January Birthworker Bookclub: Memoir Reads

I remember being the new, inexperienced nurse.  Man, I thought I knew so much! I loved when the senior nurses would tell me stories about the things they used to do.  One story that sticks out was a nurse, Jill, telling me that to suction out a baby, they would use their MOUTHS to create the suction! And that MECONIUM would occasionally get in and need to be spit out. Blaggedy-barf-hurk-aaaaah!  I loved these stories because they made me feel a kind of horror-slash-delight.  A smugness that those days of doing ridiculous things was over (HA!). So if you, like me, love those stories, and are even finding yourself now as a senior nurse sharing the dumb shit we used to have to do, memoirs are for you.  They are a great way to broaden your awareness of different lived experiences, both of the birthworkers before us and the people we serve making their way through the maternity care system.

Here are my top 7 memoirs:

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

When I was pregnant, this show was new and everyone was talking about it.  So I decided to try it.  Halfway through the first episode I had to turn it off, realizing I had absolutely NO business watching this while pregnant.  A few years later, I picked up the book which was the basis for the show. It’s truly inspiring and makes me proud to be an OB nurse, while also reminding me of what a duty it is.

Listen to me Good: The Story of an Alabama Midwife by Margaret Charles Smith, 

Why Not Me? The Story of Gladys Milton by Gladys Milton, and 

Babycatcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife & Midwife: A Calling both by Peggy Vincent

This year, I specifically read a lot of memoirs by midwives who delivered babies out of hospital. My purpose was two-fold: understand out-of hospital birth better and understand the conversation around appropriation of Black-midwifery practices by white midwives. These four memoirs did just that. As a hospital OB nurse, when it comes to homebirth, the general consensus seems to be us vs them.  My first experiences with homebirth were when laboring women were transferred to us, for a variety of reasons.  From my first experiences 13 years ago, it would be easy to think every transfer needed to result in a cesarean section.  Of course, if we never see the successful homebirths, we don’t believe they exist.  But of course they do!  And when it comes to maternal outcomes, sorry to tell ya folks, the homebirth crowd is kicking our inpatient-butts. That’s just one reason an increasing number of folks are choosing homebirth. There are others. But a good first step for all inpatient nurses is to get acquainted with it, especially if we want to be able to have sophisticated view of the challenges our maternity care system faces.  There are 2 memoirs by Southern Black midwives and 2 memoirs by a white, Berkeley, California midwife.  To read and compare them all is next level introspective shizz, but you can tell me what you think.

The Pregnancy Project by Gaby Rodriguez & Like A Mother by Angela Garbes

These two are memoirs about two women navigating pregnancy and the system.  The first is about Gaby, who was a hard-working, studious teen.  The only problem was, a lot of the women in her family became pregnant as teenagers and all assume she will as well.  So she does what any normal 16-year-old would do and fakes a pregnancy and keeps the charade up for a loooong time.  All for a school project.  It’s great.  The second is the product of what happens when a journalist gets pregnant.  No joke, I learned a lot and its a great lesson in being tenacious.  This one is for the nurses who are extra when it comes to evidence-based care or who just want to keep up on what is available to our patients.  

There you have it, my book-loving birthworker! Seven memoirs to get you going! Once you dive into one of these titles, share your latest read on Instagram and use the hashtag #birthworkerbookclub to let us know.

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