Midwives – Book Review
Midwives – By Chris Bohjalian
Grabbing this book from the ‘quick picks’ section of the library (Bubby D was making her impatience with the book selection process known) I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Recently, many books detailing the work of midwives and health visitors – particularly in the East End of London – have been popping up, probably in relation to the BBC’s adaptation of Call The Midwife.
So it was a pleasant surprise to find that this was a book about midwifery with a twist. Its a novel and not an autobiographical account – although the events the author depicts through writing certainly seem real enough. The story is written through the eyes of the midwife Sybil’s daughter, Connie, who was 14 at the time the events described occurred, and also uses excerpts from Sybil’s diaries to give her perspective on what happened.
Working as a well respected and experienced midwife in Vermont in 1981, Sybil is called to a home birth which goes horribly wrong, with the mother to be appearing to die in the process of trying to give birth. Bad weather conditions make the roads too treacherous to get to the hospital and the telephone lines are down – and so Sybil is faced with a terrible choice; to take no action and let the baby die, or to perform an emergency caesarean section with no anaesthetic or equipment and try and save the baby. She opts for the caesarean and successfully delivers the baby, with the husband and a trainee midwife, Anne, present in the room at the time.
The next day, however, Anne states she believes that the mother had still been alive at the time the caesarean was performed.
Sybil is subsequently charged with manslaughter, and the author shows how the resulting trial impacts on many people’s lives as well as making the reader think about various different moral dilemmas that would be involved in this complicated and traumatic situation.
It’s an interesting and unique look at the subject of home birth and the prejudices and opinions attached to independent midwifery at the time, as well as the legal requirements and implications of a midwife’s actions. The book draws you in from the first chapter – I started reading it on the bus and didn’t want to put it down when I reached my destination! (Not to worry, I finished reading it on the bus home).
I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys legal novels, midwife autobiographies, or simply just a good read!
Leave a Reply