This Lovely Life (ePub)

One woman's true story of raising a child born three months premature-"propulsive, startling, and vivid, like motherhood itself" (Meg Wolitzer, New York Times-bestselling author of The Female Persuasion).

Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing only one pound each, at twenty-three weeks' gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to "let her babies go"-knowing all too well that at their early stage of development they would likely die and, if they survived, would have a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply disabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube.

This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins-the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death. In the end, the long-delayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative. Forman's intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother's fierce love for her children.

"Intimate, compelling, and hopeful-an absolutely important book." -Rachel Simon, author of Riding the Bus with My Sister