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About this book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“A long overdue reality check.” —Oprah Daily
“Honest, unapologetic, and brutally funny.” —Stephanie Danler, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetbitter
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Oprah Daily, Town & Country, and Brit + Co
Belletrist Book Club Pick
The Times (London) Book of the Week
An unflinching motherhood memoir that dares to ask what happens when “what to expect when you’re expecting” turns out to be months of rage, anguish, brain fog, and a total surrender of sex, career, and identity.
“The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose.” Welcome to Sarah Hoover’s candid and propulsive take on motherhood where she turns the ecstatic narrative women have been fed—one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery—on its head.
Like most of us, Sarah Hoover grew up imagining a certain life for herself, and when she moved from Indiana to New York City to study art history, the life she’d imagined began falling into place. She got her degree in art history, landed a job in a gallery, made friends, and met interesting artists, one of whom became her husband. But when Hoover got pregnant, everything in her life began to unravel.
She felt like an imposter in her own body. She grew distant from her friends and husband. Anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame threatened to swallow her. She also experienced trauma at the hands of one of her doctors—a stark trigger. And when her son was born, there was no… joy.
Her despair was persistent, even with help, therapy, and pills. Grieving a lost identity and angry at the world around her, she found herself despising her baby, her husband, and herself. She was afraid it might not end. With the help of a doctor’s diagnosis, Hoover began to understand the cluster of symptoms that informed her experience—she was drowning in postpartum depression—and that she wasn’t a bad mother or a failed woman.
At its core, The Motherload is about learning to forgive yourself. It’s a rejection of the cultural idea of the mother as a perfect being. And it’s an honest, propulsive, and often funny take on the vicissitudes of marriage, life, and parenting—a motherhood memoir unlike any other.
“A long overdue reality check.” —Oprah Daily
“Honest, unapologetic, and brutally funny.” —Stephanie Danler, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetbitter
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Oprah Daily, Town & Country, and Brit + Co
Belletrist Book Club Pick
The Times (London) Book of the Week
An unflinching motherhood memoir that dares to ask what happens when “what to expect when you’re expecting” turns out to be months of rage, anguish, brain fog, and a total surrender of sex, career, and identity.
“The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose.” Welcome to Sarah Hoover’s candid and propulsive take on motherhood where she turns the ecstatic narrative women have been fed—one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery—on its head.
Like most of us, Sarah Hoover grew up imagining a certain life for herself, and when she moved from Indiana to New York City to study art history, the life she’d imagined began falling into place. She got her degree in art history, landed a job in a gallery, made friends, and met interesting artists, one of whom became her husband. But when Hoover got pregnant, everything in her life began to unravel.
She felt like an imposter in her own body. She grew distant from her friends and husband. Anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame threatened to swallow her. She also experienced trauma at the hands of one of her doctors—a stark trigger. And when her son was born, there was no… joy.
Her despair was persistent, even with help, therapy, and pills. Grieving a lost identity and angry at the world around her, she found herself despising her baby, her husband, and herself. She was afraid it might not end. With the help of a doctor’s diagnosis, Hoover began to understand the cluster of symptoms that informed her experience—she was drowning in postpartum depression—and that she wasn’t a bad mother or a failed woman.
At its core, The Motherload is about learning to forgive yourself. It’s a rejection of the cultural idea of the mother as a perfect being. And it’s an honest, propulsive, and often funny take on the vicissitudes of marriage, life, and parenting—a motherhood memoir unlike any other.
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Yes, you can access The Motherload by Sarah Hoover in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale
- Chapter 1: Baby Drop
- Chapter 2: Balthazar
- Chapter 3: Love and Marriage
- Chapter 4: Pregnant
- Chapter 5: Mother Wound
- Chapter 6: Birth Story
- Chapter 7: Coming Home
- Chapter 8: First Signs
- Chapter 9: Off the Deep End We Go
- Chapter 10: Brain Explosion
- Chapter 11: Brain Switch
- Chapter 12: ‘A’ for ‘Autonomy’
- Chapter 13: The Walk
- Chapter 14: Mom Strikes Again
- Chapter 15: Phone Games
- Chapter 16: The Confrontation
- Chapter 17: The End Is Just the Beginning
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Copyright