Playing Catch: A Midwife's Memoirs

by Sally Urang

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.

Genres: Nonfiction

420 pages, Paperback

First published January 12, 2006