Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

I love it when overly intellectual people have to rely on unscientific phenomenons like faith and hope and magic. I think being able to let go of factual reasoning and open our minds to blind trust stretches our narrow minded boundaries a little wider. Beck speaks to having a premonition before her son, Adam, was born. There had been almost mystic signs he was not going to be an ordinary child. Throughout Beck's pregnancy inexplicable events pushed her to believe in decidedly unscientific miracles. The problem is both Beck and her husband, John, were obsessed with facts. Overly driven to be successful (two Harvard degrees each), they couldn't wrap their brains around giving birth to a Down syndrome baby. Expecting Adam is the story of show more letting go to perfection; the releasing of ambitions; the saying goodbye to lofty goals...and saying hello to an angel. show less

Martha Beck has written a miraculous memoir of the disastrous, bizarre, overwhelming, and strangely magical months during which she was expecting her son Adam. Beck has a wonderful gift for making tragedy extremely funny and, equally, for making funny moments poignant. If you have no plans to read this one, may I recommend that you at least borrow a copy long enough to read the story of the Smurf Pool on page 77? I've read it half-a-dozen times and it still makes me crack up.

I was primed for this book. Our third grandson, Adam, had just been born (August 5), when I visited a bookstore just down the street from the hospital. So the title, Expecting Adam, quite naturally practically leapt off the shelf into my hands. I originally thought, what a great gift for my daughter (the new mother), but when I read it was a story about having a child with Down Syndrome, I reconsidered. Our particular Adam, although a few weeks premature, seemed pretty much perfect, and I didn't want to needlessly upset the new mom. I needn't have worried. This is an absolutely wonderful book, told with humor, compassion, wit, wisdom and a nearly other-worldy sense of wonder. And did I mention humor? Because this woman is a very funny show more writer. The numerous references to invisible beings, whether she calls them angels or Bunraku puppeteers, and intercontinental telepathy are the kind of thing that would normally put me off, as I am a natural skeptic. But somehow Beck pulls it off. Probably because she believes it, she makes me believe it too - all of it. My wife wants to read it now. (She'd seen Martha Beck on Oprah some time ago, she tells me.) We will then pass the book along to our daughter to read. We know she will relate, and probably cry a little, when she reads Beck's perfect descriptions of a tiny foot the size of a man's thumb and a head the size of an orange. Babies. Ain't they just the grandest things?! I'll say it again. This is a wonderful book. show less

What a great book! It is a memoire that can be enjoyed on a few levels, and I enjoyed it on all of them. The author, Martha Beck, writes about the birth of her second child, conceived when she and her husband were both pursuing fast track, combined Masters/Phd programs at Harvard. Pregnancy brings with it an array of unpleasant physical symptoms that go far beyond simple morning sickness, but also a number of wonderful, unexplainable, otherwordly occurences. Partway through the pregnancy, amniocentesis shows that the baby has Down syndrome. Against the advice of doctors and academic advisors, she and her husband decide to continue the pregnancy. Before the child is born, the couple realize that both of them have been having similar, show more unexplainable experiences. Over time, they gradually let go of their previous, driven, academic selves and begin to accept a different reality. The changes they experience are profound, as are the lessons they learn from their son after he is born. If this was all there was to the book, it would be a good, worthwhile read. What makes it a 5-star, must-read book is the fact that Marth Beck is very funny. Very funny. This book goes onto my all time favorite book shelf. show less

The subtitle of this memoir is: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic.

John and Martha Beck were both working on their Ph.Ds at Harvard when they conceived their second child. Martha suffered severe nausea throughout the pregnancy, as she had with the couple’s first child, and the pressure to succeed at Harvard caused her to do everything she could to hide her condition from everyone but immediate family way past the time when most pregnant women would happily show their “baby bump.” Still, even that additional stress didn’t fully explain how “different” she felt, or the things she experienced. When she learned the baby she carried had Down syndrome, she fought against her doctors and virtually everyone she knew show more to continue the pregnancy. She couldn’t explain it, but she knew Adam would be fine.

Beck writes well, and she is very honest about what she went through. She has a wonderful way of expressing herself. Her self-deprecating humor is refreshing, and a few scenes had me laughing out loud. Many of the experiences she relates are simply “unbelievable” and yet I fully believe in the sincerity of her memoir. show less

Martha and her husband, John, are high-achieving Harvard graduate students. Martha becomes pregnant with a boy with Down’s Syndrome. They have been enculturated to value IQ and performance, and are pressured to have an abortion. Early in the book, Martha describes the Bunraku puppeteers they had seen once in Japan – puppeteers that stand right onstage, moving dolls around so skillfully you forget that they are onstage. She uses this metaphor to describe the angelic influences they experience as they decide to resist their culture and have their baby. Their lives are transformed in the process, dropping the Harvard values, and discovering a more authentic life.

“I only know that I was experiencing a strange melting sensation, that show more my control of my own image was beginning to get sloppy, and that it felt dangerously good.” show less

I really enjoyed this memoir. I liked her writing style and the way she really brings you into her head. The journey she undergoes is fascinating and is both believable and unbelievable at the same time. She explores the metaphysical aspect of her experience and describes it all in a truly unique way and manages to do so without alienating the skeptic and nonbeliever, as she is one herself. This book purports itself to be about a woman pregnant with a Down Syndrome baby, but it really explores so much more than this. The quote from Time Magazine sums it up best "Beck's memoir charts the journey from being smart to becoming wise'".