Review: Labor of Love: A Midwife's Memoir by Cara Muhlhahn

Little-known fact about yours truly: I pretty much grew up on the maternity ward of a hospital.  My mother has been a secretary at a hospital in CT that is known for its maternity ward for twenty-years -- she's been working there since I was seven.  My aunt works there as well, as did my late grandmother.  So it's safe to say that I've been exposed to the business of birthing babies since I was seven years old, or thereabout.  Surprisingly enough, it is a field where, thus far, I harbor no biases.  I don't argue with homebirth vs. hospital birth, or midwives vs. doctors, or breastfeeding vs. formula.  I'm not a mother yet, and though I've grown up hearing the strong opinions of the strongly-opinionated women that I'm related to, I have more or less made the decision to draw my own conclusions.

This is what lead me to Labor of Love: A Midwife's Memoir by Cara Muhlhahn.  Since David and I are not parents yet (but plan to be in the not-so-distant future), I thought that this free Kindle book might be a different take on the business of birthing, a 180-degree turnaround from what I grew up with.

...About halfway through the book, I was so turned off that it took all my willpower to finish reading it.  Why did I finish reading it?  Two reasons: the first, because if I gave up halfway it wouldn't count towards my 100 books for the year, and I refuse to be a quitter.  The second: because I wanted to be able to write the review you see here with the confidence of knowing I read the whole book.

Yes, it is a memoir.  It is intended to be about the author.  But Labor of Love is less a story about a midwife's trials and triumphs than it is a 256-page ode to the author herself.  I have never read anything so blatantly self-centered and self-congratulatory.  The first three chapters were dedicated to her formative years -- growing up with her parents, moving around the country -- always sprinkled with snippets about how different and special and fantastic she is.  I kept hoping that we'd eventually move into some birth stories, and away from the author's self-gratification.  But it only got worse.  Muhlhahn went on to talk about her training in the medical field and her years of striking out on her own as a midwife, continuously patting herself on the back as she went.  Midway through the  book, I was picturing Muhlhahn as Julia Roberts as depicted in Family Guy.

But (astoundingly) her arrogance wasn't what I considered the worst part about her book.  The worst part?  The blatant lies she tells about the statistics of birth.  Muhlhahn claims that when a woman conceives a child past the age of 40, the chance of the baby having Down syndrome is one in 1.

...Yeah, you read that right.  If  Muhlhahn's statistics were true, 100% of babies born to women over the age of 40 would have Down syndrome.  I guess my cousin Nicholas, born to my aunt Cathi when she was, you guessed it, 40, is a genetic miracle then.

She has a personal agenda towards anyone who doesn't think like she does: the hospital approach to birthing as a whole, women who used epidurals and pain medications, doctors who perform episiotomies and cesarean sections, family members who don't want her going through their refrigerators looking for something to eat, and the state of New York for not understanding why she is so damn important (she's saving lives, people!) that she needs special plates for her car so she can park anywhere she damn well pleases.

Can you tell I didn't like this book?  I don't, and judging by the reviews on Amazon.com and GoodReads, there are a fair number of people who agree with me.  Many of them recommended the book Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife by Peggy Vincent as a palate-cleanser after Labor of Love, and I might just take them up on that suggestion.  I'm fairly certain that Muhlhahn's arrogant attitude doesn't speak for the entire field of modern midwifery.


Rating: *