Book Review: Hannah's Hope

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, which is a day of remembrance for pregnancy loss and infant loss. For those of you who have experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death, I am thinking of you today.

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Fairly quickly after we were faced with the possibility of infertility, I reached out to an acquaintance who I knew had also dealt with it. She had kept a blog and posted on Facebook and sent me a ton of information in an e-mail. I still refer back to it from time to time. One book that she suggested that was helpful to her was Hannah's Hope: Seeking God's Heart in the Midst of Infertility, Miscarriage, and Adoption Loss by Jennifer Saake. After Brian and I went back and forth many times on various decisions (including visiting an information session by Wake County on adoption and foster care), I decided to look into this book to see if it was something that I would be interested in. There was a Kindle version, so I purchased it for about $9 and started reading. I would read it pretty closely for several nights and then put it down for a few weeks. I finally came back to it a few weeks before my birthday when I realized that I was not coping well and needed better solutions.

The author has dealt with countless reproductive issues (medical infertility, lost adoptions, and miscarriages). She now has two living children. I really enjoyed most of the book and found it very helpful as a way to know that what I was feeling (anger, bitterness, sadness) was normal, even if it wasn't healthy. The book uses the story of Hannah, who was barren, in I Samuel 1-2 as its narrative guide and has 16 different chapters, including discussion on "Envy, Jealousy, and Rivalry", "Is God Punishing Me?", How Long Does It Hurt?", and "Bitterness of Soul." Each chapter starts out with a "brief fictionalized look at a portion of Hannah's story" that uses the historical context of Hannah's time period with the the author's own experience with barrenness. At first I thought I would find that approach too hokey, but I grew to like it and it really helped me identify with Hannah. There are also short sections at the end of each chapter for "Burden Bearers" that help explain why people facing these crises act like they do.

Clearly, this book is completely based in the Bible (Bible passages appear on most, if not all, pages), so if you're not coming to infertility from a Christian perspective, this is probably not your book. Though, it still might be worth a look. There is good stuff here.

What I Liked

• The author has experience. She's dealt with a lot of stuff and has experienced about everything you can imagine with this subject. She knows what she's talking about.
• The advice for "burden bearers" was spot on. I know it's not easy to interact with someone dealing with infertility because one day (or minute!) the person can be fine and the next emotional or withdrawn.
• The Bible passages cited were comforting and reassuring. It was nice to realize that what I was feeling had been felt by many, many other women.
• This subject needs to be talked about and discussed. Too often couples suffer in silence or friends  and family ignore the situation because they don't know what to say.
• The author is very clear on her beliefs and limits, but she does not come across as preachy or judgmental.
• Nearly all facets of how infertility affects your life are discussed. 

What I Didn't Like

• I'm not a woman who has always wanted to be a mother. A lot of the support for women's infertility comes from that perspective. At times, this book gets close to that point. Stuff such as Since I was 3 years old, playing with my dolls, I knew I was born to be a mother. When I was 3, I wanted to be a waitress and then a banker and then a teacher and then an astronaut. I pretty much assumed I would be a mother some day, but I certainly didn't think about it all the time.
• In some places the author is too conservative for my liking; there are some discussions of "serving your husband." Although the author did talk about how that respect should go both ways, in her relationship, she sees her husband as the leader who makes the final decision. Brian and I are pretty darn equal in terms of who is "in charge" so that argument didn't resonate with me.
• There was a brief discussion on how infertility could create marital infidelity (through a physical affair or turning to pornography) that was so ridiculous that all I could think about was one of those "I'm Addicted to Pornography" shows that appear on A&E or whatever network. It came across as women are so weak.

All-in-all, I thought this was a very good book. It helped me keep my emotions in check and attempt to understand how I was feeling. Many of the Bible verses were very comforting to me and it has helped me create strategies to cope.