Book Plug

I have been corresponding with Amy Abbey, author of the soon-to-be-released Journeys: Stories of Pregnancy After Loss. This book "is a collection of chapter pairs written by parents, mostly mothers, who endured a loss and coped through the insanity of a subsequent pregnancy."

Amy tells me, "The authors detail their losses, which range from first trimester miscarriage, second trimester deliveries, fullterm stillbirths, and infant death. We all grieved differently yet our pain was the same. Getting pregnant again proved challenging for many of us, obsessive for others. And coping through the next pregnancy, concurrently mourning our losses, proved to push many of us too close to the edge." Amen.

I promised her I would pass word on her new work (I look forward to reading it) in spite of its current availability only on Barnes & Noble.com - the Walmart of bookstores. It includes a foreword by Dr. Michael Berman and back cover comments by Ann Douglas, Michael Nettleton and Sherokee Ilse (who never returns my emails.)

Amy was looking forward to sending a few copies a long to the Long Island event on April 30, but unfortunately I had to inform her there won't be one. This is especially poignant as some of her subjects delivered at North Shore.

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

Anyway, I don't believe their head of OB/GYN would approve of her book.

Is it bitter in here, or is it just me?

UPDATE: It's been a difficult day, in little tiny ways. I'm not sure why, things have been building, note by note, all day. Maybe because it's March. Amy's cheerful email about the April 30 gig reminded me I'm not entirely over that yet. "No, I don't want to hear about your son." How would you feel?

A couple of things have happened in the last couple of hours to put things into better perspective. I got a package from SANDS (see the new link on the bar at the right) which I will get into soon, once I have perused the contents a bit ... and I took a moment to revisit Suzanne Pullen's story about her boy, Avery.

I hadn't watched and listened to the multimedia slideshow that went with it. It's really sweet. If you have a few minutes, please watch it yourself. What a cute little boy. (But what kind of a freak puts a poster in the imaging room that reads "Pandora's Box"?)

I regret, very much, that we didn't call anyone over to meet Calvin. Or take any pictures of him, we just have the ones they took. He deserved better. I'm sorry, boy. We didn't know.