cover image Hard Labor: The Truth about Having Babies in America

Hard Labor: The Truth about Having Babies in America

Susan L. Diamond. Forge, $25.95 (380pp) ISBN 978-0-312-85682-3

In prose that is frequently riveting and always interesting, Diamond, a childbirth instructor and obstetrical nurse, details the 10 years she spent as a labor and delivery nurse. According to the author, the joyful experience of having a baby that should be the right of parents and families is frequently destroyed by a medical system that brutalizes mothers giving birth. In both military and civilian hospitals where Diamond worked, it was routine to invade a normal expectant mother's body with unnecessary IVs, fetal monitors, oxygen masks and catheters, and to perform painful episiotomies. Although these procedures are rationalized by doctors as preventative medicine, Diamond believes they are done for the convenience of physicians rather than for the well-being of delivering mothers. After struggling for years to provide pregnant women with humane prenatal nursing care, Diamond finally left the hospital system and now lobbies for home births. Doubleday Book Club alternate. (Oct.)