The Secret Midwife: An Audible Review
Book Description:
For fans of One Born Every Minute.
The Secret Midwife is a heart-breaking, engrossing and important read. At once joyful and profoundly shocking, this is the story of birth, straight from the delivery room.
Strongest supporter, best friend, expert, cheerleader and chief photographer . . . Before, during, and after labor the role of a midwife is second to none. The Secret Midwife reveals the highs and lows on the frontline of the maternity unit, from the mother who tries to give herself a DIY caesarean to the baby born into witness protection, and from surprise infants that arrive down toilets to ones that turn up in the lift.
But there is a problem; the system which is supposed to support the midwives and the women they care for is starting to crumble. Short-staffed, overworked, and underappreciated – these crippling conditions are taking their toll on the dedicated staff doing their utmost to uphold our National Health Service, and the consequences are very serious indeed.
Not the Right Midwife?
On my to-be-read list for 2022, I had this book called The Midwife by Katja Kettu. The book that I am reviewing today is not that book. For whatever reason, when I went to Audible and searched up the book by Katja Kettu, I came across another book titled The Secret Midwife. These books are not even in the same genre, as The Secret Midwife is a medical non-fiction book and The Midwife is solidly fiction. But I decided to listen to The Secret Midwife because I am a huge fan of Call the Midwife (the BBC series, not the book – but only because I have not read it yet.)
Okay, now that I have that round-a-bout explanation out of the way, this book was fantastic. I listened to the audiobook, which had a wonderful narrator.
In the beginning, I was not very interested in a story about a young girl who was desperate to become a midwife and wasn’t great at school. I wasn’t invested in her journey yet and I found it a little dull. But I liked the way that the information was presented and the author injected humor into it as often as she could. When I first started listening to the book, I would listen for ten or fifteen minutes here and there, or while driving. It was great in the background. But that quickly changed.
Over time, I began to really like the midwife in the book. I really cared about her journey, her relationships, her evolution as a mother, and her career. I loved that she was completely honest about her struggle as a working mom. There is a moment where she so badly wants to be there for her daughter but instead snaps at her daughter because she also cannot play with her after work. Inevitably, this is followed by guilt. The character follows this path of being a hopeful, naïve student midwife to a successful, senior midwife, to a working mother and wife who is struggling with depression and excessive expectations at her work. Her story arch was a rollercoaster of emotions and I was rooting for her and her family the whole time.
A Medical Memoir
This book is an autobiography/memoir, with a lot of medical information in it. I found all of this very interesting and while none of it was new to me, I found the stories interesting. I was really surprised that in some of the book’s darkest moments, the author was able to keep a thread of hope. In one story, where a baby is tragically stillborn, the author somehow makes it possible for us to feel at peace with this. I generally avoid any books that mention child/infant mortality because I generally find it so horribly sad that I can’t focus on any of the other details of the story or book. But with this one, the midwife’s kindness towards the parents that must go on after this tragedy was really endearing, and instead of blinding sadness, I felt mostly compassion for those that are forced to endure trauma like that.
There are incredible ups and downs in this story and I found myself wishing that it had gone on to the present day. I am curious about how the midwife would have handled the coronavirus pandemic and whether she would choose to continue on the career path. The state of the hospitals at the end of the book seems grim. There is a huge lack of staffing and most of the nurses, midwives, and doctors are overworked and overstressed. This feels even more bleak reading this from the future, when we know that a pandemic is right around the corner and definitely made things more challenging for everyone, but especially medical professionals.
If you enjoyed television shows such as Call the Midwife or One Born Every Minute, you will enjoy reading (or listening) to The Secret Midwife.
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