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Last year, when I was pregnant with my first baby, I became the bane of existence of
my ob/gyn. Although recommended by my two sisters, this doctor made stark and insensitive
comments about my concerns, my issues, my fears about the baby. He almost never addressed
my questions with the kind of respectful and thoughtful responses I had hoped I would
receive. I stopped making appointments with him and started making them with every other
doctor in the office, but when it came time for me to deliver, he was the guy on call that
day at the hospital. During contractions, he was busy quizzing some nurse on details of
another delivery that had happened days ago. When we were home from the hospital, safe and
sound, I received bills from his office for several "procedures" I didn't even
know I had had. All in all, it was not exactly the overall experience I had hoped for ---
but my baby was healthy and safe and my best instincts told me to just be happy and shut
up.
Fine. I'll shut up, but it's nice to know that Naomi Wolf has both the tenacity and the
anger necessary to write MISCONCEPTIONS: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to
Motherhood. In a society where we appropriate so quickly the lessons and experiences of
other cultures (African wraps and proverbs are now part of our everyday existence, for
example, as are foods from all over the world), we have been shortsighted when it comes to
both advancements and age-old wisdom in respect to health care and the business of
birthing babies. Wolf, whose experiences with her first birth were less than perfect,
manages part-memoir, part-expose on the interactivity amongst doctors, pharmaceutical
companies, hospitals, and insurance companies in making women feel powerless during one of
the bravest, most dangerous and world-shaking times of their lives.
Wolf uses her journalistic instincts well here: she backs up her fears and problems with
information from works by Jessica Mitford and others about the perils of our
technological-yet-soulless medical establishment in the face of one of life's most intense
physical experience. It is rough-going, and all the happy-earth-mama books about midwifery
and doulas and home births and all those candlelit bonding moments with a new squealing
infant are put in their place --- as happy fairy tales that happen to few women in
America. MISCONCEPTIONS belongs on bookshelves with other feminist classics that call for
self-empowerment. I just wish it had been written before my pregnancy --- with some of her
facts backing me up, maybe Dr. Napoleon Complex might have learned something from me.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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