Book Review: Invisible Labor by Rachel Somerstein
When this book was recommended to me, I remember thinking, “I don’t know if I can handle a deep dive on C-sections that’s framed by how the system is broken.” In my healing journey, I’ve focused so much on accepting my Cesarean delivery—accepting it as what was safest, as how my son wanted to enter the world, and as what the universe had planned for us. The idea that my birth experience could be rooted in anything other than my deep love for my son was not something I thought, emotionally, I could tolerate.
I decided to try reading it anyway because a good friend (who is a midwife) had started it and really liked it. And I got hooked pretty quickly.
I listened on Audible and while it was not read by the author, it was good!
The hardcover book was also available through my local library.
Part memoir, part investigative reporting, this book follows the author as she experiences her own unplanned Cesarean, grapples with the resulting trauma, and interviews other C-section patients and experts on the history and current state of maternal health care. Each chapter explores a different layer of the multifaceted experience of birthing via Cesarean, thoughtfully explaining its roots while weaving present-day stories into an overview of the current state of care. Some of the topics she covers include: the history of Cesarean deliveries, the “cascade of consequences” that follow a C-section, American maternal health care as a business, the use of technology in prenatal and birth care, the idea of mom and baby as separate patients, the clearly demonstrated need for midwifery care, and the (sometimes toxic) beliefs that shape our culture around childbirth.
There were so many moments when it just felt good to read the words of someone who also had a belly birth she didn’t want. She talks through her own exploration of why having an unmedicated vaginal delivery had been such a priority—the dreamy social media content of dimly lit rooms, and the idea that experiencing birth in its rawest form as being fully alive. And then she smoothly dials the clock back a couple hundred years to remind readers that before the modern-day Cesarean, women in the 1860s were more likely to die from childbirth complications than men who fought in the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.
She also pulls forward the voices that history tends to leave out. The midwives who have long advanced maternal health often go unacknowledged, and she digs into birth records to re-center their perspectives. Still, the past’s communal approach to childbirth seems to have been lost in the transition to hospital birth. One of the most compelling sections of the book is her visit to Alaska, where hospital Cesarean rates are among the lowest in the country. She travels there to witness firsthand how their model of care offers the best of modern medicine while maintaining a gentle approach to support birthing people and their families.
If you’re in your immediate Cesarean recovery season, this might not be the book you reach for while juggling pain management and breastfeeding (it’s reflective and quiet, not a how-to). But it is the book to pick up when you’re ready to name what’s been simmering under the surface. It’s for those days when you want to feel like someone out there gets it—and is asking all the right questions about the experience you just had.
After finishing the book, I felt like it helped me make up for lost time. Of all the learning, reading, and preparing I did for my son’s arrival, I didn’t focus on belly birth at all. I skipped the “C-section” chapters in the birth and pregnancy books I read and subsequently, felt very foolish and unprepared. This book offers a comprehensive look at Cesarean birth—equal parts data and storytelling. Beyond gaining knowledge, I came away feeling more connected to the story of Cesareans in America, and where I fit in that story.
If you are planning a Cesarean delivery, you may want to delay reading this book altogether or skip the parts where Somerstein discusses traumatic births in the interest of experiencing birth without fear.
