Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth

Edited by master storyteller Dede Crane and award-winning author Lisa Moore, both of whom contribute their own stories, Great Expectations is a must-have collection for parents and parents-to-be. Uniquely honest and transformative, Great Expectations takes the reader on an emotional and physical journey like no other: Lynn Coady relates the painful memory of her teenage pregnancy and the anguish of having to give up her newborn for adoption; Peter Behrens expresses a father's feeling of utter helplessness and incomparable joy during the birth of his first child; Christy Ann Conlin describes pregnancy at age forty; Afua Cooper reflects upon the immigrant's experience of three pregnancies and childbirths in a new land with evolving customs; Anne Fleming chooses a male donor with her same-sex partner; and Jaclyn Moriarty transcribes her grandmother's and her mother's birth stories, along with her own, to create a tender oral history spanning three generations.