Playing Catch: A Midwife's Memoirs [Paperback]

Sally Urang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 2006

What happens when a hip, thirtysomething journalist for a major metropolitan daily newspaper abandons her prestigious career to become a nurse-midwife? Playing Catch: A Midwife's Memoirs chronicles the adventures of Sarah Porter as she embarks on a career path awash in peril -- and body fluids. With fortitude, humor and a sarcastic, self-critical eye, Sarah weathers the humiliation of nursing school, lands smack in the middle of the crack cocaine epidemic as a new nurse and is finally, painfully initiated into midwifery. Told through Sarah's eyes, Playing Catch is not a crunchy, saffron-colored look at midwifery. It is a gritty, sexy, hilarious take on the modern world of birthing babies. In the end, Sarah must decide whether the transcendence and satisfaction she experiences as a midwife outweigh the exhaustion, self-doubt and ethical dilemmas she faces daily.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sally Urang has been writing for more than 20 years. After receiving a B.A. in English literature, Sally worked at the New York Times as an assistant editor, creating graphics, captions and headlines. In that capacity, she also wrote various articles for the daily newspaper, Sunday edition and special sections. After eight years, she left journalism to pursue a career as a midwife. She has been a midwife for 15 years and has delivered more than 1,000 babies, but her love of writing has never wavered. She has published her work in a variety of journals, including Esquire and Ms., the Journal of Nurse-Midwifery, The Female Patient, Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality and Institutional Investor. She was a contributing author on The New Good Housekeeping Family Health and Medical Guide (Hearst Books). Her work has also been featured online in CBS Healthwatch, GymAmerica.com and MSN's Pregnancy and Childcare Multimedia Health Information Services.She lives and works in New York City. Playing Catch: A Midwife's Memoirs is her first novel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 420 pages
• Publisher: AuthorHouse; 1 edition (January 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 142087621X
• ISBN-13: 978-1420876215
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,649,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars some fun parts, but about as useful to a midwife as watching ER is to a surgeon, May 25, 2007

By 

Jane Acton (San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Playing Catch: A Midwife's Memoirs (Paperback)

this book is full of inaccuracy, and portrays midwife-assisted birth (and doulas) unfairly. most of the novel is just that-- total fiction. if this were someone's ACTUAL memoir and the events in it happened the way they did, it might be useful. the overall quality of writing is pretty lousy, and the plot is sort of pathetically primetime. it really is like watching ER or Gray's Anatomy, with sensationalized medical scenes, helpless patients, and most of the real drama coming from the very troubled characters. Having read the awe-inspiring, life-changing memoirs of actual midwives, I was very dissapointed to discover that this is fiction (subtitle would seem less false if it said something like "a story of..." instead of "memoirs of...") It wasn't worth my time as a novel, and does a disservice to midwives and doulas by presenting itself, however vaguely, as a factual account or even based on fact. It's not as bad as an outright attack on midwifery, but it's subtly close. Don't waste book money on this trash. Note: if, somehow, this even resembles the life and practice of a nurse midwife, then it worries me even more. If you really want to read a midwife's memoir, try A Midwife's Story, Listen to me Good, or Vagina Politics. Or anything written by Elizabeth Davis or Ina May Gaskin; these women's practice philosophies shine through their writing.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read!, February 3, 2006

By 

D. Damon (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Playing Catch: A Midwife's Memoirs (Paperback)

Once I started, I couldn't put this book down. It is funny, touching, bawdy, thought provoking and sometimes terrifying. I have no medical background, for that matter, I have no children, but I was completely swept up by this book. It is a great read!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is a novel, not a memoir!, July 9, 2008

By 

TexasMom "aedaria" (Austin,TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Playing Catch: A Midwife's Memoirs (Paperback)

I think I'm not the only one who thought this book was a memoir/biography, especially since the word memoir is in the title of the book. Nope--it's a novel, and not a very well-written one. Characters aren't developed fully, story isn't developed fully but told in a general way. Not until I finished the book completely (thinking to myself, wow, this book wasn't very informative) did I finally notice that it was a work of fiction. And then I was even MORE disappointed, since I love a great read and this was a poor excuse for a novel. Extremely disappointed, wish I had my money back.