![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsEarly: An Intimate History of Premature Birth and What it Teaches Us About Being Human
4/5. What it says on the tin. An upsetting, fascinating look at prematurity and its prevalence, history, socioeconomic and racial components, and consequences. The prologue is the story of the author's daughter, born at less than two pounds (she survived), what her treatment was like, what it felt like to hold a baby that small against your chest, when even breathing too vigorously on them could decompensate their nervous system. It's a lot. I confused Casterbrook, who I was nursing when I picked up this book, by sniffling onto his fuzzy head.
Because, well, okay. This is a very good book, and I recommend it. But for me, it was (not consciously until later) a sort of purgative. Other people's birth/pregnancy trauma helped me work through some of mine. It's like trauma calisthenics, and it worked, reading this book off and on for a few days, generally while nursing my healthy, thriving full-term one year-old who wouldn't be here today if the cards had landed a little differently. I didn't have a premie (though landing in L&D at 32 weeks is no fun, even when you're 80% sure you're okay) but somehow reading about other people's early births and the ways their babies survived or didn't helped me revisit that stretch of bad luck from September 2018 until September 2019, when Casterbrook was born. It's not even the miscarriage, or the suspected ectopic, or the fetal extraction procedure, or bleeding and bleeding in a diner in Maryland that lingered. Or even that time they thought my cervix was opening at 23 weeks (it wasn't, but that was a fun hour), or the painful contractions at 32 weeks, or the godforsaken GD that was at least manageable. Or the giving birth to a giant-headed baby with a failed epidural, either, that at least has partly fuzzed over. It's actually the middle part of my pregnancy with Casterbrook, the part that is supposed to be fun, when you feel good for a few months, and you look great. Instead I was hiding from colleagues and concealing my bump, waiting to be far enough along for an amnio to confirm or deny the ambiguously bad free cell DNA results. Googling "18-20 week abortion process" from a hotel room in Bermuda because I wanted to be as prepared as I could be. I remember the sound of the amniotic fluid pouring into the vial after the amnio, how shockingly much of it there was (several tablespoons). And then not getting off the couch for two days, waiting for the call. The way she didn't even bother to say "how are you?" when she called, but just said, "from Maternal Fetal Medicine, hi, we have the results, he's fine." That one lingered..
Anyway. It's a good book. Also, unrelatedly, by a food writer whose recipes at the NYT I like. Casterbrook is, in fact, a pretty big fan of this soup.
Content notes: Um. Babies die in this book. Not all of them, though. Not even most of them, that's the point. Also, babies receive a lot of medical care, some of it pretty horrific.
4/5. What it says on the tin. An upsetting, fascinating look at prematurity and its prevalence, history, socioeconomic and racial components, and consequences. The prologue is the story of the author's daughter, born at less than two pounds (she survived), what her treatment was like, what it felt like to hold a baby that small against your chest, when even breathing too vigorously on them could decompensate their nervous system. It's a lot. I confused Casterbrook, who I was nursing when I picked up this book, by sniffling onto his fuzzy head.
Because, well, okay. This is a very good book, and I recommend it. But for me, it was (not consciously until later) a sort of purgative. Other people's birth/pregnancy trauma helped me work through some of mine. It's like trauma calisthenics, and it worked, reading this book off and on for a few days, generally while nursing my healthy, thriving full-term one year-old who wouldn't be here today if the cards had landed a little differently. I didn't have a premie (though landing in L&D at 32 weeks is no fun, even when you're 80% sure you're okay) but somehow reading about other people's early births and the ways their babies survived or didn't helped me revisit that stretch of bad luck from September 2018 until September 2019, when Casterbrook was born. It's not even the miscarriage, or the suspected ectopic, or the fetal extraction procedure, or bleeding and bleeding in a diner in Maryland that lingered. Or even that time they thought my cervix was opening at 23 weeks (it wasn't, but that was a fun hour), or the painful contractions at 32 weeks, or the godforsaken GD that was at least manageable. Or the giving birth to a giant-headed baby with a failed epidural, either, that at least has partly fuzzed over. It's actually the middle part of my pregnancy with Casterbrook, the part that is supposed to be fun, when you feel good for a few months, and you look great. Instead I was hiding from colleagues and concealing my bump, waiting to be far enough along for an amnio to confirm or deny the ambiguously bad free cell DNA results. Googling "18-20 week abortion process" from a hotel room in Bermuda because I wanted to be as prepared as I could be. I remember the sound of the amniotic fluid pouring into the vial after the amnio, how shockingly much of it there was (several tablespoons). And then not getting off the couch for two days, waiting for the call. The way she didn't even bother to say "how are you?" when she called, but just said, "from Maternal Fetal Medicine, hi, we have the results, he's fine." That one lingered..
Anyway. It's a good book. Also, unrelatedly, by a food writer whose recipes at the NYT I like. Casterbrook is, in fact, a pretty big fan of this soup.
Content notes: Um. Babies die in this book. Not all of them, though. Not even most of them, that's the point. Also, babies receive a lot of medical care, some of it pretty horrific.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-18 06:14 pm (UTC)