An Excellent Choice
About this book
When British journalist, memoirist, and New York-transplant Emma Brockes decides to become pregnant, she quickly realises that, being single, 37, and in the early stages of a same-sex relationship, she's going to have to be untraditional about it. From the moment she decides to stop "futzing" around, have her eggs counted, and "get cracking"; through multiple trials of IUI, which she is intrigued to learn can be purchased in bulk packages, just like Costco; to the births of her twins, which her girlfriend gamely documents with her iPhone and selfie-stick, Brockes is never any less than bluntly honest about her extraordinary journey to motherhood.
She quizzes her friends on the pros and cons of personally knowing one's sperm donor, grapples with esoteric medical jargon and the existential brain-melt of flipping through donor catalogues and conjures with the politics of her Libertarian OB/GYN-all the while exploring the cultural circumstances and choices that have brought her to this point. Brockes writes with charming self-effacing humour about being a British woman undergoing fertility treatment in the US, poking fun at the starkly different attitude of Americans. Anxious that biological children might not be possible, she wonders, should she resent society for how it regards and treats women who try and fail to have children?
Brockes deftly uses her own story to examine how and why an increasing number of women are using fertility treatments in order to become parents-and are doing it solo. Bringing the reader every step of the way with mordant wit and remarkable candour, Brockes shares the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of her momentous and excellent choice.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Landing Page
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Prologue
- Chapter One: ‘Are You Going to Do It, Then?’
- Chapter Two: Origin Story
- Chapter Three: The Selfish Gene
- Chapter Four: Tubes
- Chapter Five: Sperm
- Chapter Six: January 2014
- Chapter Seven: Drugs
- Chapter Eight: Waiting
- Chapter Nine: Falling
- Chapter Ten: Rising
- Chapter Eleven: England
- Chapter Twelve: New Year’s Eve
- Chapter Thirteen: Neonatal
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by the Author
- Copyright
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