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The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir
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Product Description
Patricia Harman, a nurse-midwife, manages a women’s health clinic with her husband, Tom, an ob-gyn, in West Virginia—a practice where patients open their hearts, where they find care and sometimes refuge. Patsy’s memoir juxtaposes the tales of these women with her own story of keeping a small medical practice solvent and coping with personal challenges. Her patients range from Appalachian mothers who haven’t had the opportunity to attend secondary school to Ph.D.’s on cell phones. They come to Patsy’s small, windowless exam room and sit covered only by blue cotton gowns, and their infinitely varied stories are in equal parts heartbreaking and uplifting. The nurse-midwife tells of their lives over the course of a year and a quarter, a time when her outwardly successful practice is in deep financial trouble, when she is coping with malpractice threats, confronting her own serious medical problems, and fearing that her thirty-year marriage may be on the verge of collapse. In the words of Jacqueline Mitchard, this memoir, “utterly true and lyrical as any novel . . . should be a little classic.”
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #85666 in Books
- Published on: 2008-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 290 pages
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.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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
?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.?
?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.?
?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.?
?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. What I didn?t realize was that it would cause me, a sensible person, to get into the 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.?
?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.?
?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.?
Customer Reviews
Holding the light
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
Some women are born to be midwives
I think this is the bravest book I have ever read. It took me captive from the first paragraph:
I have insomnia...and I drink a little. I might as well tell you. In the middle of the night, I drink scotch when I can't sleep. Actually, I can't sleep most nights; actually, every night. Even before I stopped delivering babies, I wanted to write about the women.
And held me captive with this:
...in the stillest part of the deep night, I sit down to write. I need to sleep...but I need to tell the stories. The stories need to be told because they are from the hearts of women; the tender, angry hearts; the broken, beautiful hearts of women.
The women. The women who bring their bodies and their souls into Harman's examining room. Who tell her their stories, which she captures for us with a rare compelling clarity and honesty. And not just their stories, but her own, as well--the story of a nurse-midwife, half of a wife-husband medical team, who is struggling to keep a small family practice afloat in the face of IRS threats, uterine cancer, a gangrenous gall bladder, and problems in her thirty-year marriage.
The Blue Cotton Gown is a compilation: a memoir of a year in the author's life, its passages interspersed with the stories of the women who visit her practice, as well as the story of the practice itself. Every part of this memoir is about women's bodies, since that is Harman's profession and her calling. There is Heather, an unmarried teenager pregnant with twins. Nila, who has already delivered seven babies and is cheerfully expecting her eighth. Holly, whose daughter is anorexic, and Trish, whose daughter kills herself with an accidental overdose. Reba, who needs instruction in finding physical pleasure ("Sometimes I wonder where I get the balls to talk to women like that...Sometimes I crack myself up"). And there's Kasmar, who is transitioning from being a woman to being a man, and needs a little help. We all need a little help, Harman says. "We are all here for one another...gifts to one another...We are all here for one another and that is enough."
And in Harman's practice, which is all about women's bodies, being here is enough, most of the time. The Blue Cotton Gown is about women's stories, each different yet all held together by common elements, each told with sympathy and loving attention that bears witness to the inevitable pain, the loss, the fear that comes with being human, whether we are the nurtured or the nurturer. "The patients, me included, are all the same under these blue cotton gowns," Harman thinks, disrobing before the surgery that will remove her cancerous uterus. "Naked and scared."
Yes, naked and scared. This is not an easy book to read, in part because it is so utterly unformulaic. I could not predict how any of the stories were going to turn out. Would Caroline's baby die, nearly strangled by an umbilical noose? Would Kasmar's transgendering bring happiness, would Nila make it through another pregnancy, would Holly's daughter start to eat again? Would Harman's practice--and Harman's marriage--survive or go under? Every story held me with its urgency, but the stories were sometimes so honest, so ruthlessly real, that I had to put the book down and look away--and then come back, when I could breathe again. This doesn't happen to me often as a reader. When it does, I know I've found a treasure.
"Some women are born to be midwives," Harman says, and some women are born to midwife the stories of others. Patsy Harman is both. Read The Blue Cotton Gown. It is your story, too.
by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Rich, Readable, Reccommended
Patsy Harman's memoir starts out with a revelation about drinking in order to sleep and the restless nights spent worrying about the practice, patients, and her life. The book immediately drew me in with rich character development and the range of emotions, successes, failures, worries, and triumphs that make up all of our lives. I felt a strong connection to her - her love of her work, her connection to her clients, her relationship with her husband, and her joys and sadnesses.
Unlike other memoirs that focus on birthing and assisting laboring moms, this book delves into all of the other aspects of working with women - violence, disease, puberty, trans-identification, sexuality, pregnancy, care, drug use, birth loss, and more.
I highly recommend this book, not just to birth professionals, but to anyone who loves a good read!
