Review of A Little Pregnant: Our Memoir of Fertility, Infertility, and A Marriage
Authors: Linda Carbone and Ed Decker
The title of A Little Pregnant alludes to the tenuous emotional and reproductive landscape of the authors' lives, and theirs is a tale that is hard to put down until finished.
Linda Carbone and Ed Decker started their attempts to conceive several years into a marriage based on great friendship and camaraderie. Like most of us, they began their journey filled with the usual amount of bouyant hope and expectation, only to have their dreams dashed at every bend in the path. What makes their story unique is their ability to convey both viewpoints, male and female, husband and wife, with a sometimes stark honesty that enables the reader a well-rounded vantage point of infertility's effects on the marital relationship.
Taking fair turns at creating individual chapters, the authors' complementary conversational styles (both are professional writers) make it easy to visualize them as highly-attuned friends. Both reveal a quick wit and, the other side of the coin, sometimes caustic commentary on the bad luck that befalls them. To their chagrin, they discover their differences are profound -- while the husband is ready to do anything to have a child, the wife is ambivalent on the whole topic of parenthood. Rather than create a treatment stalemate, this rift shadows the couple like a dark cloud through years of tests, drugs, procedures, and finally an adoption attempt.
To hear any one individual's version of a good story is one thing; to read both a husband's and wife's separate perceptions of the unfolding events is doubly compelling. We are invited to bear witness to scenarios which would (and often do) kill many a relationship. The reader becomes a confidant of both parties which, rather than being a difficult position, actually provides grounds for greater empathy toward the couple's plight. What prevails is a sense of wanting to cheer Carbone and Decker on in their quest for reunion and peace of mind, if not parenthood.
Readers will not find a manual on how to make marriage work here, nor is this a testament to the miracles of modern reproductive science. Instead, those who are considering treatment decisions and other family-building options, particularly those who are married or otherwise partnered, will find a brutally honest and occasionally humorous account of what can happen -- the devastation, isolation, confusion -- when two people are confronted by infertility. If anything, A Little Pregnant is a testament to the authors' commitment to each other, which is in and of itself as remarkable and inspiring as all lasting marriages.
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