Great Expectations: Twenty-Five True Stories about Childbirth

By: Dede Crane and Lisa Moore

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: In this moving, uniquely honest, and transformative collection of original essays, twenty-five celebrated writers share one of their most intimate and life-changing experiences: childbirth. Featuring an introduction by bestselling author and columnist Leah McLaren, Great Expectations takes the reader on an emotional and physical journey like no other: Lynn Coady relates the painful memory of her teenage pregnancy and the anguish of having to give up her newborn for adoption; Peter Behrens expresses a father’s feeling of utter helplessness and incomparable joy during the birth of his first child; Christy Ann Conlin describes pregnancy and birth at age forty; Afua Cooper reflects upon the immigrant’s experience of three pregnancies and childbirths in a new land with foreign, and evolving, customs; Anne Fleming contemplates her partner’s artificial insemination and the birth of a beautiful girl; and Jaclyn Moriarty transcribes her grandmother’s and her mother’s birth stories, along with her own, to create a tender oral history spanning three generations.