Inspiration

• Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag - A.K Summers
  A funny and revealing graphic novel about a butch lesbian experience of pregnancy.

• I Am Not Your Baby Mother – Candice Brathwaite
  A brilliant account of personal experience and the political landscape as a Black mother in the UK.

• Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and me - Bobby Baker
  A daily drawing practice that supported recovery from mental illness.

• Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood – Anne Enright
  An honest, messy and funny walk through the first few years of parenthood.

• Motherhood So White – Nefertiti Austin
  The story of a Black single adoptive mother in America during the #blacklivesmatter and Trump era.

• Hole in the Heart: Bringing up Beth – Henny Beaumont
  A graphic novel that explores the experiences of bringing up a child with Down’s syndrome.

• The Best Most Awful Job: Twenty Writers Talk Honestly About Motherhood – Edited by Katherine May
  Stories of motherhood that are diverse, relatable and true.

• My Wild and Sleepless Nights – Clover Stroud
  A funny and personal insight full of the complications and intensity of mothering a big family.

• What Have I Done?: An honest memoir about surviving postnatal mental illness – Laura Dockrill
  A vital and useful story of maternal mental health

• Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos - Lucy Knisley
  A sweet and funny exploration of pregnancy with cartoons.

• Nobody Told Me: Poetry and Parenthood - Hollie McNish
  An honest, funny and political account of pregnancy and the first two years as mother using poetry and prose.

• Mother: An Unconventional History – Sarah Knott
  A rare collection of historical stories and snippets from mothers over the centuries, woven together with the author’s own experience.

• We Live for the We – Dani McClain
  A brilliant account of the political, social and creative aspects of raising a Black child in America.

• Skint Estate: Notes from the Poverty Line – Cash Carraway
  A powerful account of being a single mother living in ‘austerity Britain’.

• Motherwell: A Girlhood – Deborah Orr
  A fascinating account of growing up and the legacy of a complex mother-daughter relationship.

• Argonauts - Maggie Nelson
  A literary and complex account of building a queer-family.

• My Black Motherhood – Sandra Igwe
  The journey of a young Black mother, coping with sleepless nights, anxiety and loneliness after the birth of her first daughter.

Remarkable journals from the past

18th century

• Fanny Burney - Journals and Letters
  A memoire, political and social history, and a letter to a certain ‘Miss Nobody’

19th century

• Ida B. Wells - The Memphis Diary – An Intimate Portrait of the Activist as a Young Woman
  African-American teacher, journalist, civil rights pioneer and suffragist

20th century

• Adrienne Rich - Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

  A personal and political account of motherhood

• Anne Frank’s House - Dreaming, Thinking, Writing

  Diary of a 13 year-old Jewish girl hiding from the Nazi Occupation in World War II

• Frida Kahlo - The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

  By the Mexican artist and revolutionary

• Virginia Woolf - A Writer’s Diary

  British writer and diarist, author of ‘A Room of One’s Own’

• Anais Nin - The Diary of Anais Nin, Volumes 1-4

  By the French-born writer and eroticist

Best blogs

• Tell me a good birth story
  Natalie Meddings

• Maddie’s Musings
  Maddie McMahon – doula and author of Why Mothering Matters

• Smalltimemum1
  Eve Cannavan

• PND and Me
  Rosey Wren

• Birth, Art and Culture
  Laura Godfrey-Isaacs for All4Maternity

• The key to maternal mental health? Make it a collective experience again
  Carmine Pariante & Hannah Lamdin for Mental Elf

• Journaling in Pregnancy: Maternal Mental Health Improved by Creative Activities
  Amy Dignan for Artlyst

• Inspire the Mind
  Mental health blog by the Stress, Psychiatry and Immunology Lab

Mother artists

• Birth Rites – the world’s first collection of contemporary art on birth

• Dance Mama – supporting mothers who dance

• Desperate Artwives – a collective of visual artists who are mothers

• Mothers who make – a national initiative to support mothers who are artists

• Prams in the Hall – a performance company that promotes parenting

• Procreate – an arts organisation that supports mother artists