About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing and Hope. Jessica Berger Gross, editor, $24.50

Revealing a wide spectrum of perspectives, this powerful collection offers comfort and community for the millions of women (and their loved ones) who experience this all-too-common kind of loss.

The Baby Project. Sarah Ellis, $9.95 (ages 10 to 14)

An unexpected pregnancy brings joy to this family with three almost-grown kids. Eleven-year old Jessica is thrilled to have a new baby sister and not be the youngest anymore. But when baby Lucie dies of SIDS Jessica watches the wide-ranging way grief plays out on her family’s once-solid foundation and wonders if they’ll ever feel such joy again.

Bereavement Care for Childbearing Women and Their Families. Caroline Hollins Martin & Eleanor Forrest, $53.10

For many bereaved parents, the care provided by health professionals at birth — from midwives to antenatal teachers — has a crucial effect on their response to a loss or death. Providing care to grieving parents can be demanding, difficult and stressful, with many feeling ill equipped to provide appropriate help. Equipping the reader with fundamental skills to support childbearing women, partners and families who have experienced childbirth-related bereavement, this book outlines:

• What bereavement is and the ways in which it can be experienced in relation to pregnancy and birth
• Sensitive and supportive ways of delivering bad news to childbearing women, partners and families
• Models of grieving
• How to identify when a bereaved parent may require additional support from mental health experts
• Ongoing support available for bereaved women, their partners and families
• The impact on practitioners and the support they may require
• How to assess and tailor care to accommodate a range of spiritual and religious beliefs about death.

Carry You With Me. Alanna Knobben & Katie Berggren, $22.00 (ages 4-8)

Carry You With Me is a heartfelt story of a mother’s love, loss, healing and hope. Whimsical illustrations are brought to life with deeply rooted words and symbols. Together we remember the great loves we have lost and cherish all the ways we carry them with us forever.

Companioning at a Time of Perinatal Loss: a Guide for Nurses, Physicians, Social Workers, Chaplains and other Bedside Caregivers. Jane Heustis & Marcia Jenkins, $27.95

Many obstetric caregivers feel unprepared to handle the intensity of perinatal loss. Most hospitals have bereavement care standards but offer little instruction in following them. Written by seasoned support nurses, Companioning at a Time of Perinatal Loss outlines a framework for bereavement care in the obstetrical arena. Based on Dr. Wolfelt’s principles of companioning, it describes loss from the family’s perspective, defines the caregiver’s role, offers bedside strategies and reviews the work of mourning in the weeks and months after. Real-life stories teach what is important during times of intense sorrow.

Coping with Infertility, Miscarriage, and Neonatal Loss: Finding Perspective and Creating Meaning. Amy Wenzel, $26.95

Pregnancy loss can be devastating, regardless of whether it is early or late in pregnancy or in the short period after a baby is born. In many instances, similar emotions are experienced when a couple learns that their fertility treatments were unsuccessful.

This wise, compassionate book teaches proven cognitive-behavioral strategies for coping with infertility and pregnancy loss. You will learn about common grief experiences that occur with such losses, as well as ways to find perspective and meaning, identify and change unhelpful thoughts, gain acceptance, reconnect with others, and reengage in life. By applying these strategies, you can break out of the cycle of sadness and rumination and heal with grace and dignity.

Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby, 3rd Edition. Deborah Davis, $29.95

The heartache of miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death affects thousands of families every year. Empty Cradle, Broken Heart offers reassurance to parents who struggle with anger, guilt, and despair during and after such a tragedy. In this new and updated edition, Deborah Davis encourages grieving and strives to cover many different kinds of loss, including information on issues such as the death of one or more babies from a multiple birth, pregnancy interruption, and the questioning of aggressive medical intervention. There is also a special chapter for fathers as well as a chapter on "protective parenting" to help anxious parents enjoy their precious living children. Doctors, nurses, relatives, friends, and other support persons can gain special insight. Most importantly, parents facing the death of a baby will find necessary support in this gentle guide.

Ended Beginnings: Healing Childbearing Losses. Claudia Panuthos & Catherine Romeo, $39.95

Because of its wide scope (infertility, miscarriage, sudden infant death, abortion, release to adoption; emotional disappointments including handicapped babies, caesareans, premature or traumatic birth; and help for grieving children), Ended Beginnings helps parents and caregivers understand the great burden of loss, and how to find a healing path forward.

Expecting Sunshine: a Journey of Grief, Healing, and Pregnancy after Loss. Alexis Marie Chute, $23.95

After her son, Zachary, dies in her arms at birth, visual artist and author Alexis Marie Chute disappears into her "Year of Distraction." She cannot paint or write or tap into the heart of who she used to be, mourning not only for Zachary, but also for the future they might have had together. It is only when Chute learns she is pregnant again that she sets out to find healing and rediscover her identity-just in time, she hopes, to welcome her next child. In the forty weeks of her pregnancy, Chute grapples with her strained marriage, shaken faith, and medical diagnosis, with profound results. Glowing with riveting and gorgeous prose, Expecting Sunshine chronicles the anticipation and anxiety of expecting a baby while still grieving for the child that came before-enveloping readers with insightful observations on grief and healing, life and death, and the incredible power of a mother's love.

Expecting the Unexpected: an Honest Look at Miscarriage, Postpartum Depression, and Motherhood. Amy Kim, $22.75

Amy Kim believed that having a baby would be one of the most exciting and happiest experiences in her life. But she never could have predicted having to endure a miscarriage and postpartum depression, in addition to the many other obstacles inherent with motherhood.

Join Amy on her sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious, and always relatable journey through motherhood. Experience with her the ups and downs, and the need to laugh at herself and her situation as she learns to embrace her new identity as a mother.

Ghostbelly: a Memoir. Elizabeth Heineman, $20.95

In our mother-blaming culture, women who make unconventional choices find themselves under fire. And Elizabeth Heineman makes unusual choices. She has a baby at an advanced maternal age, chooses home birth with a midwife, and then, when her baby is born dead, she spends time with him. In Ghostbelly, Heineman's brave, disarming, and stunning memoir, she recounts her indescribable grief after delivering a stillborn son, her extraordinary and intimate bonding with the baby's body before the burial, and the impossible task of saying goodbye.

Ghostbelly provides this necessary tale of motherhood — the need to invent our own rituals of grieving, and the unexpected space we occupy when birth and death coincide.

A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby's Life is Expected to Be Brief. Amy Kuebelbeck & Deborah Davis, $20.50

A GIFT OF TIME is a gentle and practical guide for parents who decide to continue their pregnancy knowing that their baby's life will be brief. 

When prenatal testing reveals that an unborn child is expected to die before or shortly after birth, some parents will choose to proceed with the pregnancy and to welcome their child into the world. With compassion and support, A GIFT OF TIME walks them step-by-step through this challenging and emotional experience — from the infant's life-limiting prenatal diagnosis and the decision to have the baby to coping with the pregnancy and making plans for the baby's birth and death. 

A GIFT OF TIME also offers inspiration and reassurance through the memories of numerous parents who have loved a child who did not survive. Their moving experiences are stories of grief — and of hope. Their anguish over the prenatal diagnosis turns to joy and love during the birth of their child and to gratitude and peace when reflecting on their baby's short life.

Full of practical suggestions for parents and for caregivers, A GIFT OF TIME also features the innovative concept of perinatal hospice and palliative care. Caring and thoughtful, the book helps parents embrace the extraordinary time they will have with their child.

Healing Your Grieving Heart after Miscarriage: 100 Practical Ideas for Parents and Families. Alan Wolfelt, $12.95

Compassionate advice and simple activities to help you though your grief after miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, or other early pregnancy loss.

Healing Your Grieving Heart after Stillbirth: 100 Practical Ideas for Parents and Families. Alan Wolfelt & Raelynn Maloney, $12.95

Stillbirth is an overwhelming loss that is profound and life changing. This compassionate guide offers practical ideas for families including tips on communication between spouses, explaining the death to others, reconciling anger or guilt, remembering the baby who died, and others.

Interrogating Pregnancy Loss: Feminist Writings on Abortion, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth. Edited by Emily Lind & Angie Deveau, $34.95

Feminist theories of the body, reproduction, and the institution of motherhood typically focus on issues of rights, autonomy, and choice. These themes become increasingly complicated when applied to questions of reproductive loss. Interrogating Reproductive Loss: Feminist Writings on Abortion, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth contains essays, short stories, and artwork that imagine a feminist epistemology of loss.

Whereas biomedical and feminist literature treat abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth as differently conceptualized events, this collection explores the connections between these three categories. How have feminist debates and strategies around reproductive choice invigorated the cultural conversation about miscarriage, and stillbirth? How can we imagine more nuanced engagements with the spectrum of experiences that are at stake when a pregnancy ends? And how can we effectively create a space where women are given the opportunities to “identify and ‘own’” (Cosgrove 2004) the ways that loss makes meaning for those who grieve and/or celebrate the end of pregnancy?

A beautiful, inspiring story of loss, grief and healing that ultimately, is a celebration of life.

Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Perinatal Loss. Joann O'Leary & Jane Warland, $75.50

Despite research which highlights parents’ increased anxiety and risk of attachment issues with the pregnancy that follows a perinatal loss, there is often little understanding that bereaved families may need different care in their subsequent pregnancies. This book explores the lived experience of pregnancy and parenting after a perinatal loss.

Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Perinatal Loss develops a helpful framework, which integrates continuing bonds and attachment theories, to support prenatal parenting at each stage of pregnancy. Giving insight into how a parent’s world view of a pregnancy may have changed following a loss, readers are provided with tools to assist parents on their journey. The book discusses each stage of a pregnancy, as well as labor and the postpartum period, before examining subjects such as multi-fetal pregnancies, reluctant terminations, use of support groups, and the experiences of fathers and other children in the family. The chapters include up-to-date research findings, vignettes from parents reflecting on their own experiences and recommendations for practice.

Written for researchers, students and professionals from a range of health, social welfare and early years education backgrounds, this text outlines what we know about supporting bereaved families encountering the challenges of a subsequent pregnancy.

Midwives Coping with Loss and Grief: Stillbirth, Professional, and Personal Losses. Doreen Kenworthy & Mavis Kirkham, $49.50

The experience of stillbirth and other losses in pregnancy at what is usually a time of great joy is tragic for everyone involved, including midwifery professionals. Although research increasingly shows how profound the effects of loss can be, few studies have explored the effects of pregnancy loss — which often leads to other personal and professional traumas such as loss of autonomy or a workplace — on midwives.

This in-depth investigation uses a phenomenological approach to capture midwives’ experiences of loss and grief in their own words, and encompasses both pregnancy loss and wider professional and personal issues. It then makes recommendations to enhance midwives' resilience and ability to cope appropriately, whilst giving maximum support to their clients. Reflections on the emerging implications for midwifery education and practice further broaden the scope of the analysis. The insights in this book will be of great use to midwifery managers and supervisors. They will also help midwives to nurture themselves, their colleagues and their clients.

Miscarriage, Medicine & Miracles. Bruce Young, $24.50

Providing up-to-date information on physical and mental health, nutrition, and technology, Miscarriage, Medicine & Miracles is a proactive tool and comforting resource — from an expert with real-life reasons to give every woman hope for a successful pregnancy.

A compassionate and practical guide that explores the causes of miscarriage, the tests and procedures that can help prevent a repeat loss and the best methods of recovering and preparing to conceive again. The book includes reassuring advice on the grief, disappointment and depression that can accompany pregnancy loss and the anxiety that may come with the next positive pregnancy test.

Scholarly, passionate and personal, this is a thought-provoking exploration of pregnancy loss through the eyes of an anthropologist and mother.

Perinatal Loss: a Handbook for Working with Women and Their Families. Sheila Broderick & Ruth Cochrane, $50.50

This practical, compassionate text guide professionals in providing the best possible care through the physical and emotional pain of a pregnancy loss — from early miscarriage, to neonatal death.

The Prenatal Bombshell: Help and Hope When Continuing or Ending a Precious Pregnancy After an Abnormal Diagnosis. Stephanie Azri & Sherokee Ilse, $52.95

Finding out your unborn child has been diagnosed with a poor or fatal prenatal diagnosis is devastating news sure to reverberate through your family’s life forever. The emotional aspects of such a pregnancy and the practical implications of an adverse diagnosis are difficult to navigate. The Prenatal Bombshell is a warm and understanding companion guide through the journey from diagnosis and beyond once you’ve decided to either continue or end your precious pregnancy. Issues such as managing the pregnancy, delivery, termination, creating memories, future babies, and the long term impact of such a traumatic experience are all covered in detail. The lived experiences of other women who have gone through this journey are also included to provide hope, support, and guidance through difficult times. 

The Prenatal Bombshell does not attempt to convince women to make a particular choice about their pregnancy. It supports them from their choice onwards in a way that is honest, informative, and reliable. Filled with stories and testimonies, this is a helpful book to have during, and well beyond, a poor prenatal diagnosis. 

This outstanding compilation of personal accounts and practical, supportive advice is and exceptional resource for families affected by SIDS and infant loss and those who care for them.

Silent Birth: When Your Baby Dies. Sharon Covington, $8.95

Based on the experiences of parents who have lost an infant during pregnancy, at — or shortly after — birth, Silent Birth will help you know what to expect and what to do when suddenly faced with the trauma of your baby’s death. Though nothing will take away the pain, this booklet is designed to help you find a meaningful way to commemorate your baby’s life and manage your grief.

This brief, compassionate guide is written for parents but will be of value to professionals, family and friends as well.

A Silent Sorrow, Pregnancy Loss: Guidance and Support for You and Your Family. I. Kohn & P. Moffitt, $34.95

A Silent Sorrow has long been considered the "bible" for families seeking emotional and practical support after a pregnancy loss. Well organized, easily accessible, and filled with practical suggestions for each topic it covers, A Silent Sorrow is a positive first step for bereaved parents and their families, providing support and guidance to help resolve the grief and enable them to look to the future with hope.

Stewart's Tree: a Book for Brothers and Sisters When a Baby Dies Shortly After Birth. Cathy Campbell, $19.95 (ages 3+)

Ellen's new baby brother Stewart has been 'lost'. Ellen looks in all the cupboards for Stewart, and even in the washing machine — then her family help her understand that Stewart has died and isn't going to come back. Together they plant a tree for Stewart, so they will always have a place to remember him.

A therapeutic children's book for explaining sibling loss to young children, colourfully illustrated to emphasise focusing on the happy memories of a lost child. The book ends with a guide to bereavement for children written by qualified clinicians.

Still: a Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood. Emma Hansen, $24.95

Emma Hansen is 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant when she feels her baby go quiet inside of her. At the hospital, her worst fears are confirmed: doctors explain that her baby has died, and she will need to deliver him, still. Hansen gives birth to her son, Reid, amidst an avalanche of grief. Nine days later, she publishes a candid essay on her website sharing photos from the delivery room. Much to her surprise, her essay goes viral, sparking positive reactions around the world. Still shares what comes next: a struggle with grief and confusion alongside a desire to better understand stillbirth, which is experienced by more than two million women annually, but rarely talked about in public.

At once honest, brave, and uplifting, Still is about one woman’s search for her own definition of motherhood, even as she faces one of life’s greatest challenges: learning to live after loss.

Through, Not Around: Stories of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss. Allison McDonald Ace, Ariel Ng Bourbonnais & Caroline Starr, $21.00

Infertility and pregnancy loss can be devastating, yet both are often private sorrows for the one in six people who cope with the experience. This collection offers personal stories about what it's like to go through the emotional and physical facets of infertility, miscarriage, and pregnancy loss: the pain, sadness, and desperation, the hope, humour, and frustration. Through, Not Around offers reassurance to those in the midst of their own struggles that they are not alone and that it is possible to find acceptance and strength on the other side of grief. The way forward is by going through the grief, not around it.

Allison McDonald Ace, Ariel Ng Bourbonnais, and Caroline Starr are co-founders of The 16 Percent, a website dedicated to sharing stories of pregnancy loss and infertility.

To Full Term: a Mother’s Triumph Over Miscarriage. Darci Klein, $23.50

A powerful and empowering memoir of a woman's fight to bring her fifth pregnancy to full term after years of heartbreak and horrific loss.

To Full Term is the gripping memoir of Darci Klein's pregnancy with her son Sam, and the story of one woman's struggle to give her baby a fighting chance. From refusing to accept outmoded obstetric guidelines to going head-to-head with stubborn medical professionals, to overcoming her own paralyzing fears, Darci faced each challenge to achieve her goal. What she learned on her journey about defending her own reproductive health and coping with the emotional strain of high-risk pregnancy will empower any woman who wants to do all she can to have a full-term, healthy baby.

Unspeakable Losses: Understanding the Experience of Pregnancy Loss, Miscarriage & Abortion. K. Kluger-Bell, $18.50

This comforting and healing book is a must — not only for women who have at one time experienced pregnancy loss but also for their partners, sisters, daughters, brothers, and friends. Kim Kluger-Bell's extensive field work as a therapist specializing in the psychodynamics of reproductive crises strips away the shrouds of silence surrounding pregnancy losses and abortions, giving new voice to these "unspeakable losses," in a culture that has rendered its discussion taboo.

Filled with in-depth stories of those who have experienced losses and solid, practical advice along with mourning rituals and services, Unspeakable Losses is a necessary companion to all those who have experienced pregnancy loss and those who care about them.

Vessels: a Love Story. Daniel Raeburn, $30.95

An unforgettable portrait of a marriage tested to its limits.

When Dan, a writer with a passion for underground comics, and his wife Bekah, a potter dedicated to traditional Japanese ceramics, met through a mutual friend, they swiftly fell in love. “Of all the women I’ve ever met,” Dan told a friend, “she’s the first one who felt like family.” But at Christmas, as they prepared for the birth of their first child, tragedy struck.

Based on Daniel Raeburn’s acclaimed New Yorker essay, Vessels is the story of how he and Bekah clashed and clung to each other through a series of unsuccessful pregnancies before finally, joyfully, becoming parents. In prose as handsomely unadorned as his wife’s pottery, Raeburn recounts a marriage cemented by the same events that nearly broke it. Vessels is an unflinching, enormously moving account of intimacy, endurance, and love.

When a Child Dies: How Pediatric Physicians and Nurses Cope. Robert McKelvey, $29.95

How is it possible for practitioners of the healing arts to cope with the deaths of children and the devastating grief of their families? Physician Robert McKelvey looks squarely at this painful question and gets to the heart of it... in When a Child Dies the focus is on the grieving process of physicians and nurses for their child patients. There is a wealth of information here that will be recognizable and comforting to those already in the medical profession and that will help in the training of those about to enter the profession. Physicians, nurses, and medical students, as well as sociologists, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, the clergy, and families, will find this book invaluable.

When Your Child Dies: Tools for Mending Parents’ Broken Hearts. Avril Nagel & Randie Clark, $16.95

The death of your child is devastating. No parent feels that he or she should outlive his or her child. WHEN YOUR CHILD DIES provides grief-stricken parents with the tools to navigate the grieving process and addresses possible challenges including the intrusion of the media, the justice system, medical system and coroners. 

Grieving parents will learn how to reduce anxiety and depression and promote healthy self-soothing, identify and address issues that linger and cause emotional pain following the child’s death and incorporate their loss into their lives in healthy ways. There are suggestions for talking with surviving children about death and grief, how to handle the impact on extended family systems and social relationships, how to foster a continued loving relationship in their lives with the dead child's memory, among other practical advice, as well as providing a comprehensive list of resources and reading for ongoing support.

WHEN YOUR CHILD DIES is a comprehensive handbook for grief-stricken parents, grief counseling organizations, resource centers and library grief collections.

Where's Our Baby? Valerie Oldfield, $19.99

A little boy is trying to make sense of the confusion surrounding the death of his baby sister. He must ask questions to the adults around him and find a way to interpret the things they do and say in order to find his own sense of peace.