McKay begins the book by explaining what inspired her to write it. Whereas I expected a didactic account of the history of midwifery in Canada, instead I stumbled into a fable where magic is intertwined with history. In other words, I’m the poster girl for Big Medicine and I did not expect that The Birth House would be my cup of organic, herbal tea.īut immediately, the book surprised me. Two trips to the fertility clinic, a big dollop of synthetic progesterone, two pitocin drips to induce labor and two epidurals later, I have the family I’ve always desired. But then when nature proved to be decidedly unhelpful in my quest to have a baby, I stopped putting my faith in rose quartz, moonstone, and Chasteberry tea and put it into cold, hard science. I had read Naomi Wolf’s (Mis)Conceptions and, before I had my own two children, agreed wholeheartedly that herbs, teas, yoga, time and prayer were vastly preferable to scheduled Cs, episiotomies and epidurals. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for a discussion of how women have been pushed out of the birthing process by the medical community.
So it was going to be one of those books.
But their idyllic community is threatened with the arrival of Gilbert Thomas, a brash medical doctor armed with promises of sterile, painless childbirth.”
Babineau’s apprentice, and together the pair help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labor, breech births, unwanted pregnancies, and even unfulfilling marriages. As she grows into adulthood, Dora becomes Mrs. When the review copy of the book arrived from the publisher, I anxiously cracked the spine and started reading the introductory note: “As a child, Dora Rare, the first female in five generations of Rares, is taken under the wing of Marie Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for storytelling and a kitchen filled with herbs. The book had received rave reviews in Canada and the publishers were touting the book as “reminiscent of the works of Annie Proulx and Chris Bohjalian ” I had loved both The Shipping News and Midwives.
When I was asked if I would be interested in reviewing Ami McKay’s The Birth House, I jumped at the opportunity.
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