This Watery Place
Four Essays on Gestation
Pluto Press · Print & ebook · November 20, 2025
What does it feel like to experience your body cleaving into two bodies during fierce debates about fetal separateness and reproductive rights?
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- Who it’s for
- Personal experience and political reflection meet in essays on gestation, birth, and the care of infants.
- Themes
- Motherhood and bodily transformation, Reproductive justice, Politics of birth and childcare
- Pacing
- Reflective
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Start with this bookAbout this book
What does it feel like to experience your body cleaving into two bodies during fierce debates about fetal separateness and reproductive rights? This Watery Place explores the intimate and physical experiences of conception, gestation, and neonatal care, grounding these experiences in the contemporary political landscape.
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Drawing from her journey of motherhood, Emma Heaney examines how these profound moments intersect with broader issues of reproductive justice and gendered healthcare. Through chapters on fetal separability, medicalized conception, and the realities of childbirth and infant care, the book delves into the embodied realities that are often mystified or overlooked. Heaney's narrative weaves personal anecdotes with a critical reflection on the politics of birth, childcare, and the demands of modern life. This Watery Place is a meditation on motherhood's physical and emotional transformations and a call for a world that better supports life in all its forms.
Gestation and Care
Personal experience and political reflection meet in essays on gestation, birth, and the care of infants.
Come here for
- Embodied accounts of conception, gestation, childbirth, and infant care
- Reflections on reproductive justice and gendered healthcare
Expect
- Chapters on fetal separability and medicalized conception
- A critical look at birth, childcare, and modern life
Where it sits
| Motherhood | 59% |
|---|---|
| Health & Wellness | 49% |
| Reproductive Rights & Birth Control | 22% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Healthcare Issues
- Health & Wellness
- Maternity & Women's Health Nursing
- Public Health
Show all 6 publisher categories
- Feminist Theory & Criticism
- Women's Studies
- Authors
- Emma Heaney
- Publisher
- Pluto Press
- Published
- November 20, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Motherhood and bodily transformation · Reproductive justice · Politics of birth and childcare
- Reading lane
- Healthcare Issues