Thread

The words 'Caesarean Section,' are powerful. They conjure up strong emotions. For some, feelings of doubt, shame and judgement. For others a sense of safety, relief, validation and reassurance. But they are rarely spoken of in the ecstatic tones with which we celebrate so-called natural, or vaginal birth. They are rarely called beautiful, or associated with an innate sense of feminine power. Can Caesarean birth also be magical? Mystical? Awe-inspiring? Knotting its way through history, culture, folklore and human experience throughout the world, Thread seeks to reframe the Caesarean Section on its journey through myth, magic and medicine.Journalist Hannah Marsh blends the medical with the mystical, charting the development of a now common procedure, once a dance between life and death: a last-ditch attempt to save a child whose mother lay dead or dying. Weaving in the arc of her own experience, a journalist's insatiable curiosity, and the stories of women, contemporary, historical and mythical, who endured, sacrificed and drove developments, Thread is an unflinching but compassionate examination of a procedure that nowadays remains both pedestrian and miraculous.

Hannah Marsh is a journalist; she has written for The Telegraph and The Independent. Born into a medical family, with two Oxford University professors and scientists as parents, and an international community of scientists, researchers and specialists around her, Hannah defied the family convention to carve out a career in writing and the arts.Hannah gave birth via Caesarean in 2017. After being diagnosed with PTSD following the birth, discovering more about the procedure, and its history, became both a fascination and a key part of her healing. She first wrote about her discoveries in a personal essay for online culture magazine Demented Goddess in 2019.Writing about women and gender has long been a focus for Hannah; she wrote a series of columns for The Independent focusing on feminist and gender issues and she has penned columns for The Vagenda. Hannah explores the Caesarean experience with a journalist's tenacity, curiosity and eye for a story, a scientific edge and a storyteller's creative approach, giving new life to forgotten women's voices.