Wednesday's Special Is...The Blue Cotton Gown!

THE BLUE COTTON GOWN by Patricia Harman

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“A flower child who found her calling after coaching a friend through a home birth, nurse-midwife Harman works with her ob-gyn husband at a West Virginia clinic. In her sweetly perceptive memoir, she reveals how her exam room becomes a confessional. Coaxing women in thin blue gowns to share secrets—about abusive boyfriends, OxyContin habits, unplanned pregnancies—she reminds them that they’re not alone.” —People magazine

“Here is an intimate account of a woman, both her career as a midwife and her life as the wife of a doctor in West Virginia. Her patients’ lives are stories of hope and loss; her marriage is a story of love and faith accompanied by debt and tension. Well-written and heartfelt.” —Boston Globe

"As the mother of seven children and veteran of eight pregnancy losses, I knew when I ran my bath that I would be unable to resist Patricia Harman's memoir of midwifery. What I didn't realize was that it would cause me, a sensible person, to get into the bath with one sock still on and rise from it when the candle was gone and the water cold. Utterly true and lyrical as any novel, Harman's book should be a little classic." —Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Cage of Stars

"A seductive read! Read it to understand the fragile thinness between the care-giver and the cared-for. Patsy Harman does not shy away from her narrative. She does not shy away from controversial topics. She grabs the reader by the literary throat." —Judy Schaefer, editor of The Poetry of Nursing

"A nurse midwife struggling to keep solvent the women's health clinic in Torrington, W.Va., that she ran with her surgeon husband shares poignant stories about her patients over the course of a year …Wearying of the financial pressures and tensions with Tom, Harman tells in this heartfelt memoir that she dreamed of leaving the practice, though a genuine love for helping women, and her great faith both in God and her spouse, sustained her." —Publisher's Weekly

Excerpt from THE BLUE COTTON GOWN

Chapter 1

Confessional

I have insomnia . . . and I drink a little. I might as well tell you. In the
middle of the night, I drink scotch when I can’t sleep. Actually, I
can’t sleep most nights; actually, every night. Even before I stopped
delivering babies, I wanted to write about the women. Now I have
time.

It’s 2:00 a.m., and I pull my white terry bathrobe closer, thinking
about the patients whose stories I hear. There’s something about
the exam room that’s like a confessional. It’s not dim and secret the
way I imagine a confessional is in a Catholic church, the way I’ve
seen them in movies. I peer at the clock. It’s now 2:06.


The exam room where these stories are shared is brightly illuminated
with recessed lighting. The walls are painted off-white and
have a wallpaper border of soft leaves and berries. There are framed
photographs of babies and flowers and trees, pictures I took myself
and hung to make the space seem less clinical, and a bulletin board
with handouts on stress reduction, wellness, and calcium.


The room is not big. It’s the usual size. If I had to guess, I’d say
eight feet by ten feet. The countertop under the tall white cupboard
is hunter green, and there’s a small stainless-steel sink in the corner.
Other than a guest chair, my rolling stool, and a small trash can with
a lid, there’s just the exam table, angled away from the wall, with a
flowered pillow and rose vinyl upholstery. On it lies a folded white
sheet and a blue cotton gown with two strings for a tie. The exam
table dominates everything.


I don’t drink for fun. I don’t even like scotch. It’s for the sleep.
I can’t work if I can’t sleep. The scotch is my sleep medicine and I
want it to taste like medicine. The little jam jar with the black line
at three ounces sits in the bathroom cupboard. My husband fills it
for me, then locks the bottle in the closet. I ask him to do that.
When you have as many alcoholics in your family as I do, you don’t
take chances. On nights when I’m restless, I drink it down sip by sip,
making a bad face after each swallow. Then in an hour, I go back to
bed.


I stand now at the window listening to the song of the spring
frogs and thinking of the stories the women tell me, and then, in the
stillest part of the deep night, I sit down to write. I need to sleep
. . . but I need to tell the stories. The stories need to be told because
they are from the hearts of women; the tender, angry hearts; the
broken, beautiful hearts of women.

The Blue Cotton Gown by Patricia Harman
Copyright © 2008 by Patricia Harman
Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston
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Answer the following question for a chance to win a free copy of THE BLUE COTTON GOWN. Or stop by and let's hear your confesssions...

:-) Seriously, please drop in and say hi, and feel welcome to ask questions! Patricia has a great listening ear!! Let's open the floor for discussion related to this topic.

Patricia mentions a drink as a sleep aid. What kind of drink would she recommend to writers to help them write better?