2023-01-19
A guide offers a holistic, wide-ranging strategy for creating a healthy pregnancy experience.
When considering the complicated topics of the desire for a baby, the problems of infertility, and the experience of pregnancy, Murphy invokes the familiar image of an iceberg. All the various difficulties facing a pregnancy—endometriosis, miscarriages, unexplained infertility—are the visible portion, and underneath are emotional issues like fear, anger, frustration, abandonment, and betrayal. “If you can overcome the bigger part of the iceberg,” she writes, “then the top will melt away on its own.” For readers asking themselves the elemental questions that spring from such concerns—Why can’t I get pregnant? Why am I stressing out? Why don’t I feel worthy?—the author urges an inward look. She encourages the audience to not only explore physical factors as simple as breathing patterns, but also broader environmental concerns. These include how pregnancy itself is viewed by the person’s family and immediate support group, the “fertility lineage” that becomes so important when complications arise. She discusses in depth how this lineage—abandonment, abuse, abortion, betrayal, and bereavement—can adversely alter pregnancy chances. She offers a variety of methods to increase those chances and overcome obstacles that some of her readers may not have been aware of in the first place. It’s a remarkably empathetic and all-encompassing approach, drawn from Murphy’s own life experiences and from years counseling people who were trying to start a family. One of the book’s few shortcomings is the emphasis it places on the psychological. The “three b’s” of infertility, for example, are given as “betrayal, bitterness, bereavement” when by far the most likely B in such circumstances will be biology. But the heartfelt psychological framework offers many comforts even in those cases. Pregnant readers and those wanting to become pregnant will find much food for thought here.
A readable, useful, and caring approach to the intensely personal elements of infertility and childbirth.
