Because Every Baby is Perfect

There was a chair in the room, more a loveseat than a chair (I supposed that was for if a couple were there), a table, and a telephone. Next to the telephone was a box of tissues. This was definitely a “bad news” room. A bad news room! I supposed all hospitals had to have rooms like this - a “delicate situation” room, a “knowing nothing else to do with these people” room.

So begins Yvonne Joye’s second book, “Ten Fingers and Ten Toes”. This second memoir, about yet another extremely trying time in the author’s life, again tells it like it is with honesty, reality and the kind of odd sense of humor I can relate to. Yvonne had me crying one minute and laughing the next. Maybe some things we think and do aren’t appropriate, but don’t we all do them and think them?

In the midst of job changes and a house remodel, Yvonne and her husband decide it is time to have a fourth child. When they find out that this baby will be born with severe birth defects, there is nothing to do but push forward and deal with the outcome. Which the family does marvelously, not perfectly, though, because who in this world is perfect?

I love Yvonne’s style of writing. Though she is from Ireland and certain spellings and grammar aren’t what I’m used to here in America, it was just one more thing that endeared her to me. Between this book and her first one about her battle with breast cancer, if you ever want to read stories which will hit home, read these.