Life, Almost: Miscarriage, Misconceptions and a Search for Answers from the Brink of Motherhood

After losing four pregnancies with no obvious cause, Jennie Agg set out to understand why miscarriage remains such a profoundly misunderstood, under-researched and under-acknowledged experience.

Part-memoir, part-scientific investigation, Life, Almost documents Agg’s path to motherhood and her search for answers. Tracing each tentative step of her fifth pregnancy--as her body becomes a creature she does not wish to spook--Agg dismantles the myths that we unquestioningly accept about our reproductive lives:

Why are we told miscarriage can’t be prevented when half of all miscarriages are of perfectly healthy embryos?

Why is it normal not to tell anyone you’re pregnant for the first three months?

Why don’t we know why labor starts?

Drawing on pioneering research and interviews with world-leading experts, Life, Almost is a ground-breaking book that will change how you think about miscarriage, and a moving reflection on grief and love at the edge of life as we understand it.

Jennie Agg is an acclaimed health and science journalist, whose work has appeared in the Guardian, the Times, the Mail, the Telegraph, Red, Grazia, Women’s Health and elsewhere. She is the author of the award-winning blog The Uterus Monologues, through which she has charted her own experience of recurrent miscarriage as well as helping other women to share their stories of infertility and pregnancy loss.