Book Review: Womb by Leah Hazzard

This book was an incredible read. One I think will stay with me for a while, if not the rest of my life. Leah writes with whit and sarcasm a book that is interesting, infuriating, eyeopening and informative. In this book, Leah discusses the life of the womb, from birth (being born as female) to conception, threw pregnancy, loss, trauma and unforeseen circumstances, menopause and beyond. She talks in depth about the functionality of the womb as an organ and the role it plays throughout these different phases in our lives and it leaves you wondering why especially for those who have wombs, we’re not given this extremely interesting information through our biology or even sex ed classes. Understanding the role the womb plays in our lifetime is so much more active than I ever knew.

The deeper understanding of the womb that this book has left me with makes me excited to talk about it with my clients. They say knowledge is power and it’s so true. I’m excited to tell them about how our wombs play an active role (maybe even more so than the sperm) in conception. How through pregnancy it does more than just house our babies, like how it contracts from the get go and being able to explain in better detail the process of the womb postpartum and how that can have an effect in the first few weeks.

For me personally, what stood out the most is the reality of the lack of funding and therefor research that is going into womb. This book and the plethora of knowledge it holds feels like it’s still just the tip of the iceberg and it leaves me hungry to know more. 

I was left a little underwhelmed in the chapter on menopause. All preceding and succeeding chapters feel a little fuller. It is noted that the writer has had personal experience with pregnancy, birth, endometritis, hysterectomy etc. so perhaps this fullness comes from personal experience that she just hasn’t had with menopause yet, or maybe it’s due too a lack of research. Maybe there really isn’t more to say on the topic than what she already did. Either way, this chapter fell short for me and I would have loved to have had more to chew on.

I would really love to know more about menopause. This book has made me realize I have a very deep longing to understand the womb more, perhaps even get involved with more research on the organ. I also found myself wanting to know more about hormones, their roles and effects and especially their role in menopause. As a 34 year old with the hopes of more children on the horizon, menopause still feels like ‘the next step’ in the journey of my womb and myself. I have seen the havoc menopause can wreak on ones body and mental state. I want to know more, I want to understand and see if this is the only way to cope. I’m very interested in looking at menopause further.