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The Moods, Modes and Methods of Motherhood
By Ellen Emry Heltzel
Chicago Tribune, May 6, 2007
Peggy Orenstein, author of notable non-fiction books that examine girls’ and women’s lives (“Schoolgirls” and “Flux”), shows in “Waiting for Daisy” that she’s as adept at mining her own for the right material. In this story of her battle with infertility, she gives the ending away with the title. But the optimistic outcome helps set the tone of the book, which is funny, self-knowing and sometimes wise.
The classic independent-minded career woman, Orenstein marries at 30 and edges warily toward parenthood. But just when she resolves the dilemma in favor of having a child, her first-ever mammogram reports that she has breast cancer.
” ‘But I eat organic broccoli!’ ” she wails to her husband, Steven — a remark that captures not only her hurt and indignation but also her expectations. She wants what she thinks she deserves. Fortunately, she also comes equipped with the self-deprecating humor to keep her ego in line.
First, she is treated for cancer. That’s the easy part. Then she tries to have a baby and finds herself headed “down the rabbit hole of infertility” instead.
Orenstein hits various mileposts familiar to others who have dealt with the same issue: miscarriages, the fertility drug Clomid, in-vitro fertilization and egg donors, to name a few. She notes that she’s just one of many in an industry that in the late 1990s was costing Americans $2.7 billion a year.
“Waiting for Daisy” gets in a few slaps at fertility doctors and the adoption mill. But mainly it’s about the struggle to conceive and an obsession that nearly destroys her marriage. Eventually the long-suffering Steven has had enough and declares, ” ‘You’re this angry, bitter person fixated on having a baby.’ ”
Unabashed, Orenstein refuses to take her eyes off the prize. “My husband was telling me straight out that as much as he loved me, he wasn’t sure he could stay in our marriage. And my only response was to think, ‘Now how do I get him to have sex with me?’ ”
The outcome of this story may seem obvious, but that’s less important than how Orenstein gets there. “Waiting for Daisy” is a study in patience and resolve.