It’s Mother’s Day in Australia today and I have just finished reading The Birth of the Pill by Jonathan Eig. It made me realise how this contraceptive profoundly changed the experience of motherhood for me and for many women across the world. The book is truly fascinating and reads like a thriller. Here’s the blurb from the cover:
In the winter of 1950 Margaret Sanger, then seventy-one, and who had campaigned for women’s rights to control their own fertility for five decades, arrived at a Park Avenue apartment building. She had come to meet a visionary scientist with a dubious reputation, more than twenty years her junior. His name was Gregory Pincus. Continue reading →
My favourite breastfeeding photo, graduating university and feeding my daughter
About 28 years ago I was privileged to become friends with a fantastic group of women. We were all new mums, learning the tiring, challenging and beautiful art of mothering together. We were passionate about our role as mothers and were all members of the Nursing Mothers Association, now the Australian Breast Feeding Association. I can’t remember what I learnt at our regular meetings but I well remember the support, understanding and bond I shared with these women. On the days that I doubted my ability and when I felt as if I was going crazy from lack of sleep they were the ones that made the tea and passed the tissues.
We all breastfed our babies. The five of us suckled 14 babies. We weathered Continue reading →
In the winter of 1950 Margaret Sanger, then seventy-one, and who had campaigned for women’s rights to control their own fertility for five decades, arrived at a Park Avenue apartment building. She had come to meet a visionary scientist with a dubious reputation, more than twenty years her junior. His name was Gregory Pincus. Continue reading 
