Cut, Stapled, and Mended When One Woman Reclaimed Her Body and Gave Birth on Her Own Terms After Cesarean

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.

Academics don’t qualify Roanna Rosewood to be an author; life experiences do. School’s last grasp rewarded her with a GED at fifteen. She lived the story of Cut, Stapled, and Mended, giving birth without drugs or a doctor at home in a tub after not one but two Caesarean births. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Contents
1. She Visits 1
2. Baby Dreams 12
3. Herstory 21
4. Blessing Way 30
5. My Sun 34
6. Nummie Woman 46
7. Snake Oil 57
8. A Window 76
9. The Lie 91
10. Eve’s Truth 102
11. She Returns 119
12. Ring of Fire 132
13. Merbaby 137
14. Amaryllis and Dalia 150
15. Bunk Beds 160
Acknowledgments 165
Notes 168
Readers’ Discussion Guide 170