Talking About My Baby

Talking About My Baby
Margot Early

The MidwivesThis baby is hers!One night in Texas, midwife Tara Marcus finds a newborn baby abandoned in her car. A baby she desperately wants to keep.She takes the baby to her hometown in Colorado, hoping to adopt her. But adoption requires money. And it requires a better situation than Tara can offer. A husband, a home….She needs a strategy, and the best one she can think of is marriage. Dr. Isaac McCrea, a newcomer to town, happens to be a widower with three kids. Surely he needs a wife! So what if he's a doctor–not exactly Tara's favorite species? So what if she falls in love with him despite her outrageous proposal? None of that matters.Only her baby matters. Her baby and his children.

“I’ll do it for the baby.” (#u55e2c090-f564-5b76-9f48-d2098f5df824)Letter to Reader (#ua03a1b56-50af-5ee0-8346-6942dbe03295)Title Page (#ueeec176d-57fb-5238-9cbe-51cfd96ac338)Dedication (#u50397d5e-1c9c-5da1-bbca-26ef1435cc9f)PROLOGUE (#u3d16c97e-2731-54db-978f-48851f47da2a)CHAPTER ONE (#ubb0ca017-618b-5a9e-8cfe-cbda8129a11a)CHAPTER TWO (#u5c93ccdd-9f5e-5ae1-8928-5208c587c4fe)CHAPTER THREE (#u2787dbae-eaf5-5c04-b9e4-1575d8e9a35e)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)PROLOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“I’ll do it for the baby.”

Tara placed the infant Laura in a sling against her chest. “Here’s a man who needs a wife. And I need a husband so I can get a home study to adopt Laura.”

“Tara, you can’t...”

Tara laughed. “Just kidding, Mom.” But she wasn’t.

She wanted to adopt Laura legally and she knew the other midwives at the birth center in Texas would help her. But Tara also knew that in her case, the authorities . would insist on a prerequisite. A husband.

Tara didn’t have time to “fall in love,” as her mother had suggested the other night. It would take a century. But a “suitable” man to marry lived two miles away, and she had the tool to bribe him. Herself. She would care for his children and she would clean his house.

Are you crazy, Tara? What made her think Isaac would marry her because he needed child care—or a housekeeper?

But she needed him. Isaac McCrea, M.D. She needed him so she could keep Laura.

Dear Reader,

Why write about midwives? First, because my son was born at home with a midwife, and I quickly became an admirer of midwives. Second, because although midwives attend most of the births in the world, they attend fewer than five percent of U.S. births. Third, because In meeting and studying midwives, I have found almost as much diversity as in the population as a whole. What these women have in common is their commitment to be “with woman” (from the Old English med-wyf) in labor and birth.

In You Were on My Mind, you met Ivy, a certified nurse-midwife, dealing with amnesia and a forgotten husband and daughter in rural West Virginia. Talking About My Baby is her sister Tara’s book

Tara is a different kind of midwife—trained in Third World settings, committed to being a midwife with no other tide attached. She is spontaneous and passionate, an outlaw who is sometimes hard to understand. But the outlaw is changed irrevocably by an abandoned baby, and a man who does understand her—Isaac McCrea, M.D.

I hope you’ll enjoy this story and look forward to reading about Tara’s parents and a missing Alaskan midwife in There Is a Season, in December ’99.

Best wishes and happy reading.

Margot Early

Talking about My Baby

Margot Early

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

The Midwives...

for

Marina of the Sea

Many people have offered their assistance in my research for

this book. Also, I have used several references, including

Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow

We Will Be Killed with Our Families, Hanny Lightfoot-

Klein’s Prisoners of Ritual and a host of midwifery articles,

books and conference tapes. I would also like to thank

Maureen Matthews and William Dwelley, MS, LM, WEMT-I

for their help. An unnamed thanks to the other midwives

I have known, who have inspired me with their dedication

and courage. My greatest debt is to Marina Alzugaray,

MS, ARNP, CNM, and director of the CoMadres Institute,

dedicated to enhancing the health of women and their

families through the art and science of midwifery. Long

before she answered extensive research questions for this

book—and allowed me to use her wonderful analogy to

wild hens and her thoughts on the chicken-and-the-egg

question—Marina was midwife at the home birth of my son.

This series, THE MIDWIVES, is dedicated to her.

I am unfamiliar with adoption law in Texas. Direct-entry

midwives may become licensed in the state of Colorado, but

this law was passed years ago. Midwives in many states,

including Colorado, have faced legal action for pursuing

their trade; they have won and lost lawsuits. I have never

practiced medicine, nursing or midwifery. All technical

errors in this fictional work are mine.

PROLOGUE