Life WIthout Baby

Nonfiction by lisa manterfield

Are you facing a life without children and don’t know how to begin making peace with your situation?

Maybe you’re dealing with infertility and you’re out of viable options or options you’re willing to pursue. Or perhaps your window of opportunity for motherhood is closing in front of you and you feel hopelessly lost and alone.

These nonfiction titles by Lisa Manterfield address the isolation of facing a life without children, when motherhood has always been in your plans.

Childless Not by Choice Awareness ribbon

Life WIthout Baby

Surviving and thriving when motherhood doesn’t happen

“What if I never get to be a mother?”

When this doubt first takes hold, it can knock you completely off your feet. You feel cheated, frustrated, and no longer sure of your place in society, your family, or your circle of friends. Now…imagine you could spend time with someone who really understands how you feel, who lets you express all the things that once seemed whiny, self-indulgent, or just plain crazy, and who confides that she once felt that way too.

Life Without Baby founder, Lisa Manterfield, once stood where you are and not only survived, but thrived. Now she shares what she learned from her own experiences and from the women of the community she created. She’ll help you:

Know when it’s time to cut your losses and let go of your dream
Give yourself permission to grieve the loss that few others can truly understand
Learn some emotional aikido moves to handle social challenges, such as baby showers, Mother’s Day, and the dreaded “Do you have kids?” question
Rediscover your passion and find joy again, without enduring a complete life makeover
Get pragmatic about aging without children and building a new kind of family

Based on her small-group workshops and popular ebook series, this book offers a combination of hard-won lessons, gentle queries, and real-world suggestions. Manterfield is a comforting and supportive companion who will guide you gently down your own path to making peace with being childfree-not-by-choice and thriving in a new happily ever after.

Praise for Life without baby

“Page by page, Lisa holds your hand with gentle, unflinching support, openly sharing her story with you, and giving you permission, guidance, and gentle queries that help in your journey of healing.” —Tracey Cleantis, author of The Next Happy: Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a New Way Forward
“If you’re newly coming to terms with this, or if you’ve been living this life for a decade or more, or if you have a friend or family member you want to help, you will find belonging, food for thought, and further hope for a future, wonderful life without baby.” — Linda Rooney, Founder of No Kidding in NZ
“A comforting book, full of practical help for women who wanted to have children and are trying to move past the overwhelming panic and grief that comes with realizing it’s not going to happen. I wish I’d had a book like this when I was 40.” —Sue Fagalde Lick, author of Childless by Marriage

Life WIthout BaBy

Steel Rose Press ✧ 2016 ✧ 247 pages

ISBN (ebook): 9780983012597
ISBN (paperback): 9780983012535

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I'm Taking My Eggs and Going Home

How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood

2012 Independent Publishers Book Awards winner

Lisa Manterfield was a sensible 32-year-old when she met The One—a man who sparked a passion for tango, an urge to break down closed doors, and a deep-rooted desire to reproduce. Five years later she was a baby addict, hiding her addiction, plotting a maternity ward heist, and threatening anything that got in her way, including her beloved husband and his pesky practicality.

In this gritty, award-winning memoir, Manterfield traces her spiraling route from rational 21st-century woman to desperate mama-wannabe. She examines the siren song of motherhood, the insidious lure of the fertility industry, and the repercussions of being childless in a mom-centric society. But this isn’t just another infertility story with another miracle baby ending, nor is it a sad introspective of a childless woman; this is a story about love, desire, and choices—and ultimately about hope. It is the story of a woman who escapes her addiction, not with a baby, but with her sanity, her marriage, and her sense-of-self intact.

Praise for I’M Taking My Eggs and Going Home

“In this memoir of love and loss, Lisa Manterfield dares to reveal the depths of her desperation, and in so doing, dares to reveal the depths of her heart.” — Jennie Nash, author of The Victoria’s Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer
“I’m Taking My Eggs And Going Home is a wonderful book, full of heart and hope. As funny as it is moving. I couldn’t put it down.” — Carrie Friedman, author of Pregnant Pause: My Journey Through Obnoxious Questions, Baby Lust, Meddling Relatives, and Pre-Partum Depression
“Lisa tackles a taboo subject with candor and aplomb. Her voice is a welcome sanity check for women left to wonder how society became so fixated on motherhood.” — Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, author of Silent Sorority: A (Barren) Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found

“A raw, transparent account of the gut-wrenching journey of infertility. Lisa writes with poetic, reckless abandon. Anyone who has ever suffered through infertility will thank her for pouring on the page the painful process of coming to terms with never being a mom. A true sister in the journey of infertility!” —Stephanie Baffone, LPCMH, NCC licensed and board certified mental health therapist
“The book was so much more than an infertility story. It was an account of real life and the barrage of situations women face in adulthood. I hope many women will read this and feel comforted, whether they have faced infertility or not.” —Lily Hay, author of The Infertile Mind