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The grief of having a miscarriage or losing a child during pregnancy can be so overwhelming. And because each person’s experience with miscarriages is unique, one person can relate to something that doesn’t resonate with another. But books on miscarriage and pregnancy loss can still help you feel less alone and find more resources to heal.
To help you find what you need most, I’ve broken this list into three sections: fiction books, non-fiction, and children’s books that can help with miscarriages and pregnancy loss.
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A note on content: the books in this list cover miscarriages, infertility, infant deaths, and stillbirths. If applicable, I have included additional content warnings in addition to individual books.
5 Fiction Book About Miscarriages
The light between the oceans by ML Stedman
After a miscarriage and a stillbirth, the lighthouse keeper of the married couple Tom and his wife Isabel discover a child who is swimming with a dead body in a rowboat. Although she and Tom feel compelled to report the body, Isabel is moved to claim the child as her own and keep a secret how she found it. Years later, after moving to the mainland, the ramifications of this decision for the couple and a stranger they soon meet emerge.
The End of Miracles by Monica Starkman
Content warning: Thoughts of suicide
Written by a psychiatrist, The End of Miracles examines the profound psychological effects that miscarriage trauma can have. Margo Keber and her husband tried for many years to get pregnant despite infertility problems. When she finally becomes pregnant, she is devastated if she has a subsequent miscarriage. After Margo falls into severe depression, she is hospitalized – but the psychiatric treatment she receives struggles to address her overwhelming grief.
The Library on the Edge of the World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Content warning: infidelity
Years after a devastating miscarriage, librarian Hanna Casey discovers that her husband was unfaithful. Although her job takes her to many quaint Irish villages, she cannot escape her grief or her strained relationship with her mother. But when her library is threatened with closure, she finds a community as she brings other book lovers together to save them.
Eowyn Ivey’s Snow Child
The married couple Jack and Mabel move to Alaska after a stillbirth that threatens to overwhelm them with desperation. After the first snowfall of the year, they build a snow child – only to find that the child has come to life the next day and has a name: Faina.
Mabel and Jack grow so close to this magical child that they see it as their own daughter. But the Alaskan forests are an unpredictable place, and Faina may not be all it appears to be.
The Duchess’s Day by Sarah MacLean
Content warning: infidelity
After tragedy and irreversible failure drove them apart, Duke Malcolm Bevingstoke turned to his estranged wife Seraphina with an offer – he will leave her life forever if she helps him move on. But when the two are back together and are forced to face the pain of their past together, Malcolm comes up with a new plan: help heal their emotional wounds, earn their trust, and ask for forgiveness.
5 non-fiction books about miscarriages
The Miscarriage Card: What to Expect When You Stop Expecting From Sunita Osborn
Dr. Sunita Osborn is a psychologist known for her experience with miscarriages and pregnancy loss. In The Miscarriage Map, Dr. Osborn discusses the common and often unspoken issues couples face after a miscarriage – including the impact of loss of pregnancy on a relationship, body image after a miscarriage, and dealing with emotional distress.
Waves from Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel
Waves is a graphic reminder of two women who suffer immeasurable loss after years of infertility following a stillbirth. As they process their grief, they try to rebuild their relationship amid the reality that they may not be able to conceive another child.
I had a miscarriage: a memory, a movement from Jessica Zucker
When she was 16 weeks pregnant, reproductive mental health psychologist Jessica Zucker had a miscarriage. As she navigated through her own grief, she discovered the need to change the way in which pregnancy loss is often shamed and silenced. In her memoir, Dr. Zucker tells others who have miscarried their truth and encourages them to process grief as a collective effort.
Which god is honored here? Miscarriage Writings by and for Local Women and Women in Color Edited by Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang
In which god is here honored? Indigenous women and women of the same color share their experiences of miscarriages and pregnancy loss. Central to this anthology is the fact that miscarriages disproportionately affect BIPOC and marginalized women in the US. These essays discuss body image, religious and cultural identity, and personal empowerment in relation to women of color after the loss of pregnancy.
An exact replica of an invention of my imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
In her mid-30s, writer Elizabeth McCracken was surprised by love and marriage after accepting her life as a “self-proclaimed virgin”. After nine months of pregnancy, she found that her unborn child had suddenly died. This essay discusses her grief after her late miscarriage while exploring how to move on after losing a child.
5 picture books that can help children understand miscarriages
Perfectly imperfect family of Amie Lands and Natia Gogiashvili
Perfectly Imperfect Family, a young boy and his parents remember and celebrate his sister, who died before he was born. This picture book can be helpful in explaining a miscarriage to children in a way that celebrates the memory of the unborn child.
Something happened to Cathy Blanford and Phyllis Childers
After their family experiences a miscarriage, a boy is overwhelmed by the loss of his expected sibling. But together with his family, he finds ways to deal with his grief and to honor the memory of the unborn baby. Written by a nurse with over 20 years of experience caring for grieving children, this picture book can be helpful in introducing or discussing the concept of a miscarriage with a child.
Always My Twin by Valerie R. Samuels and Najah Clemmons
Based on the author’s experience of losing her twin, Always My Twin follows a little girl as she remembers and grieves her lost sister, who died shortly after she was born. This book can be especially useful for families with children whose twin has passed away.
Where you go? by Julia Alvarez and Sabra Field
Although this book is about grief rather than pregnancy loss, where are you going? can help children process their feelings after a family miscarriage. Lyrical and calming, this picture book explores the questions children can have about death and loss.
Ladder to the moon by Maya Soetoro-Ng and Yuyi Morales
In this dreamlike picture book, a little girl named Suhaila longs for her grandma Annie, who died before she was born. One night a golden ladder appears on which Grandma Annie can spend a special moment with her granddaughter. For children who wish they could have met their unborn sibling after losing their pregnancy, Ladder to the Moon can be comforting.
