What We Talk About When We Talk About Birth: An Essay on Sharing Birth Stories

It's an elemental, almost animalistic urge—the expectant mother's hunger for birth narratives. We are inundated with how-to guides and month-by-month pregnancy manuals when what we truly crave are artful, entertaining, unvarnished accounts of labor and delivery. We want to know what really happens—the good, the bad, and the ugly. In anticipation of the publication of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Women Writers, celebrated author Elissa Schappell brings us "What We Talk About...