The First Breath

A touching, insightful and engaging memoir.

The Lancet

Pacy and accessible . . . It is the female experience of such invasive surgeries that remains the focus here; expectant mothers steeling themselves for “needles as long as rulers” and learning to navigate a “strange form of knowledge” about a child that has yet to enter the world.

Prospect - who named The First Breath one of the best science books of 2019

Part memoir, part analysis of neonatal and postnatal care. It’s wonderful.

Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other and My Wild and Sleepless Nights

Smart, sympathetic

Sunday Times Style

Very powerfully told.

Emma Barnett, BBC Radio 5 Live

This touching and hopeful book skilfully interweaves medical history, reporting and – most movingly – memoir.

The TLS

A meticulously researched history of fetal medicine and a heartfelt account of parenting preterm babies.

Leah Hazard, bestselling author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story

We take pregnancy and childbirth for granted. Now please read The First Breath and be thankful for your children’s lives. A compelling and uplifting book.

Heart surgeon Professor Stephen Westaby, bestselling author of Fragile Lives and The Knife’s Edge

A wonderfully well written, brilliant discussion of the evolution of genetics, prenatal diagnosis, fetal and neonatal medicine, ethics and popular prejudice interwoven into a framework of [the author’s] own very human story and the other mothers who tell of their experiences so graphically . . . moved me to tears.

Professor Stuart Campbell, British fetal medicine pioneer

Exceptionally moving . . . a pleasure to read.

Professor Dame Kay E Davies, Professor of Genetics, University of Oxford

Extraordinary . . . An absorbing and awe-inspiring account of the extraordinary foetal and neonatal medicine that is enabling a new generation of babies to thrive.

The Bookseller

Genuinely brilliant…exceptionally powerful, deep and important.

Professor Daniel M. Davis, author of The Beautiful Cure and The Compatibility Gene

Absolutely gripping

Harriett Gilbert – BBC Radio 4 A Good Read

A book full of emotion and one that medical practitioners should read

Jewish Chronicle

A gem…So impressed by the tenderness and science

Dr Rana Awdish, author of In Shock

This jaw-dropping story of medical discovery is interwoven with Gordon’s own deeply moving story of her own experience as a new mother with a child in neonatal care. It conveys, brilliantly, the devastating emotional impact of being separated from one’s child, and the shock of an unexpected diagnosis.

Useful Reading, The Birth Trauma Association

Beautifully written

Stevie Davies