In this courageous memoir, Elizabeth Heineman âilluminates the complex emotional landscape of stillbirthâputting into frank and poetic words the unspeakable experience of simultaneously grieving and mothering a baby who has diedâ (Deborah L. Davis). Ghostbelly is Elizabeth Heinemanâs personal account of a home birth that goes tragically wrongâending in a stillbirthâand the harrowing process of grief and questioning that follows. Itâs also Heinemanâs unexpected tale of the loss of a newborn: before burial, she brings the baby home for overnight stays. Does this sound unsettling? Of course. Weâre not supposed to hold and caress dead bodies. But then again, babies arenât supposed to die. Interwoven with her own accounts of mourning, Heineman examines the home-birth and maternal health-care industry, the isolation of midwives, and the scripting of her own grief. With no resolution to sadness, Heineman and her partner learn to live in a new world: a world in which they face each day with the understanding of the fragility of the present.
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