Thread: A Caesarean story of Myth, Magic and Medicine - Hannah Marsh

Written by Hannah Marsh
Read by Hannah Marsh
Format: M4B
Bitrate: Variable
Unabridged

Listening Length
11 hours and 30 minutes

Audible release date
19 Jun. 2025

‘I start to see my own experience not as a woeful result of a system or a body that has let me down, but as a birth experience as ancient, rich and potent as any other kind of birth.’

Back in 2017, journalist Hannah Marsh was about to give birth to her son after months of preparation, reading and hypnobirthing classes. Following thirty hours of induced labour, Hannah was quickly acquainted with a caesarean section: a process she had not physically or emotionally prepared for.

In an attempt to heal, Hannah began interrogating the following questions: why do the words ‘caesarean section’ bring up feelings of doubt, shame and judgement for some, but a sense of safety, relief, validation and reassurance for others? Why are those two powerful words rarely spoken of in the ecstatic tones with which we celebrate so-called ‘natural’, or vaginal birth? Why is the procedure rarely called ‘beautiful’, or associated with an innate sense of feminine power?

Working her way through history, culture, and folklore, it wasn’t long before Hannah stumbled upon the pioneering voices and fascinating tales history seems to have forgotten. Take Koronis, mother of Aesclepius, the Greek God of surgery, or Dr James Barry, born Margaret Anne Bulkley, who performed an early and rare successful c-section, in which both mother and child survived, in South Africa in 1826.

Weaving in the arc of her own experience, a journalist’s insatiable curiosity, and the stories of both contemporary and historical women who endured and drove developments, Thread is an unflinching but compassionate examination of a procedure which is much more than surgery and medicine.