The Blue Cotton Gown:
A Midwife's Memoir
by Patricia Harman
Beacon Press, Fall 2008
CHAPTER 1
Confessional
I have insomnia... and I drink a little. I might as well tell you. In the middle of the night I drink scotch when I can’t sleep. Actually I can’t sleep most nights, actually every night. Even before I stopped delivering babies I wanted to write about the women. Now I have time.
It’s 2:00 A.M. and I pull my white terry bathrobe closer, thinking about the patients whose stories I hear. There's something about the exam room that’s like a confessional. It’s not dim and secret the way I imagine a confessional in a Catholic church, the way I've seen them in movies. I peer at the clock. It’s now 2:06.
The exam room where these stories are shared is brightly illuminated with recessed lighting. The walls are painted off-white with a wallpaper border of soft leaves and berries. There are framed photographs of babies and flowers and trees on the walls which I've taken myself and hung to make the space seem less clinical and a bulletin board with handouts on stress reduction, wellness and calcium.
The room is not big. It's the usual size. If I had to guess, I'd say 8x10. The counter-top under the tall white cupboard is hunter green and there's a small stainless steel sink in the corner. Other than a guest chair, my rolling stool, and a small trash can with a step-down lid there's just the exam table, angled away from the wall with a flowered pillow and rose vinyl upholstery. On it lays a folded white sheet and a blue cotton gown with one sting for a tie. The exam table dominates everything.
I don't drink for fun. I don't even like scotch. It’s for the sleep. I can’t work if I can’t sleep. The scotch is my sleep medicine and I want it to taste like medicine. The little jam jar with the black line at three ounces sits in the bathroom cupboard. My husband fills it for me then locks the bottle in the closet. I ask him to do that. When you have as many alcoholics in your family as I do, you don't take chances. On nights when I'm restless, I drink it down sip by sip with a bad face after each swallow. Then in an hour, I go back to bed.
I stand now at the window listening to the song of the spring frogs and thinking of the stories the women tell me, and then in the stillest part of the deep night, I sit down to write. I need to sleep... but I need to tell the stories. The stories need to be told because they are from the hearts of women; the tender, angry hearts; broken, beautiful hearts of women. 
