Flesh and Blood (A Memoir)

When psychiatrist and expert witness, Sabina Dosani, is referred to the recurrent miscarriage clinic after a series of devastating losses, she finds herself undergoing invasive tests and intrusive scans. Sabina starts to scrutinise the medical systems she worked and trained in. What she discovers overturns many things she had taken for granted. Dosani’s memoir explores whether it is possible to be a compassionate, yet emotionally-uninvolved, witness to family tragedy. Weaving professional encounters in the family court, with personal experiences of foetal loss, Flesh and Blood is an exploration of maternal attachment and clinical detachment.

Flesh and Blood takes the reader on journey through a medicalised pregnancy, which unfolds under the bright glare of medical examinations, alongside a parallel, professional journey with families eviscerated by illness, adversity and addictions. Tracking the conflicts, collisions and concerns of medical professionals, social workers and lawyers, Flesh and Blood asks readers to consider what it would mean if clinics and courts were places of greater compassion, or whether emotional bonds hinder the difficult and often devastating interventions designed to keep children safe, that often leave mothers in the shadows.