Description
A nurse-midwife takes readers behind the exam room door of her rural West Virginia clinic in this “utterly true and lyrical” memoir (Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean)
As a nurse-midwife and the manager of a women’s health clinic in West Virginia, Patricia “Patsy” Harman bears witness to the struggles and triumphs of every woman who walks through her exam room door. She sees Heather, a teenager pregnant with twins, through the loss of both babies and their father. She cares for Nila—a longtime patient who must try to make a new life without her abusive husband—and helps Kaz transition into a new body. The only thing more varied than these women’s backgrounds are their stories, which they share with Patsy inside her small clinic, covered only by a blue cotton gown.
In her memoir, Patsy juxtaposes these heartbreaking and uplifting tales with her own story of keeping a small medical practice solvent. She recounts conversations with her patients over the course of a year and a quarter—a time when her own life seems on the brink of collapse due to financial troubles, malpractice threats, serious medical problems, and marital strife. Honest, compassionate, and wise, The Blue Cotton Gown is an unforgettable memoir that shines a light on the varied experiences of women everywhere.
“In her sweetly perceptive memoir, Harman reveals how her exam room becomes a confessional . . . she reminds [women] that they’re not alone.”
—People
About the Author
Patricia Harman has spent over thirty years caring for women as a midwife, first as a lay-midwife, delivering babies in cabins and on communal farms in West Virginia, and later as a nurse-midwife in teaching hospitals and in a community hospital birthing center.She spent over a decade in the sixties and seventies in her wild youth living in rural communes in Washington (Tolstoy Farm), Connecticut (The Committee for Non-Violent Action) and Minnesota (Free Folk). During the Vietnam years, she and her husband, Tom Harman, traveled the country, often hitch-hiking, as they looked for a place to settle. In 1974 they purchased a farm with a group of like-minded friends on top of a ridge in Roane County, West Virginia. Here on the commune, they built log houses, dug a pond, grew and preserved their own food and started the Growing Tree Natural Foods Cooperative.It was during this time that Patsy attended her first home birth, more or less by accident. "Some people are destined," she has written. "I was staying at a woman friend's commune when she went into labor and I ended up delivering my first baby." Soon after, Harman traveled to Austin, Texas to train with a collective of home-birth midwives. When she returned, she became one of the founding members of The West Virginia Cooperative of Midwives. Her passion for caring for women and babies led her to become an RN as the first step in getting licensed as certified nurse midwife. In 1985, with her children, a yowling cat and her husband she traveled north, pulling a broken down trailer to begin her training at the University of Minnesota where she received her MSN in Nurse-Midwifery.For the past twenty years, Ms. Harman has been a nurse-midwife on the faculty of The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University and most recently West Virginia University. In 1998 she went into private practice with her husband, Tom, an OB/Gyn, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Here they devoted their lives to caring for women and bringing babies into the world in a gentle way.When, in 2003, the cost of liability insurance for Obstetrics sky-rocketed from $70,000 a year to $110,000, the Harman's decided to give up deliveries. Though many loyal patients grieved the loss of their favorite mid-wife/physician team, the change in life style gave the author time to begin writing her first book, The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife's Memoir.Patricia Harman still lives and works with her husband, Ob/Gyn Thomas Harman, in Morgantown, West Virginia at their clinic, Partners in Women's Health Care. Though she no longer attends births, she provides care for women in early pregnancy and through-out the life span. She brings to this work the same dedication and compassion she brought to obstetrics."
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