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Press Release or What Inspired the Birth House?
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Interview Q's & A's Q: The Birth House is your debut novel. How did you become a writer? A: It all started with a "Thank-You" note. All through high school, university, and grad school I wrote in secret, keeping all of my thoughts, ideas, short stories and dreadful poetry in notebooks under by bed. My New Year's resolution for the year 2000 (after much prodding from my partner) was to start putting my writing out into the world. So, I declared 2000 to be "the year of sending thank-you notes to people I didn't know." My first letter led to a featured guest appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show (and that was just January!) After that whirlwind experience, I kept writing - freelance documentaries for CBC radio, a short story here and there - and eventually my first novel. I still commit random acts of writing thank-you notes from time to time… just to keep the karma flowing. Q: What inspired you to write this particular book? Is there a story about the writing of the novel that begs to be told? A: I moved from Chicago to Scots Bay, NS in 2000 (it was a big year for me). By the following spring I was pregnant with my second child. As my belly grew, the women in the community began telling me stories about the midwife who had once lived in the house that I now call home. My neighbour encouraged me to visit a woman who had grown up in my house, the daughter of the midwife. Nearly 90, and living in a nursing home, her mind and words were clear, her eyes bright. While I sat with her, she explained that her biological mother had died three days after her birth and that the midwife had adopted her (when no family could be found to take her in). She spoke of her mother's calling as a midwife, how she cared for the women, keeping them at the house for a week or more after a birth. She then began to recite the names of all the women who had given birth in the house as well as the names of their children. I was so inspired by her stories that I decided to have a midwife assisted home birth. My son was born at home in the middle of a March snowstorm, another child in the long linage of babies born in my house. Not long after his birth, I began to make the first scribblings towards what would become The Birth House. Q. Chicago to Scots Bay, NS. What prompted such a big move? A. Love. My husband is Canadian. When he first brought me to visit Nova Scotia, I fell in love with the ocean, the landscape and the people. The area around Scots Bay is known for its amazing beauty and the famous hiking trail at Cape Split. While moving from a city of 6 million to a small village of 250 people can cause quite a case of culture shock, I knew it was what I needed to do. I had been through a lot of personal changes in the months leading up to the move, including a nasty car accident that left me in the hospital and then laid-up in my apartment for a month, so I was really ready to find a quiet place I could call 'home.' Q: Obviously, a community that small will be close-knit. How have the people in Scots Bay responded to the book? A: In ways I never imagined. (For better and occasionally for worse.) I've been blessed with wonderful neighbours and friends since I moved here. Although I suppose I'm something of an odd-duck to most. They are (for the most part) people who are part of the land and the land has been a part of their lives and their families' lives for generations. It's not unlike the area where I grew up in Indiana in that respect, although so far, the families of Scots Bay have been able to hold on to their land and way of life, whereas the sadness of so many losing 'the family farm' in Indiana still lives in me. Most have seen the book as a tribute to that way of life, to their tradition of having great respect for nature, and they thank me for writing it down. But I'll admit, there are a few in the community who have been offended by it and spoken out against the novel. It's been called everything from "a book of lies" to "smut." It was the hot topic of conversation and debate at the little general store for quite a while. Of course, I'd much rather have people have an opinion about my work than to not care about it one way or the other. That's when I know I've done my job as a storyteller… Q: The Birth House is about childbirth in the 1900's, but you wound up having a home birth with the assistance of a midwife in 2001. How did you come to decide to do that? Weren't you scared? A: Fear is highly overrated when it comes to childbirth. After speaking with the women in the community and hearing all of their stories about the real midwife who had once lived in the house and the respect they had for her, I started researching modern midwifery. My first birthing experience had been in the States and was highly medicalized…my labour had been induced, a lot of interventions followed and I felt like I had very little if any control, choice or place in the situation. So with my second pregnancy, I consulted with my family doctor and then began seeing a midwife as well. She was amazing! She had delivered over 200 babies. She spent at least 45 minutes to an hour at every visit. She included my husband and my son as well. What I also learned through the process is that today's midwives are individuals who are both highly trained and embrace tradition. Our
society is caught up in the notion that childbirth is something that needs to
be feared. It's portrayed as always being a life and death situation. We expect
the pain to be unbearable, we expect something to go wrong, we willingly accept
interventions that lead to more aggressive measures. Women are joining the 'too
posh to push' club because they are scared of giving birth. Women who can afford
it are checking out of the hospital and straight in to five-star hotels so they
will have someone to wait on them. Q: What did happen? In the book, a doctor comes to town with the purpose of driving midwifery out. He's quite a villain. Was there really so much animosity between obstetricians and midwives? A: Sadly, yes. When I was researching the history of midwifery in North America, I found evidence of a movement to eliminate midwives. Obstetrics was still a young branch of medicine in the early 1900's and with WWI came the desire in all parts of society for things to be faster, more efficient, and standardized. Childbirth was included in that march towards progress. I found quotes from leading doctors of obstetrics outlining how to 'solve the midwife problem.' They actively went to women's organizations - like women's auxiliary and extension clubs - and lectured about the complications of childbirth, the shortcomings of midwives and told the women that they should do whatever they had to have a hospital birth with a doctor. There are quotes from medical conventions where doctors say things like "Midwifery is a relic of barbarism." We live with that same tension today. Some OB's work hand in hand with midwives, while others have a real distain for them. There was a quote in a national newspaper in Toronto this past February where a doctor tells the reporter, "Parents forget how many things can go wrong. Delivering a baby is a major medical procedure. It's potentially dangerous, and it hurts like hell. Who do you want to be on the receiving end -- a trained doctor backed up by modern life-saving machines and painkillers, or some woman with a Guatemalan hat?" An OB's car in a hospital parking lot had a bumper sticker that read, "Home delivery is for pizza." I may have written a story set nearly one hundred years ago, but we're still trying to work out these issues. Q. Childbirth wasn't the only thing that was regulated by the medical profession. Your main character, Dora is diagnosed with hysteria and is urged to undergo 'treatments' for her condition. Can you describe the treatment? A. Vibrators are a beautiful thing… At
the turn of the century, a woman might be diagnosed with hysteria for the following
symptoms - speaking her mind too often, reading too many novels, writing cramps,
headaches, fear of impending doom, and being overly 'fretful'. (just to name a
few) |
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