Book report: Motherwit

Onnie Lee Logan (as told to Katherine Clark). Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story, 1991

My score

2/10

My review

This is not an inspirational book. This is a book that seeds a few ugly, shocking birth stories, while attempting at some history. It is hard to read, anticlimactic, and lacking useful information.

Imagine a hot summer day, humidity in the high-nineties. You are on the front porch of a hand-built house in the middle of rural Alabama. There are 14 or so children running around -- all borne from the same mother. On the porch swing sits Onnie, a large black woman in her sixties, sipping sweet iced tea with fresh mint, the ice cubes ringing gaily in her glass. Onnie's slow, southern drawl is telling you her life story. Slowly. Meanwhile, mosquitoes as big as your fist are buzzing around your head, and you have a nagging feeling you have to be somewhere else.

The tone of Motherwit is just that: Onnie Lee Logan dictating her memoirs. The southern drawl, the slang, and the verbal self-corrections are all immaculately captured. I literally had to read the book aloud to myself on several occasions to see what on earth some words were supposed to be. Pick'n some co'n -- oh!

Onnie portrays a black-hating, rural, poverty-ridden world in Alabama. She introduces her large family (her mother spent almost all her adult life pregnant), and talks about her early days as first a home-care, and, later, midwife assistant.

In the second half of the book, however, the tone takes a turn for the worse. Since when did "memoirs" become synonymous with "here, let me describe to you the things that were so awful, so terrible, so heart-wrenching, that I cannot get them out of my mind -- and you should suffer with me?" That which has been read, cannot be unread.

Unlike Ina May's guides, which are full of information for anyone interested in how midwives function, or in labor, or in labor customs, Onnie's memoirs have virtually no useful information. I was hoping to discover the labor techniques for poor women living in squalor, or read some inspiring or heartening birth stories told from a black midwife's perspective, but alas. The setting was a background on which to paint an ugly canvas and dig up painful memories that just will not die.

I hate posting bad reviews of books, and I was hesitant to post this one. But there you go.

Book report: Spiritual Midwifery

Gaskin, Ina May, Spiritual Midwifery, Fourth Edition

My score

7/10

My review

Oh, Ina May... If you only pick up this book to flip through and look at all the photos of laboring hippies, do it. Even after four editions of the book, she still talks about feeling telepathic with all laboring mothers ever, how childbirth is so heavy, and uses her own terminology, such as "butt-hole" for anus, "taint" for perineum -- because "'taint what's above and 'taint what's below", or "cootchie" (what is that?). Spiritual Midwifery will teach you how to be a midwife in the astral sense of the word, using your inner peace to deliver the baby not only in the physical plane but energetically as well.

As with Ina May's Guide to Childbirth (see my review), the first half of Spiritual Midwifery is birth stories, including the story of Ina May's own tragic first birth. This section of the book is a history lesson on how The Farm came into being and how the hundreds of people traveled across the country in school busses, birthing babies along the way and picking up the knowledge they would need to become the birthing community they are today. Some birth stories are long, some are short; some end beautifully while others end tragically. All are inspirational.

The second half of Spiritual Midwifery focuses on the medical side of giving birth: how to conduct prenatal exams, how to turn a breech baby, how to sew up a tear, how to revive an asphyxiated baby, and so on. The figures are numerous and informative. After reading Ina May's descriptions, I feel intimately familiar with the procedures that go on in a delivery room.

Ina May has shared with me natural birth as it is meant to happen, introduced me to many unlikely complications for moms and their fetuses (and what is normally done about it), and has given an in-depth, heartfelt tour of the midwife's maternity and birthing room.

Any day now

Any day now: This was my standard post-37-weeks answer when anyone would ask, gazing at my large, round form, when my baby was due. Even knowing that most first-time mothers do not deliver before 40 weeks (I think 41 is the mean), somehow I knew that, at 38 weeks, it was "any day now." I delivered at 38 1/2 weeks.

My first doula client is due any day now. That is, she is about 35 1/2 weeks along but it is becoming clear that it will be soon. Her baby has dropped ("lightening") and is in position. She has been having fairly consistent Braxton-Hicks contractions for six days, getting progressively stronger. And at home, she has been boiling diapers and hanging clothes lines. Sure, it could take another month, but probably not. If she holds out until Sunday, she can deliver at the birth center rather than the hospital. Hang in there, girl!

As the time draws near, I am both excited for her and apprehensive about my own role as her doula. She is my first client, and I have quite a bit of performance anxiety. What if I do not fulfill her expectations? What if I say or do something wrong? And my biggest fear -- what if she feels unsupported, afraid, and alone?

There is only one way, short of those hypnosis re-trainers of dubious credentials, to get over something, and that is to do it. My mind tells me I will be a fine doula for her. I know her well, and we have discussed all aspects of her pregnancy at length. She is as overprepared as I am. Yet as my mind is certain I am ready (and prepared) to be a strong and gentle support person in her labor, my emotions are raging. I have even been having anxiety dreams!

Do doulas get labor support -- while on the job? Maybe I should hire one for myself!