*THE BLUE COTTON GOWN: A MIDWIFE'S MEMOIR by Patricia Harman

A debut memoir interweaving a nurse-midwife's personal and professional trials with the intimate stories of her patients In Patricia Harman's exam room, patients open their hearts. Harman, a nurse-midwife, manages a private practice with her husband, an ob-gyn, in Torrington, West Virginia—a practice now providing only gynecological exams and first trimester care because they've been forced by escalating malpractice insurance costs to give up delivering babies. Despite this, the women who sit before her receive nurturing in all aspects of their lives.This unique memoir juxtaposes the tales of these women with Harman's own story of keeping a small medical practice solvent and coping with personal challenges. Her patients include a mother of seven who is stalked by her ex-husband; a teenager who is pregnant with twins and loses first one then the second baby; a young mother addicted to drugs; a long-time patient's dangerously anorexic daughter; and a professor who needs help and support in transitioning to become a man. The nurse-midwife tells her secrets, too. Her outwardly successful practice is in deep financial trouble. She develops serious medical problems, including uterine cancer, and her thirty-year marriage seems on the verge of collapse. This vivid narrative, full of courage, is impossible to put down.

****Rate this book 4/5. Every health professional can read and identify with this wonderful book. We are taught to hold our emotions in check, not get involved with our patients so that we can treat them effectively. This is nigh on impossible to do with some patients, as described in this book. I love the way this author uses phrasing, at one time she describes her emotions regarding patients as being "embroidered on my heart with colored thread". I can so identify that. Over the years there have been patients that I feel the same way about, and yes, they are still embroidered on my heart. I also love the way she phrased her thoughts on one especially starlit night when she sat thinking to herself: "reaching over the porch rail, I hold my hands open and let the starlight pour into them. I take the light and splash it up on my face. Four or five times, I let it pool and pour it over my head". The visual in my mind is breathtaking