Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When Heineman (Before Porn Was Legal), a professor at the University of Iowa, became pregnant at age 45, she and her partner Glenn opted for a home birth with a certified nurse-midwife, expecting an uneventful delivery of her second child. In the first pages of this riveting memoir, however, something goes terribly wrong during the labor process, and readers are carried along on a frightening wave of events leading to a stillborn birth. Thereupon, Heineman analyses every decision and turn she took from conception to gestation to delivery and beyond. In so doing, she not only probes her own grief, but gives life to the very child she has lost. Courage was required to write this raw story, and it also takes some to follow along with Heineman as she brings her embalmed baby home from the funeral parlor and reads to him. She also examines the practices of midwives and hospital physicians while scouring her memory for any mistake she (or her caregivers) may have made. As Heineman admits, "there is nothing happy about a dead baby. Not beginning, not middle, not end." Her story reveals the depths of emotional pain associated with stillbirth and reveals that parental love has no boundaries. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A wrenching account of how the author gave birth to a stillborn baby and coped with the loss of her child. Heineman (History and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies/Univ. of Iowa; Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse, 2011, etc.) was approaching her mid-40s when she and her partner decided to try for a baby. Conception happened relatively quickly, though, and the pregnancy was easy. Against medical advice to the contrary, she decided to have her baby at home with only a midwife in attendance. Heineman knew an out-of-hospital delivery was risky and that her advanced maternal age made her vulnerable to problems during pregnancy as well as childbirth. But she was also unwilling to have her baby in an impersonal hospital setting. Heineman remained optimistic even after her pregnancy stretched beyond 40 weeks: Her health was excellent, her baby was in good condition, and Deirdre, her midwife, had been practicing midwifery more than 20 years "with no bad outcomes." Just as she was about to give birth, an unexpected placental abruption occurred, and the child, a boy she had nicknamed Thor, was born dead. Heineman found that little support existed to help grieving parents of stillborn children make sense of their losses. She also discovered the grim truth that, in a society afraid to acknowledge the reality of death, the proper place of corpses was not among loved ones but "away from the living." With tenderness and lucidity, Heineman writes about the bonding rituals she and her partner developed around Thor's body, which a sympathetic funeral director allowed them to keep before interment. These descriptions are disturbing yet refreshing for their honesty. However, some readers may find the author's protracted post-mortem of both her decision to give birth at home and its consequences overdone and obsessive. At times self-indulgent but provocative.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
