advanced maternal age, is often due to poor egg quality.
It provides a very specific, research-based 3-month program to help women with various fertility-related struggles improve their egg quality.
While I didn’t use this book during my recurrent miscarriage journey, I know numerous women who swear by its concrete, straight-forward methods.
(11) One in Four: Shifting the Balance of Pregnancy Loss by Dr. Barbara Toppin
This book, written by an OBGYN, focuses on one specific common cause of recurrent pregnancy loss: blood clotting disorders.
This book talks about her methods for preventing pregnancy loss due to blood clotting, the effectiveness of those methods in her own practice, and how to advocate for yourself as a patient.
(12) Is Your Body Baby Friendly? by Dr. Alan Beer
Alan Beer is one of the preeminent names in the field of Reproductive Immunology (RI). An area of study that’s gaining a stronger reputation with time, reproductive immunology aims to answer some of the many unknown questions about recurrent miscarriage.
It works under the belief that the body’s immune system is often responsible for pregnancy loss.
Updated in 2019, Is Your Body Baby Friendly? discusses the latest research in reproductive immunology, includes a list of clinics practicing RI, and helps patients advocate for themselves with their own doctors.
Miscarriage Journals
One of my favorite types of miscarriage books is actually a journal. Why? Because they’re written to help you actually work through your grief.
These miscarriage journals will help support you through your loss, and through walking through life after miscarriage when the pain is not so recent.
They include practical tips, carefully crafted activities, and basic journaling.
(13) Mourning Retreat: A Journal Through the Sisterhood of Miscarriage Grief by Katy Huie Harrison, PhD
This guided journal combines my own experience with recurrent pregnancy loss with the tools I’ve developed during years of therapy. This guided journal helps you move through the unimaginable process of miscarriage grief, using experience-based approaches that helped me process my own grief and learning to move forward.
In Mourning Retreat, you’ll find a sense of community and the feeling of a warm hug from sisters in loss who understand.
You’ll also gain an actual community through our private Facebook group, available only to women who are part of our mourning retreat.
(14) A Journal Guide to Conceiving After Loss by Shelly Mettling
This journal guides you through 3 months of the emotional process of trying to conceive after loss.
In these pages, you’ll find basic information to help anyone trying to conceive, such as ovulation tracking charts. Written from one miscarriage mama to another, this journal also includes prompts and exercises to help you through the emotional roller coaster of trying to conceive after loss.
Tell us about your favorite miscarriage books in the comments!
Posts for Families Experiencing Miscarriage
- What to expect when miscarrying
- Coping with miscarriage
- Fathers dealing with miscarriage
- Miscarriage memorials
- Baby showers after miscarriage
- How to deal with miscarriage
- Miscarriage quotes
Posts for Miscarriage Support People
- What to say to someone who had a miscarriage
- Miscarriage support
- Gifts for miscarriage
- Helping a friend through a miscarriage
I would add “Loved Baby” to this list!! Helped me more than anything!
I would love to add “Finding Hope in Seasons of Loss and Disappointment” – By Angelica Gunn to this list. Extremely helpful during my journey through grief & loss. It is an interactive prayer journal book.