Book Review: Waiting for Daisy

Waiting For Daisy by Peggy Orenstein

I picked up this book because I knew of the author. I had read her other book, Flux, which examined the phenomena of super-women who try to have it all (the career and family 1-2 punch). You could tell that she valued her career and I felt that I could relate to her. Her story was very different from ours (so far) but the emotions and the questions to be considered were all the same. Honestly, I couldn't put it down. I was enthralled and really felt the disappointment right along with her in so many different points of the book. The writing was fantastic and sarcastic humor was seamlessly intwined with thought provoking internal debate and sequential narrative. Her story does have a happy ending, but it doesn't try to pretend that everything is roses after you do achieve a baby. The whole account was superbly realistic and thought provoking. I never re-read books, but this may be one that I am inclined to pick back up.

Some of my favorite excerpts that spoke to me especially:

How was it that despite my achievements, my education, my professed feminist politics, my self worth had been reduced to whether or not I could produce a child?

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Clomid was my gateway drug: the one you take because, Why not - everyone's doing it. Just five tiny pills. They'll give you boost, maybe get you to where you need to go. It's true, some women stop there. For others, Clomid becomes infertility's version of Reefer Madness. First you smoke a little grass, then you're selling your body on the street corner for crack. First you pop a little Clomid, suddenly you're taking out a second mortgage for a another round of IVF. You've become hope's bitch, willing to destroy your career, your marriage, your self respect for another taste of its seductive high. Here are your eggs. Here are your eggs on Clomid. Get the picture?

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The decent into the world of infertility is incremental. Those early steps seem innocuous, even quant; IUI was hardly more complex than using a turkey baster. You're not aware of how subtly alienated you become from your body, how inured to its medicalization. You don't notice your motivation distorting, how conception rather than parenthood becomes the goal, how invested you become in it's "achievement".