Tag Archives: Childbirth

The Midwife by Gay Courter

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Synopsis:
The tale of a Russian midwife who emigrates to America during the pogroms of the early 1900s.

Review:
The Midwife was a completely satisfying reading experience, not just because the plot and characters were so engaging, but because I loved the author’s perspective on birth. It’s as if Ina May Gaskin were writing historical fiction–it’s so rare to see birth treated like a normal event, not an emergency. I am not a birth junkie but I did have both my kids at home and loved my midwives so much, and it was great to read a book that portrayed the special heroism of midwives who believe that birth can happen at home.

The story itself is gripping. Hannah is training in Moscow when restrictions against Jews begin to tighten, so she travels on a harrowing train ride back to her home in St. Petersburg, where the violence becomes personal. She and her family decide to flee, at great personal and financial cost, and settle on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. NYC at the turn of the 20th Century is one of my favorite fictional settings, and I just ate up the perspective on Jewish culture and society, from least to greatest. There’s a romance element that really worked for me because it felt grounded in emotional truth. Loved it!

The Midwife’s Confession by Diane Chamberlain

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Synopsis:
After the suicide of their friend, an underground home birth midwife, best friends Tara and Emerson discover a mare’s nest of secrets that threaten the happiness they’ve worked so hard to create.

Review:
I found no surprises in The Midwife’s Confession, which is a decent but not great read. I found the whole thing a little frustrating, waiting for the characters to catch up with me. But it was nice to see home birth portrayed as a safe and reasonable option, rather than an excuse for drama.

Labor of Love: A Midwife’s Memoir by Cara Muhlhahn

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Synopsis:
The autobiography of a homebirth midwife in New York City.

Review:
Labor of Love is a book that really meant a lot to me. I had both of my daughters at home with midwives and worked quite hard this spring lobbying Albany to pass the Midwifery Modernization Act. My first midwife is featured heavily in the book as she is a good friend to Muhlhahn, and it was nice to encountar her in a different way.

Muhlhahn became a divisive figure after an unflattering profile in New York Magazine followed by her very public role at the center of Ricki Lake’s documentary The Business of Being Born. When I became pregnant with my second daughter, my original midwife was unavailable for my due month, and she recommended I contact Muhlhahn. Honestly I was hesitant to do so because her persona in the film seemed like one that would not jive with my personality. I have been assured by a few close friends who worked with her that she’s much more of a calm presence than the movie made her out to be. I did make an appointment to meet her but before that happened I met with another midwife and made an instant connection. (She ended up missing the birth because my second daughter also has superfast powers, but I would work with her again in a heartbeat.)

The honesty of the book really appealed to me and I was fascinated by her journey from working as a lay midwife to going to nursing school. I wish she had more stories of her years as a lay midwife, since they are unlicensed and often work underground, but the book was too short. Maybe she can be convinced to write a follow-up. I’d love to read that.

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

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Synopsis:
A young woman discovers that she is cursed to go mad on the birth of her first child unless she can complete three impossible tasks.

Review:
Woven from the lyrics of the ballad Scarborough Fair, made famous by Simon and Garfunkel, Impossible successfully places a fairy tale in the context of modern life without sacrificing any magic at all.

Lucy Scarborough was raised by foster parents after her mother, Miranda, went mad on Lucy’s birth. Now Lucy finds herself pregnant at 17, and discovers a diary kept by Miranda during her pregnancy claiming that unless Lucy can complete the tasks named in the ballad, Lucy will go mad when her own daughter is born. Lucy chooses to believe, and sets out to weave a seamless shirt with no needles, find an acre of land between the saltwater and the sea strand, and plow it with one grain of corn using a goat’s horn. In the backdrop lurks the figure of the Elfin King, who seems to rule over Lucy’s plight, though she does not know yet exactly how.

I tore through this book. It’s fast paced, romantic, magical, and skillfully plotted. I’m not always a fan of updated fairy tales but this one really worked, I think because Werlin didn’t try to make it too contemporary. There was just enough realism for me to connect with the characters, and just enough magic for me to buy the premise.

Misconceptions by Naomi Wolf

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Synopsis:
The personal is political, as feminist thinker Naomi Wolf uses her c-section as a springboard for the way in which the maternity care system in America infantilizes women.

Review:
There’s nothing in Misconceptions that hasn’t appeared in any number of other exposes of the state of maternal care in the US, such as Jennifer Block’s Pushed, which I reviewed a few months ago. However, it’s the way in which Wolf presents the information that makes this a must read, even if you’ve read it all before.

Wolf uses the popular pregnancy guide What To Expect When You’re Expecting and deconstructs its message, in order to show how the book takes power away from pregnant women. For example, the book presents a diet plan that is impossible to follow in its entirety. It’s simply too much food. But the book doesn’t expect you to follow the diet exactly, because it assumes that you’re not smart enough. So it gives you too much food in the hopes that you will eat some of it. This condescension is mirrored in the way that obstetricians and hospitals treat pregnant and laboring women, who are not to be trusted to make choices that are in the best interests of their babies.

Wolf had a particularly horrific birth experience which ended in a c-section that she describes in horror-movie terms. It is hard not to be moved when she describes the pain of a friend who is haunted by the thought that while recovering she could not know if her baby was crying. It pained my heart to read these stories, because there is something seriously wrong when 30% of laboring women end up with major abdominal surgery and all of its concomitant issues. Women are let down by a system that cares more about the bottom line than about their health and that of their children.

Wolf faltered in the section discussing the first months of her daughter’s life. It seemed that she described a caricature of a life, not the thing itself. She alluded to needing to supplement her daughter, and I would’ve liked to have heard more about how that came about, since she seemed pro-breastfeeding. Many women have difficulties and it would have been illuminating and instructive to hear hers.

I probably should not read any more books on this topic. They upset me too much. I am thankful I live in New York State where homebirth midwives are legal and where statistics on interventions are in the public record.

Pushed: The Painful Truth about Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care by Jennifer Block

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Synopsis:
A muck-raking expose of what happens in labor and delivery wards across America.

Review:
Pushed upset me–so much so, that I considered not finishing the book. I have an innate mistrust of doctors and hospitals after some rough treatment I received during a miscarriage last year. where I was not informed of all my options and wound up in the ER with an infection. My quest to find a new care provider ultimately led me to choose home birth with a midwife for my low-risk, healthy pregnancy. It was a wonderful, peaceful experience.

Reading Pushed, you’d think that almost every hospital birth is rife with drama and that almost every OB would rather do a C-section than “allow” a woman to deliver vaginally. Since I don’t have a hospital experience of my own to draw upon, I can’t add to the conversation. However, among my friends, I have heard some horror stories. One woman I know delivered in a closet that was commonly used as a passage, so while she was pushing on her hands and knees there were hospital personnel constantly walking past. Another friend of mine was told at 39 weeks that her baby was “too small” and offered the choice of induction or a C-section–right then and there. Having heard horror stories about Pitocin, and because she had not even begun to dilate, she chose C-section. Her baby was 6lbs and she was unable to breastfeed (she chose to pump for 7 months and is my hero for that). On the flip side, I have several friends who chose the conventional epidural birth and had wonderful, easy experiences with no drama or chaos.

Block makes a convincing case that protocol on labor and delivery wards are driven not by what is best for individual women, but by fear of litigation. The stories that made me the saddest were those about women who expressly declined certain interventions and were given them anyway. The worst was a woman who showed up at the hospital with her baby crowning. Because she had had a previous cesarean, the hospital called in a judge who granted custody of the baby to the hospital and she was forced to have a repeat c-section. The concept of “informed consent” is being eroded day after day by hospitals who view vaginal delivery as a “procedure” to be granted or withheld, rather than as a natural, normal, biological process. Block writes:

What’s best for women is best for babies. And what’s best for women and babies is minimally invasive births that are physically, emotionally, and socially supported. This is not the experience that most women have. In the age of evidence-based medicine, women need to know that standard American maternity care is not primarily driven by their health and well-being or by the health and well-being of their babies. Care is constrained and determined by liability and financial concerns, by a provider’s licensing regulations and malpractice insurer. The evidence often has nothing to do with it.

Today women have unprecedented access to the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves–and therefore the best decisions for their babies. They are in fact in a far better position to make evidence-based decisions than their doctors. They have a right to make those decisions, and they should make those decisions.

The goal is to have a healthy family.

The must-read chapters in this book concern the role of midwifery care in the US, care that is illegal in many states. Whenever I think about a midwife being prosecuted for assisting a birth, the image of a woman being tried as a witch comes to my mind. I love the concept that a midwife doesn’t deliver a baby, she assists at the birth of a family. I really felt that my midwife (and my chiropractor, but that’s another story) shepherded me into motherhood, because the care I got was so personal and intimate.

I am the first to say that I am glad that we have modern medical technology. The friend of mine who was issued the c-section ultimatum was a c-section herself. Her mother’s placenta peeled off, which is a genuine life-or-death situation for the baby. I am beyond glad that my friend is here today, thanks to the doctors who intervened. However, I believe it’s just as important that women who choose to refuse interventions are supported in their decisions, because most births are simply not emergencies.

After reading Pushed, you will never watch “A Baby Story” the same way again.

Non Fiction Meme

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I’m late getting to Gautami’s Non Fiction Meme.

* a) What issues/topic interests you most in non-fiction, i.e, cooking, knitting, stitching, there are infinite topics that have nothing to do with novels? Books about food, books that explain scientific topics for general readers, biography, memoir, history, travelogues.

I love reading books about my hobbies, particularly knitting and cooking. My library is filled with books of film history, criticism, and theory. I like some books on Christianity by authors like CS Lewis and Dan Allender.

Lately I’ve been reading books on natural family living and breastfeeding because I’m interested in becoming a post-partum doula. I also enjoy reading about natural childbirth and the politics of childbirth and breastfeeding.

I went through a true crime phase in my 20s, but I can’t stomach them now. Small Sacrifices was a particular favorite.

I also like a good muckraking read, like Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.

* b) Would you like to review books concerning those?

I’ve been reviewing some crafting books here, and I’d love to review some cookbooks!

* c) Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? Tell reasons for what ever you choose.

I have fantasies about reviewing for the New York Times, but right now it’s just a hobby. I’ve done film reviewing professionally, however, and enjoyed it.

* d) Would you recommend those to your friends and how?

I’m the queen of recommending books–it’s a big reason why I blog!

* e) If you have already done something like this, link it to your post.

Browse the tags below-

* f) Please don’t forget to link back here or whoever tags you.

I found it at Shelf Life, A Reader’s Journal, and Framed and Booked.

The Big Book of Birth by Erica Lyons

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Synopsis:
A comprehensive, non-judgmental overview of labor and delivery.

Review:
I have a dear friend who is a doula and a childbirth educator, and she gave me this book when I became pregnant. The Big Book of Birth is written by the woman who runs Realbirth, where my friend used to teach (before she moved) and where my husband and I will be taking childbirth classes. Continue reading →