The First Breath – a powerful medical memoir about the extraordinary fetal and neonatal medicine bringing a new generation of babies into the world.

In stores this month.

‘Fascinating and moving.’ – Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt

About the book

Olivia Gordon’s The First Breath is a story about the love and the fear every parent feels. It is a story of the heroic lengths doctors, mothers and sick babies go to, all before the first breath. ⠀

The First Breath is the first popular science book about the pioneering fetal and neonatal medicine bringing into the world a generation of babies without precedent, who would not have lived if they had been born only a few decades ago.

Gordon explores the female experience of medicine through her own personal story and sensitive, intimate case histories of other mothers’ high-risk births. She details the relationship mothers develop with doctors who hold not only life and death in their hands, but also the very possibility of birth.

From the dawn of fetal medicine to neonatal surgery and the exploding field of perinatal genetics, The First Breath tells of fear, bravery and love. Gordon takes the reader behind the closed doors of the fetal and neonatal intensive care units, resuscitation rooms and operating theatres at some of the world’s leading children’s hospitals, unveiling the untold story of how doctors save the sickest babies.

Excellent … A serious journalistic investigation into foetal and neonatal medicine … reads like a thriller.
– The Times

Heartstopping. – Daily Mail

Part memoir, part analysis of neonatal and postnatal care. It’s wonderful. – Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other

Categories International Non-fiction

Tags Memoir New books New releases Olivia Gordon Pan Macmillan SA The First Breath