GUEST REVIEW
Labour of Love: Tales from the World of Midwives
Edited by Amanda Tattam & Cate Kennedy
Pan Macmillan Publishing
ISBN 0-3304-2166-2
Labour of Love: Tales from the World of Midwives Book Review
Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
It’s been nearly four years now since my last labour, but get me together with a group of mothers, and especially if there’s a pregnant one in the crowd, and the stories begin flowing freely. There’s nothing more powerful for a woman than that moment when the baby’s head crowns, except for the moment afterwards when the baby is placed against your breast and begins feeding. The intensity of those moments, still inspire pages of poetry from me, though I’ve long since become accustomed to the joy and exhaustion that parenthood brings. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day routine of parenthood, but Labour of Love is an extremely powerful book which will not only remind mothers of those moments, but also remind us how lucky we are, and how tenuous and varied the experiences can be.
The collection is sensitively and beautifully pulled together by Amanda Tattam, who handles the factual elements of the collection, and Cate Kennedy, who brings her poetic sensibility and ensures that the stories are as compelling as well written fiction. The stories are mainly written by midwives, and every one of them is moving and engrossing. The book is broken into sections which include fairly standard (if there is every such a thing) hospital births, births in foreign parts under war zone conditions, homebirths, tragic births that end in loss (a section I sobbed my way through), post-partum experiences, and some fascinating self-reflections.
While all of the stories in the book are powerful, there are a few that really stood out. Robin Barker’s “Baby Royal” for example, was full of all the elements necessary for good storytelling, including pathos, drama and suspense. The story, which is, like all of the stories in this book, true, follows a visit by Barker to a child of two parents – a schizophrenic father and an intellectually challenged mother. Barker captures profoundly the tightrope like walk between involvement and support; between a child’s need to stay with his or her parents, and the need for safe care. Barker’s own experiences and sense of both duty and fear is clearly presented:
“I feel outraged, distressed, self-righteous, defensive and worst of all almost paralysed by a great galloping siege of guilt. We didn’t do enough. Christmas we dropped the ball, no one visited them for four weeks which was long enough for a catastrophe.”
Another, Heather Harris’ “Sage femme” is set in the war torn Ivory Coast, and the mingling of the very domestic act of childbirth, and the drama of minimal supplies and linguistic difficulties makes for a story full of drama. During a rare break in the fast paced births, the author sums up her experiences sagely, showing that the universal wisdom of midwifery is a collective one:
“I am privileged to be here. In the middle of a war zone, with no equipment and no technology, I see marvellous midwives applying their knowledge using their heads and their hands, plucking life from the jaws of death, making heroic efforts to save lives. We combine our collective wisdom, new and old, each learning from the other.”
Other stories take the reader on the rollercoaster ride of stillbirth, incontinence, bush births, and more, the horrific mingling hand in hand with the heroic. I’ll never forget the way a midwife angel whispered in my ear during my first birth and changed the experience from one of fear and pain to one of controlled intensity and joy. After having three children I’m certain that midwives are the heroic backbone of our country. If, heaven forfend, things were different in Australia (as they are, for example, in the US), and obstetricians were free and midwives expensive, I’d pay whatever the cost to have a midwife with me during a labour. Ask anyone who has had a child with a midwife and I’m sure she’d say the same. Labour of Love is no misnomer. This is a book which will entertain the reader, bring back the joy of birth, and remind us of our own transcendent or not so transcendent experiences. If you’re about to have children, it’s a reasonable primer, and will tell you more than any ‘how-to’ guide or breathing class. If you’ve already had children, it will bring tears to your eyes as you listen to the absolutely engrossing stories of others.
Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader http://www.compulsivereader.com/html and Preschool Entertainment http://www.preschoolentertainment.com/html. Her stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won many awards. She is the author of The Art of Assessment, and Quark Soup (available from http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/images/quarkindex.htm) Her novel Sleep Before Evening will be available from BeWrite Books early in 2007.
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