The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, starts on a snowy night in 1964. Dr. David Henry delivers his own twins and discovers that one of them, his daughter, has been born with Downs Syndrome. In a hasty decision, he gives the daughter to a nurse to be taken to an institution for Down Syndrome patients and tells his wife that their daughter is dead. The nurse, Caroline, raises the daughter as her own in another town where no one knows about her past or the baby girl's past.
Here's part of the excerpt from the book "The Memory Keeper's Daughter":
She looked up, smiling, when he tucked the blanket around her legs.
"You know, I've been wondering what it's like," she said. "Before we're born, I mean. It's too bad we can't remember." She opened her robe and pulled up the sweater she wore underneath, revealing a belly as round and hard as a melon. She ran her hand across its smooth surface, firelight playing across her skin, casting reddish gold onto her hair. "Do you suppose it's like being inside a great lantern? The book says light permeates my skin, that the baby can already see."
"I don't know," he said.
She laughed. "Why not?" she asked. "You're the doctor."
"I'm just an orthopedic surgeon," he reminded her. "I could tell you the ossification pattern for fetal bones, but that's about it." He lifted her foot, both delicate and swollen inside the light blue sock, and began to massage it gently: the powerful tarsal bone of her heel, the metatarsals and the phalanges, hidden beneath skin and densely layered muscles like a fan about to open. Her breathing filled the quiet room, her foot warmed his hands, and he imagined the perfect, secret, symmetry of bones. In pregnancy she seemed to him beautiful but fragile, fine blue veins faintly visible through her pale white skin.
It had been an excellent pregnancy, without medical restrictions. Even so, he had not been able to make love to her for several months. He found himself wanting to protect her instead, to carry her up flights of stairs, to wrap her in blankets, to bring her cups of custard.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter moves through the years, showing how one decision, one lie affected every part of two families' lives. This is a very powerful novel where which the readers gets drawn and absorbed into the story, feeling every love, and joy, every pain, heartaches and regrets the characters goes through.
P.s Its not only the story that attracts me. Initially, its the book cover that attracts me to pick it up. Definately a good read ;)
.Big Girl -> Amulet
.18 Oct
.Likes. Reading, Cooking,Movies, Singing & Arts
.Munch. Salmon sashimi, Chinese Raw Fish, 可爱鸡
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter.
In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition;
but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
-- Joseph Addison
.Little Girl -> Darrielle
.25 Mar
.Birth Weight. 3.51KGs
.Total Breastfed for 14months
.Partial Breastfed till 22months
.Likes. Book Reading with Mommy, Play, Swimming, Singing, Dancing
.Munch. Cold stuffs, Salmon sashimi, Tibits
What I wanted most for my daughter was that she be able to soar confidently in her own sky, whatever that may be.
-- Helen Claes
Pregnancy
.June 2007 - Mar 2008
.OB. Lawrence Ang
.Very mild morning sickness
.Always sleepy
.Colostrum at 23 weeks
.Fell down at 29 weeks
.My Birth Story .Special thanks to Shirley and my mum who tried to accompany me to all ante-natal checkups, especially Shirley who stayed overnight in TMC to keep my mum and me accompanied.
.Matured milk comes in on Day5
.Faced Nipple Confusion on Day4 - Day5
.Nipples bruised and sore from Day3 - Day5
.Nipples cracked and bled from Day5 - Day10
.Taught to apply fresh BM and nipple cream after each feedings
.Nipples start to heal from Day 11 onwards
.Fed every 2hrly at night for 1st month
.Fed every 3hrly at night for 2nd & 3rd month
.Fed every 4hrly at night from 4th month onwards
"When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breast milk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution. Countless women have regained trust in their bodies through nursing their children, even if they weren't sure at first that they could do it. It is an act of female power, and I think of it as feminism in its purest form."
----- Christine Northrup M.D.
If a multinational company developed a product that was a nutritionally balanced and delicious food, a wonder drug that both prevented and treated disease, cost almost nothing to produce and could be delivered in quantities controlled by the consumers' needs, the very announcement of their find would send their shares rocketing to the top of the stock market. The scientists who developed the product would win prizes and the wealth and influence of everyone involved would increase dramatically. Women have been producing such a miraculous substance, breastmilk, since the beginning of human existence. ----- Gabrielle Palmer
