When I was asked to review The Early Birds, the first thought that crossed my mind was "cheesy title". But then I read the synopsis and a few reviews and thought that even thought the title seemed incongruously lighthearted in comparison with the subject, the book itself didn't sound half bad.
Jenny Minton was an erstwhile average book editor living in New York when she and her husband learned she had PCOS and embarked on fertility treatments. The book describes their journey through infertility, IVF, pregnancy with twins, and the twins subsequent premature birth and lengthy stay in the NICU.
I'll qualify my review with the following statement: technically speaking, I've never been "infertile" - though three losses leads me well across the borders of that fabled country and entitles me to honorary citizenship. That being said, I was glad to see someone talk about what ordinary life looks like when its been put through the grist mill of infertility assessment and treatment.
Minton's story is not outstanding. She never suffered from a miscarriage. She had several failed IUIs, but conceived on her first attempt at IVF. There are moments when I, and I would guess, many of my readers, would start to object to some particular point of naivete with an indignant eyebrow. But her honesty about her feelings - some of which change over the course of the book - kept bringing me around to forgiveness within a few sentences. Take the following, where Minton describes the waiting room of her RE's office:
"I'm not aware of anyone staring me down - but then again I try not to meet anyone's eyes in the waiting room. I hate overhearing the sad stories some women blurt out to perfect strangers about their four failed attempts at IVF. I always bring several magazines and bury my head in them until my name is called, in much the same way as I won't even look at the person sitting next to me on an airplane until we have safely landed."
An earlier passage had me feeling all bond-y with Minton as she discussed the sense of being different because of her relative youth in an RE's office. But when I read the sentence about women sharing sad stories with perfect strangers, I was taken aback. I have been that woman. And my story was likely much more scary than four failed IVF attempts. Then in the next sentence I found myself agreeing with her again, as my antisocial stance in my RE's office is much the same as she describes it.
Minton's naivete about the world of IVF, multiples, and prematurity falls away as she moves through her story. She laments the fact that she went along with whatever her doctors prescribed - despite her gut instincts and her own research. It is a realization that anyone who's interacted with the medical community arrives at sooner or later. Advocating for yourself and your children is a task not easily undertaken.
One of my favorite passages describes her sudden lack of interest in books following her sons' hospitalization:
"For ten years in publishing I read, on average, four novels a week. Now the thought of reading fiction no longer appeals to me. It's more than that I'm too tired or that there's a war unfolding in Iraq. What keeps me from opening any of the new novels that friends from work send over is a feeling that fiction is hubris. With all of the real pain going on in the world, it strikes me as gratuitous, objectionable even, that writers feel a need to create tragedies. So many already exist."
I, too, went through precisely this reaction. I stopped reading and I even found movies disgustingly disingenuous (you know, because Hollywood used to be so good at "keepin' it real".)
Minton's descriptions of some of the more typical motherhood decisions, like whether or not to return to work, are heartfelt. She is honest about the new spin preemie babies puts on each and every decision thereafter - perhaps more so than regular motherhood, or perhaps not, since she's never experienced the other. She spends a good deal of the book worrying nearly to the point of obsession about what she sees as uncertain futures of her boys, based on how quickly the do or do not hit milestones, etc. What interested me, as a mother of a damn-near-full-term baby, is that these worries seem universal to all mothers. But her lack of experience as anything other than a mother of preemies leads her to believe she is less than common in this regard.
I wish, however, that Minton had let her own experience stand as the explanation more. There are awkward insertions of statistics, research, and facts that, while helpful and relevant, detract from the narrative and, therefore, the overall impact of the story. I can't really offer a helpful solution, but it seems the transitions in and out of those facts could have been smoother. Or perhaps those facts could have been omitted entirely, leaving her own experiences and those of her sons to show the impact of prematurity and less-than-vigilant prenatal care.
Overall, the book is a good read and a quick one. And for anyone who's traveled the road of infertility - or a parallel one - many of her revelations about motherhood and the struggle to attain it will resonate. For me, it raised many issues that I'd left dormant since Hannah's birth. Recalling the fear, the intervention, the other-worldliness of it all, is important to me as my husband and I decide how best to move forward toward another child.
It forced me to compare her experience to my own. Which led to the conclusion that if her story can be taken seriously by the general public, certainly mine can, too. And it led me to process some of my own feelings about Hannah's brief-yet-horrifying stay in the NICU - most of which I'd glossed over in an attempt to get to the part where I finally enjoy being a mom to a living baby.
I'd be interested to hear what the rest of you think - particularly those who've faced prematurity or NICU stays. Or even those who haven't. As mothers, are we interested in hearing about the stories of others, no matter how similar or different from our own? Can we listen without judging? Can we compare in order to learn? Or are women like Minton and myself just making an issue out of something that's more ordinary than the world thinks?
