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A review by cathjw
Mother Ship by Francesca Segal
5.0
I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by the author. Francesca Segal has a beautiful voice, I'm glad I opted to listen to this memoir rather than read it.
She relates her experiences of giving birth to her premature twin daughters, known only as A-lette and B-lette during the early sections of the book, and their resulting NICU stay. She sheds light on this hidden world, the immense compassion she finds in the staff and her fellow parents as well as the utterly brutal nature of some of the medical procedures her daughters endure.
This was a somewhat peculiar read for me, I also had twin daughters, also my first pregnancy. They were born at 23 weeks and my eldest daughter died in the NICU. So this was looking into a life that 'might have been' my own and a lot of it I found familiar despite the different circumstances.
Many of the thoughts that Francesca Segal articulates so wonderfully, echo my own poor clumsy versions. Loved her descriptions of being pregnant with twins, your own girl gang. Such a miraculous feeling! Then the birth and the feeling that your own body failed your babies, yourself and your partner. The strange otherworldly beauty of extremely preterm babies. Thoughts of them as voyagers inside strange vessels. Wishing you didn't have to leave them in the hospital, going back to an outside world that suddenly feels strange and abrasive. The endless routines of pumping milk, sterilising, hand washing. The terror of that first overnight stay when all the doctors and nurses leave you!
The peculiar mix of barbarity and kindness you find in the NICU. When she described some of the early procedures, like central line insertion, I physically cringed. Think I had attempted to put that from my mind. So many of those early procedures aren't really a choice, it is a case of do this or the baby dies. But that doesn't make them any more pleasant and I found these sections brought a lot back to me. I found the author very stoic and wise, probably a far nicer parent/patient than I was!
I found her reflections on her daughter's early experiences of touch very interesting. My daughter used to speak about her 'hurting days' and had night terrors when she was a toddler. I'm always left wondering if those early experiences shaped her emotional landscape as they have her cognitive one.
She relates her experiences of giving birth to her premature twin daughters, known only as A-lette and B-lette during the early sections of the book, and their resulting NICU stay. She sheds light on this hidden world, the immense compassion she finds in the staff and her fellow parents as well as the utterly brutal nature of some of the medical procedures her daughters endure.
This was a somewhat peculiar read for me, I also had twin daughters, also my first pregnancy. They were born at 23 weeks and my eldest daughter died in the NICU. So this was looking into a life that 'might have been' my own and a lot of it I found familiar despite the different circumstances.
Many of the thoughts that Francesca Segal articulates so wonderfully, echo my own poor clumsy versions. Loved her descriptions of being pregnant with twins, your own girl gang. Such a miraculous feeling! Then the birth and the feeling that your own body failed your babies, yourself and your partner. The strange otherworldly beauty of extremely preterm babies. Thoughts of them as voyagers inside strange vessels. Wishing you didn't have to leave them in the hospital, going back to an outside world that suddenly feels strange and abrasive. The endless routines of pumping milk, sterilising, hand washing. The terror of that first overnight stay when all the doctors and nurses leave you!
The peculiar mix of barbarity and kindness you find in the NICU. When she described some of the early procedures, like central line insertion, I physically cringed. Think I had attempted to put that from my mind. So many of those early procedures aren't really a choice, it is a case of do this or the baby dies. But that doesn't make them any more pleasant and I found these sections brought a lot back to me. I found the author very stoic and wise, probably a far nicer parent/patient than I was!
I found her reflections on her daughter's early experiences of touch very interesting. My daughter used to speak about her 'hurting days' and had night terrors when she was a toddler. I'm always left wondering if those early experiences shaped her emotional landscape as they have her cognitive one.