A Gift of Time Book Tour

About A Gift of Time:
A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby’s Life is Expected to Be Brief was written by Amy Kuebelbeck and Dr. Deborah L. Davis. This newly published book (January 2011) was written by the authors of two successful and widely read books for parents who have lost children: Waiting for Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby’s Brief Life and Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby. I read both of them during my family’s five year roller coaster ride through secondary infertility, pregnancy loss and neonatal death. They helped me to cope and to heal throughout our journey, especially before and after the birth and death of our second child, Molly, who was born and died in April 2008.

I wish A Gift of Time had existed when we got the diagnosis and prognosis for our baby girl early on in the second trimester of our pregnancy. I am pleased that it is now available as a resource for anyone going forward given diagnoses and prognoses that their unborn children may not live long before or after they are born. A Gift of Time was very moving for me to read, and I could relate to so many of the contributors’ stories. Over 120 parents (including myself) shared their personal experiences with the authors to help make this possible and are quoted throughout the text. I also found it healing to read A Gift of Time at this point on our journey (almost three years since Molly’s birth and death), as we never get over the death of our children. It has helped in my efforts of continuing to work through my grief and make peace with our loss. I look forward to having the opportunity to discuss this book as it relates to our own experiences with other participants, contributors and the authors on this book tour.

How Does a Book Tour Work?

Everyone is welcome to participate if you have the book and a blog!

1) Please sign up for the tour by clicking here and filling out a brief form. All you need to provide is your blog name, blog URL and email address. I appreciate your comments on this post, however to participate you ALSO need to be sure to fill out the form.

2) Get the book, if you haven’t already, and read it (or at least enough of it to be able to ask a question for other participants to answer) by Tuesday, March 22. You can order a copy of the book here or download the electronic version here.

3) Come up with 1 or 2 questions that require more than a “yes” or “no” answer, the type of questions that will invite the other participants to share their opinions, life experiences and will lead to discussions. You may also choose to submit 1 or 2 questions for the authors of A Gift of Time Amy and Debbie, as they will both be participating in the tour. Lastly, some of the participants may have also served as contributors (including myself) for A Gift of Time, sharing our stories for the book. You are also welcome to submit 1 or 2 questions specific to the contributors participating in the book tour that they may choose to answer in their blog post for the tour. Please email your questions to me by Tuesday, March 22. I will send you email reminders closer to the time.

4) I will email you the list of questions that I have compiled from the other participants by Friday, March 25. Then each participant will select 3 questions from the list (any 3 that interests you and you want to explore) to answer/discuss on your A Gift of Time Book Tour post on your blog. The authors will at the same time review the questions you have submitted for them and answer as many as they can in a Q & A interview format that I will post on my blog.

5) I will let you know which day you are going to post your blog entry for the book tour. Half of our group will post on Wednesday, March 30 and the other half on Thursday, March 31. You are welcome to let me know if you have a date preference and I will do my best to accomodate you. Each day I will post a list here on Four of a Kind with links to the blogs of the participants who are posting blog entries for that day. Whichever date you are given, please be ready with your Q & A blog entries and post them early that day (by 8:00 a.m. EST).

6) Then comes the best part — when we all get to “tour” each other’s blogs, read the Q & A posts and discuss A Gift of Time! The idea behind this being that by the end of the week each participant will comment on all of the other participants blog posts, hopefully leading to interesting and thought provoking discussions, as well as maybe even some new permanent blog readers.

So now what?
Sign up, get the book, start reading, grab the button, link to this post and please feel free to spread the word on your blog, Facebook page or Twitter account. Please also let me know if you have any questions about this book tour.

Thank you and I look forward to sharing this A Gift of Time book tour experience with you!