5 Engaging Novels About Pregnancy to Read While You’re Expecting

Looking for pregnancy reading that isn't another how-to guide? Discover five engaging novels about pregnancy to get lost in while you're expecting.

By Julie Tyler Ruiz, PhD, CNC

CONTENTS:

• When you want a story instead of another pregnancy guide
• 5 novels for your pregnancy reading list
• Just for fun: if your pregnancy were a novel

When you want a story instead of another pregnancy guide

Pregnancy comes with a lot of reading.

You can find apps telling you what's happening in your body week by week, books about what to eat, birth preparation guides, breastfeeding books, baby books, and, of course, What to Expect When You're Expecting. All of that information can be useful. But at some point, you may want to put down the advice and read a good story instead.

You may still want to read about pregnancy and motherhood, though. There's something compelling about encountering pregnancy in fiction, where it unfolds through characters, relationships, family, humor, romance, and imagination rather than another list of things you should or shouldn't be doing.

That's the idea behind this collection of novels about pregnancy.

I've deliberately skipped the pregnancy horror and dystopian fiction that turn up on many reading lists, along with books that are especially sexually explicit or dwell on graphic or traumatic childbirth. Instead, I looked for stories that are absorbing, beautiful, funny, romantic, hopeful, or deeply moving.

Some venture into difficult territory. You'll find heartbreak, complicated families, longing, loss, and the messier parts of becoming a mother. But each offers a story worth getting lost in.

Think of this list as pregnancy reading for when you still want to stay on topic, but you've had your fill of helpful advice.

5 novels for your pregnancy reading list

Where the Heart Is (p. 1995) by Billie Letts

Seventeen-year-old Novalee Nation is seven months pregnant when her boyfriend abandons her at a Walmart in a small Oklahoma town. With almost no money and nowhere to go, she secretly takes up residence in the store. What begins as a precarious situation gradually becomes a story about the eccentric, generous people who gather around Novalee as she gives birth, raises her daughter, and creates a life and family for herself.

Pregnant readers may especially appreciate a story in which impending motherhood becomes the beginning of a much larger transformation. Novalee's circumstances are far from ideal, but the novel is warm, funny, and ultimately hopeful, with a strong emphasis on friendship, community, and the unexpected ways people show up for one another.

Like Water for Chocolate (p. 1989) by Laura Esquivel

Set in Mexico around the time of the Mexican Revolution, Like Water for Chocolate follows Tita, the youngest daughter in the De la Garza family. Family tradition dictates that she remain unmarried and care for her mother, separating her from the man she loves. Tita pours her emotions into cooking, and in the novel's magical-realist world, those emotions pass into the people who eat her food. Pregnancy, birth, motherhood, family traditions, and the relationships among generations of women are woven throughout the story.

For a pregnant woman or new mom, the novel offers a lush and imaginative exploration of women's bodies, food, family, love, and the expectations passed from one generation to another. It's more bittersweet than some of the other books on this list, but its combination of magical realism, romance, sensory detail, and female experience makes it a beautiful change of pace from practical pregnancy reading.

Little Earthquakes (p. 2004) by Jennifer Weiner

Four women find their lives intersecting during the transition into motherhood. Becky, Kelly, and Ayinde meet while pregnant and soon find themselves navigating babies alongside marriage problems, difficult relatives, work, changing bodies, and expectations about what motherhood is supposed to look like. Their circle eventually expands to include Lia, a woman carrying a painful secret of her own.

This may be especially appealing if you're nearing the end of pregnancy or have recently had your baby. Weiner turns many of the subjects covered earnestly in pregnancy and parenting books—prenatal classes, breastfeeding, postpartum bodies, marriage, sleep deprivation—into the material of friendship and fiction instead. The result is frank and funny while still taking seriously how profoundly a baby can rearrange a woman's life.

The Red Tent (p. 1997) by Anita Diamant

Inspired by the brief biblical account of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, The Red Tent imagines a much fuller life for her and for the women surrounding her. Dinah grows up among her mothers Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah, learning the traditions of women and eventually becoming a midwife. Pregnancy, menstruation, fertility, birth, motherhood, and women's relationships with one another occupy the center of the world Diamant creates.

Pregnant readers may appreciate how thoroughly the novel places women's reproductive lives within a larger story of female community and generational wisdom. Its ancient setting also provides a striking change of perspective: pregnancy and childbirth appear here as experiences women have shared across centuries, surrounded by other women who have traveled the same path. The story contains sorrow and violence, but also intimacy, resilience, and a strong sense of connection among women.

The Bright Side of Disaster (p. 2007) by Katherine Center

Jenny Harris is heavily pregnant and preparing for life with her fiancé, Dean, when he abruptly disappears. The very next day, she goes into labor. Suddenly, Jenny is facing single motherhood. As she learns to care for a newborn, she also has to navigate exhaustion, heartbreak, a new group of mom friends, and a helpful neighbor who makes her wonder whether the life she planned is necessarily the life she wants.

For pregnant readers, this one moves almost seamlessly from late pregnancy into the bewildering early months with a baby. Katherine Center draws on the overwhelm of new parenthood for both comedy and emotional depth, making this a good choice when you want a novel that recognizes how hard those early months can be while remaining spirited, romantic, and hopeful.

Just for fun: if your pregnancy were a novel ...

One of the pleasures of reading fiction about pregnancy is seeing how an experience that can feel so ordinary one moment and extraordinary the next becomes the stuff of stories.

So what would make it into yours?

Maybe it's the strange food you couldn't stop eating, the friendship that deepened while you were pregnant, the family drama unfolding in the background, or the conversation with your partner that you'll remember forever. Maybe it's the moment you first felt your baby move. Or perhaps it's something seemingly insignificant that would make a novelist take notice: the song you played every morning, the neighbor you kept running into, the place you went to think, or the ridiculous thing that made you cry one afternoon.

New motherhood brings its own cast of characters and plot twists: middle-of-the-night feedings, unexpected friendships, changing relationships, small victories, and days that don't remotely go according to plan.

You don't have to write any of it down. But it can be fun to imagine your pregnancy or early motherhood as a novel in progress—and wonder which details a writer would know were worth keeping.

For more meaningful reading material for moms, check out my book lists, "8 Books About Motherhood: A Curated List for Picky Readers" and "16 Books for Moms to Inspire, Encourage, and Restore."