Catalogue Baby

A Memoir of (In)Fertility

A few months after Myriam Steinberg turned forty, she decided she couldn’t wait any longer to become a mother. She made the difficult decision to begin the process of conceiving a child without a partner. With her family and friends to support her, she picked a sperm donor and was on her way.

But Myriam’s journey was far from straightforward. She experienced the soaring highs and devastating lows of becoming pregnant and then losing her babies. She grappled with the best decision to make when choosing donors or opting for a medical procedure. She experienced firsthand the silences, loneliness, and taboos that come with experiences of fetal loss. Unafraid to publicize her experiences, though, she found that, in return, friends and strangers alike started sharing their own fertility stories with her. Although the lack of understanding and language around fetal loss and grief often made it very hard to navigate everyday life, she nonetheless found solace in the community that rallied to sustain her.

Beautifully illustrated by Christache, and told with humor, honesty, and courage, Catalogue Baby is one woman’s story of tragedy and beating the odds, and is a resource for all women and couples who are trying to conceive. Catalogue Baby is a compassionate portrait of fertility and infertility that hasn’t been seen before.

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