Roanna Rosewood wasn’t afraid of birth. Women have been doing it since the beginning of time, she thought. How hard can it be? That was before her pregnancy ended in caesarean, like one in three pregnancies do in America. It was on the operating table that she realized birth is more than the means to a baby. It’s an ancient rite, one that she had just failed. Determined to birth naturally, Roanna disregards her doctor’s orders for a repeat cesarean and sets out to reclaim birth. From the obvious: writing a birth plan, exercising, and huge quantities of supplements; to the ridiculous: drinking frog extract, enduring the manual relocation of her liver, and giving up chocolate, she goes to astonishing lengths to prepare herself for birth. But in the end, Roanna finds the secret to birth, in the last place she expected it to be. And she gives birth without drugs, or a doctor, at home, in a tub. Cut, Stapled, and Mended is every-woman’s chance to experience natural birth from the comfort of a cozy reading chair, written by an expert: the person on the working side of the vagina, Cut, Stapled, and Mended will leave you longing for and ready to experience birth yourself, not from a lack of fear (on the contrary, Roanna unshrouds labor in naked detail, never softening or prettying it), but because you will have glimpsed the enormity of your own power.