#BlogTour ‘Baby Teeth’ by Celia Silvani

About the book…

They said a mother knows best and I believed them. Was I wrong?

It is supposed to be a dream. James and I have been trying for years. But now it is starting to feel like a nightmare.

Doctors don’t ask questions, or care about how you’re feeling. They just tell you what to do. They never listen.

Mam and James don’t understand either. James thinks I’m being anxious and Mam says it’ll pass. It always does. That’s what she did when Dad died.

I’ve never felt more alone. Or scared.

Then I joined an online group for mothers. A sisterhood, really. They might be on a screen, but sometimes it feels like they know me better than James. They listen, they care. It’s all I could have asked for.

Until the worst happens and I see them for who they are. But if I leave, what if they come for me next?

My thanks to Tracy at Compulsive Readers for my blog tour invite and oublishers Orion for my gifted review copy of ‘Baby Teeth’  by Celia Silvani, her debut novel which is out in e-book and paperback format from all good bookshops!

Praying that my ancient laptop stays alive long enough to complete this review…thoughts and prayers please!

Between 1993-96 I trained as a midwife, based in South Shields for placement, and Newcastle for theory classes . I saw first hand, as a very naive 18 -21 year old, the way women who came in with birth plans were sniggered at, the way doctors dismissed requests for natural childbirth and how, at the opposite end of the spectrum, medical advances made it possible for both mother and baby to survive against impossible odds.

It’s a tale as old as time…as soon as you hit a certain age, it’s the question of ‘when are you starting a family then?’

A) it’s actually no one’s business but your own and B) it’s far more complicated and difficult to do this than people may believe.

Plus your feelings, thoughts and expectations are no longer your own, everyone seems to have a vested interest in your lady parts and an opinion to offer, whether you wanted it or not.

And then there are the feelings of your partner to consider-all of this is framed within a patriarchal expectation to propagate the species and there seem to be certain ways of doing this that are ‘better’ than others.

Combine societal expectation, social media filters on presenting childbirth and pregnancy as the apotheosis of woman hood as well as the lure of the internet to find a  sense of community and you begin to see Claire and James’ journey to parenthood as littered with landmines.

Claire’s dislocation from her family to support her husband’s career dovetails with her overwhelming desire to be a parent. Played off against her best friend from her uni days, Sally, her career driven boss , Helen, fellow runner, Taya , this is a very difficult balance to maintain especially when she carries her own trauma from hospital experiences as a child, when her father died.

James seems to be doing well, actively social and out going, Claire…not so much. Desperate to fit in, she spends endless hours researching on pregnancy forums and blogs, tracing Instagram footprints of followable people and counting the days till she can take another pregnancy test.

Each negative result feels like a failure, so when eventually it shows up positive, she can scarcely believe it.

However, this closely curated cocoon of a pregnancy and childbirth turns out to be rather more suffocating than liberating.

New friend , Taya, doesn’t seem to be overwhelmed with happiness. Sally is not exactly invested having made her own transition to motherhood some years earlier. And the less said about unsympathetic boss , Helen, the better. So Claire is very much ripe for the picking when she ventures online and tries to work out just how much control over her pregnancy she will hand over to the medical profession….the Goddesses online have very set opinions about this.

Aiming for nothing less than a complete ‘off grid’ experience, muddling through with an absolute ban on any negative posts or  mothers who decide to involve professionals at any step of their childbearing journey, in the name of feminist regaining of bodily autonomy, my alarm bells started ringing very early on. One of the mums, Flora, spends a lot of time discussing the way her past pregnancy made her feel and how it has informed her decision to make sure everything is natural this time around.

As Claire navigates the intense physical and mental steps around pregnancy, she leans so heavily on these women who could, in fact, be anyone hiding behind a monitor, she starts shutting out the real people in her life to listen to the narrative peddlers who claim their methods are safe.

For both Claire and Flora, the horrifying truth is so far removed from what they have been sold that it genuinely takes your breath away…

As the plot tightens its hold, the first person narration from Claire makes you feel like her confessional, her confidante, you want nothing but the best for her in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Her pregnancy represented safety and being wanted and quickly becomes alarming and dangerous. Her experiences, like Flora’s , with medical professionals (bar 1 very wonderful midwife) support her decision to back away from the least bit of medicalisation of what is, in most cases, a very natural event.

Celia does a terrific job in getting inside of Claire’s head, and explores, very cleverly and sensitively, the way women feel so conflicted about who they are and what they want from the childbearing experience. No on comes across as ‘evil’ or ‘ malicicious’ however, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and some of these goddesses are abundant with them.

Terrifying, timely and deeply unnerving, I absolutely loved this book and am so grateful to have had the chance to read it!

About the author… 

Celia Silvani is a communications director and freelance writer, who has written for Stylist, the Telegraph and BBC Future on topics ranging from weddings to hurricanes.

Baby Teeth is her first novel.

Twitter @Tr4cyF3nt0n @celia_silvani @orionbooks

Instagram @celiasilvaniauthor @thebookdealer @orionbooks