Just before my recent trip to India, I was checking out what books might be on special for my Nook. Was intrigued when I saw the title pop up: Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother. Immediately it was downloaded and consumed. Obviously.
The Barnes and Nobel overview states, Peggy Orenstein’s widely hailed and bestselling memoir of her quest for parenthood begins when she tells her new husband that she’s not sure she ever wants to be a mother; it ends six years later after she’s done almost everything humanly possible to achieve that goal. Buffeted by one obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks answers both medical and spiritual in America and Asia, all the while trying to hold on to a marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures, and disappointments. Waiting for Daisy is both an intimate page-turner and a wryly funny report from the front.
Orenstein is able to elegantly capture the ups and downs that infertile women go through with trying to have a baby; her story is unique, but her feelings genuine. She deals with cancer, depression, miscarriages, adoption, egg donation, career balance, mixed emotions, doctor mistakes, alternative therapies, and traveling to another continent in her pursuit of a baby. There is plenty of self-deprecating humor that lifts the book up in a way that only an insider may be able to "get". At the beginning of the book she is making fun of how obsessive someone online seems, only to find herself in the same obsessive state later in the book. She humorously likens her path to harder medications to that of a drug addicted: "...next thing you know you are taking out a second mortgage to pay for your IVF treatment".
She is brutally honest and as such, some readers may not like her. She has thoughts we don't like and does actions we can't condone. Never-the-less, there will be many parts that IVFers will be able to relate to and even if you get angry at some of her choices, deep down I think many of us have guilt for something we have thought or done. She does not dwell on her guilt, but I suspect it is because publicly admitting some of the things are hard enough without lamenting on it for a long period. (Note: anyone that has gone through adoption or wishes they could go through adoption, will NOT like this book at all.)
The book ends with Peggy unexpectedly conceiving naturally, against all odds. While this is not possible for me, I still really enjoyed the book. Even though I got mad at the author on several occasions, I still felt that bond that I feel to many of my IVF/surro bloggers who have different beliefs, different experiences, and different lives. I'm reminded how certain things can bring us all together, routing for one another, through it all.
