Media Reviews – Issue 85
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Midwifery Today, Issue 85, Spring 2008.
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The Second Nine Months
by Vicki Glembocki
[2008, Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 272 pages, paperback.]
The Second Nine Months, a memoir that allegedly tells the real story of becoming a mom, is an object lesson on why not to have an interventionist hospital birth. Unfortunately the author fails to make a connection between her inability to bond with her baby and her medicalized, unsupported birth and hands-off style of mothering, complete with sleeping separate from mom, “crying it out,” and being pushed around in a stroller rather than worn. Vicki Glembocki clearly needed a midwife before, during and after the birth.
This book, which was supposed to be a humorous take on parenting a new baby, was so depressing I felt like crying. I find incredibly sad that an educated woman—a journalist—would have no insight at all about birthing and parenting. I hope she finds out that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that her joking about throwing the baby out the window or leaving it with strangers is not normal.
About Author: Cheryl K. Smith
Cheryl K. Smith has been managing editor for Midwifery Today since 2017 and from 2005–2009. She edited several books published by Motherbaby Press, including Placenta: The Gift of Life (2007), Survivor Moms: Women’s Stories of Birthing, Mothering and Healing after Sexual Abuse (2008), and The Power of Women (2009). She has raised miniature dairy goats since 1998 and is the author of Goat Health Care (karmadillo Press, 2009 and 2019), Raising Goats for Dummies (Wiley, 2010 and 2021), and Goat Midwifery (karmadillo Press, 2020), as well as many articles in various magazines.
