Fab review for Birth in Suburbia from the National Childbirth Trust
Birth in Suburbia
By Carol Falaki
Published by Lulu (2009)
ISBN 978-1-4092-5214-6
Price £10.50
Review by Kim Thomas; New Digest, NCT professional, Edition 49 January 2010 (p19).

Traditional advice to new authors is to write about what you know and Carol Falaki has certainly taken that to heart. A midwife for 19 years, and a mother of two, her novel Birth in Suburbia follows the lives of three friends in their journey from late pregnancy to giving birth.
The three friends, Debbie, Helen and Liz, all residents of the fictional suburb of Wellonsey, find themselves in very different situations. Helen is happily married to Nigel. Debbie is married to Sean, but he seems distant and pre-occupied, and she worries that he is having an affair. Liz meanwhile, has split up with her partner, and moved back from London to Wellonsey to live with her parents.
Falaki is obviously familiar with the concerns that women have in pregnancy -their fear of giving birth, their worries about whether they will be able to breast-feed and their anxieties about relationships. She knows what pregnant women talk about, and offers a good account of the conflicting views about whether home birth is better than hospital birth. She is also excellent at showing the confusion women feel when confronted with so much contradictory advice.
The author comes into her own when relating the very different birth experiences of the three women. Her descriptions of a home birth, a relatively straightforward hospital birth and a difficult hospital birth ending in an emergency Caesarean are realistic and packed with the kind of detail, both about the physical experience and the emotions of the women themselves that only an experienced midwife could convey.
For antenatal teachers, these descriptions provide an excellent starting-point for a discussion of birth experiences, and the book as a whole does a great job of bringing into the open the often unspoken qualms of many pregnant women.


On January 31st 2010 | Answer

looks like an interesting book Carol. I've only read the first few pages so far but I'll try and get back to it.
On January 30th 2010 | Answer

Congratulations to Anna on the birth of your beautiful baby girl

On January 29th 2009 | Answer

If you are having a baby
I would be very interested in your opinion of this book if you are pregnant.
On December 10th 2008 | Answer