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A Better Woman : A Memoir of Motherhood

Resource Type

Book - Parent

Description

"Before she had children, Australian novelist Johnson believed that she could easily juggle pen and paper with formula and nappies. But the real story here is not so much her attempt to manage motherhood and work as it is her ability to do all that while coping with an injury she sustained during childbirth. She describes how a fistula (a tiny tunnel running from the inside of her anus to the inside of her vagina), created by a third-degree tear, caused her physical and emotional distress postpartum. Told in crisp, writerly prose, her story is as poignant as it is aggravating this reviewer could not believe that Johnson was not more bitter toward her national healthcare doctors, who instructed her to walk with the tear to another wing of the hospital to breast-feed her baby. While Johnson seems to take her injury in stride as merely a terrible byproduct of a beautiful miracle, one hopes that her story teaches others to question the authority of doctors." -Library Journal

Ages

13 years and up.

ISBN

0743432975

Author

Susan Johnson

Publication

2003 Washington Square Press

Availability

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