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The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir

The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir
By Patricia Harman

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Product Description

A 2008 Indie Next Pick
 
Despite nurse-midwife Patsy Harman’s own financial and personal medical trials, including her private battle with uterine cancer, she devotes herself to her patients’ well-being in all aspects of their lives. They, in turn, tell her intimate stories both heartbreaking and uplifting.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #85001 in Books
  • Published on: 2009-10-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 296 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A nurse midwife struggling to keep solvent the women's health clinic in Torrington, W.Va., that she ran with her surgeon husband shares poignant stories about her patients over the course of a year. A self-described former hippie who lived on a commune with her three sons, Harman later went to nursing school and became a midwife while her husband, Tom, attended medical school. Although their practice took off, they were strapped with debt, back taxes, growing bills for malpractice insurance, constant threats of lawsuits and the discovery, over the year, of Harman's freak ailments—a gangrenous gallbladder and uterine cancer requiring an immediate hysterectomy. Harman conveys the hope inspired by her patients' stories, such as the seven-time mother who never tried birth control and couldn't decide which husband to stay with, and the lesbian horticulture professor who wanted to become a man. Wearying of the financial pressures and tensions with Tom, Harman tells in this heartfelt memoir that she dreamed of leaving the practice, though a genuine love for helping women, and her great faith both in God and her spouse, sustained her. (Sept.)
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Review

"Nobody writes with more candor and compassion about women's woes and women's triumphs than nurse-midwife Patricia Harman. Her behind-the-exam-room-door memoir is a bittersweet valentine to every woman-young and old-who has ever donned that thin blue cotton gown, to every dedicated healthcare provider, and to every husband-wife medical team. I couldn't put The Blue Cotton Gown down."
-Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots and Lately

"This luminescent, ruthlessly authentic, humane, and brilliantly written account of a midwife in rough-hewn Appalachia-a passionate healer plying her art and struggling to live a life of spirit-stands as a model for all of us, doctors and patients alike, of how to offer good care."
-Samuel Shem, M.D., author of The House of God, Mount Misery, and The Spirit of the Place

"Patricia Harman has opened for us a window, a glimpse into her life as a midwife and the lives of those women who have entered her exam room. And as the touch of her careful and caring hands learned the story of their bodies, into her heart they poured their life stories-stories of joy, of sorrow, those bright with promise, those dimmed with grief and pain. It doesn't take long to realize that this book is so very, very real. They are our stories-as daughters, mothers, grandmothers, friends. In our hearts, where it counts, Harman has reminded us of what we are-wonderful, strong women and sisters. Thank you for the gift, Patricia Harman."
-Sheila Kay Adams, author of My Old True Love


Review

“In her sweetly perceptive memoir, Harman reveals how her exam room becomes a confessional. Coaxing women in thin gowns to share secrets ... she reminds them that they’re not alone.”
—Michelle Green, People
 
“Harman shows us the joys and sorrows of listening to women’s stories and attending to their bodies, and she leads us through the complicated life of a healer who is profoundly shaped by her patients and their journeys.”
—Perri Klass, author of The Mercy Rule and Treatment Kind and Fair
“Luminescent, ruthlessly authentic, humane, and brilliantly written.”
—Samuel Shem, M.D., author of The House of God, Mount Misery, and The Spirit of the Place
“As the mother of seven children and veteran of eight pregnancy losses, I knew when I ran my bath that I would be unable to resist Patricia Harman’s memoir of midwifery, The Blue Cotton Gown. What I didn’t realize was that it would cause me, a sensible person, to get into her bath with one sock still on and rise from it when the candle was gone and the water cold. Utterly true and lyrical as any novel, Harman’s book should be a little classic.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, authorr of The Deep End of the Ocean and Cage of Stars
 
“Harman has a gift for storytelling, and The Blue Cotton Gown is a moving, percipient book.”
—Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
“Touchingly revelatory . . . deeply moving.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Patricia Harman has opened for us a window, a glimpse into her life as a midwife and the lives of those women who have entered her exam room. And as the touch of her careful and caring hands learned the story of their bodies, into her heart they poured their life stories—stories of joy, of sorrow, those bright with promise, those dimmed with grief and pain.”
—Sheila Kay Adams, author of My Old True Love
“The Blue Cotton Gown is a seductive read! Read it to understand the fragile thinness between the care-giver and the cared-for. Patsy Harman does not shy away from her narrative. She does not shy away from controversial topics. She grabs the reader by the literary throat.”
—Judy Schaefer, editor of The Poetry of Nursing

“Here is an intimate account of a woman, both her career as a midwife and her life as the wife of a doctor in West Virginia. Her patients’ lives are stories of hope and loss; her marriage is a story of love and faith accompanied by debt and tension.  Well-written and heartfelt.”
—Boston Globe

Customer Reviews

Holding the light5
The stories of Patsy Harmon's Blue Cotton Gown are the stories of everyone who has ever closed the door of an exam room. Yet Harmon imbues the stories with a humor, pathos and insight that make this telling unique in the writings about women's health. We end up caring what happens to Nila, Kasmar and Aran as they come in and out of Patsy's exam room and our compassion is aroused by Patsy's compassion.

Yet Patsy has the ability to put a knife in your gut, to make you long for things you have experienced and things you have not. She takes you to her green fields and lets you play among the stars, but she is also merciless when looking at her own complex relationships and her practice challenges. The only thing missing in the drama of her day to day life in Appalachia is the revenue agent charging out from behind the hills to discover that she and her husband, who is also her practice partner, have an illegal still in their office.

Practice is not easy, relationships are not easy, being a driven and compassionate mother and woman are not easy, and Patsy makes that painfully clear. You come to cheer on her thoughts of running away from it all and returning to a simpler time. If anyone who practices modern day healthcare does not share this fantasy, then they are not present to the challenges of today's practice. Patsy, more than any other writer in this time, has the skill to take us into a world where tragedy, joy and tedium mix every time the exam door closes behind another woman.
Penny Armstrong, CNM, MSN

Not what I expected3
The second half of this book's title is "A midwife's memoir", and technically it is, but it's not at all what I expected from that description. During the period Patricia Harman is writing about, she no longer attends deliveries because the insurance is too expensive, so there are few birth scenes in the book (one of my favorite parts of both "Baby Catcher" and "A Midwife's Story"). Also, the book is very much a general memoir at times, and includes a lot of her disclosing personal details to patients in a way I didn't think was appropriate. This is a well-written book, but it's more similar to a general memoir than a book like "Baby Catcher".

Touched by this book...5
I haven't ever written a review before but feel compelled to do so with this book. I couldn't put it down. It's a memoir that reads like a novel (the best kind, I think). The women's stories and that of Patsy herself captivated me and drew me in and made me hopeful and sad and anxious and eager always to learn more. Their stories and hers are inspiring and yet they are ordinary and they are us.

Thank you, Nurse Midwife Counselor and Friend to so many, Patsy Harman. I loved your book and am eager to read a second one. Not only is your work remarkable but you've done something that isn't easy, you've written about it in a way that allows us to be included in your life and work. Thank you.

Tracey McGee
Chicago, IL