Can any book really tell you what to expect when you`re expecting?
Certainly there`s no lack of books that try. But in their obsession with the ”normal” or their sentimental tone, most nonfiction books, says Laura Chester, fall short of conveying the real texture of pregnancy, childbirth and life with a new baby.
Chester`s answer is ”Cradle and All: Women Writers on Pregnancy and Birth” (Faber & Faber, $12.95). The book is an anthology of prose and poetry, short pieces that attempt to freeze-frame the most profound emotions of childbearing.
Chester, a 40-year-old mother of two, says she wanted to capture ”both the woe and the wonder,” and the book`s best pieces manage to do both: Alicia Ostriker`s poem about bright young college women who can`t conceive of messing up their lives and bodies to have babies; Carol Itter`s account of life with a colicky newborn; and Chester`s own poem about birth-from the baby`s point of view.
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”Cradle and All” is the natural outgrowth of many other projects Chester has undertaken over the years. Since writing ”Primigravida,” a combination of prose and poetry (now out of print) about her own first pregnancy 15 years ago, Chester had thought of doing a book that would capture ”a bigger vision than just one story.”
She began to collect these pieces for a previous anthology, ”Deep Down:
The New Sensual Writing by Women” (Faber & Faber, $9.95), but says she realized that the sensuality of childbearing somehow ”didn`t fit” with the sexual sensuality that was her real subject. So ”Cradle and All” became its own book and Chester now plans to complete a trilogy with a new anthology,
”The Marriage Bed.”
She also has recently published a novel, ”The Stone Baby” (Black Sparrow Press, $12.50), in which four close friends support one another through childbirth, infertility treatments, stillbirth, out-of-wedlock motherhood, and other experiences.