![]() Instead, she gives the baby, who is born with her own caul intact, up for a closed adoption-to the Melancons. The Melancons refuse, and Laila’s child is eventually stillborn.Īt the same time as Laila’s life is falling apart, her niece, Amara, is desperate to end her own unexpected pregnancy so she can continue her studies at Columbia. Opening in Harlem in 1998, the book starts with Laila, an emotionally and physically fragile woman who has had miscarriage after miscarriage: “Some of the fetuses grew, saw the dents of their past siblings in her womb, and joined them in the ether.” When she finds herself pregnant again, she’s desperate to enlist the services of the Melancons, a local family who sells their precious caul to the highest bidders, who are usually wealthy white families. A new novel, Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins, examines the precarity of the “gift” of caul. ![]() ![]() Because it’s so rare, caul births are sometimes thought to possess mystical, healing powers. Babies born en caul emerge in the very same gelatinous sac that protected and nourished them throughout their time in utero. In fewer than 1 in 80,000 births, a baby is born still fully enclosed within the unruptured amniotic sac, or caul. ![]()
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