Being Pregnant
What To Expect When You’re Expecting AKA Call The Doctor, Your Whole Family Is Dying
Mira Jacobs writes, in her hilarious piece about the adaptation of best-selling pregnancy bible, What To Expect When You’re Expecting for the big screen, that the concept seems more appropriate for the “horror” genre than the romantic comedy. She and her husband (and many others) found the book utterly frightening:
“Maybe it was the tone—dry and authoritative, with a hint of the-worst-is-yet-to-come. Maybe it was the connection of what seemed like mild symptoms to horrible your-fetus-is-melting scenarios. Maybe it was the scary picture of the sexless pregnant woman on the front cover, wearing the cardigan of “I’ve given up entirely.” Whatever the reason, WTEWYE made us more agitated, and paralyzed, and useless than any other new parent book on the block. Late in my pregnancy, my husband even renamed it Call the Doctor, You’re Whole Family is Dying.”
Now that’s a movie I’d like to see. Can they get the authors of the Scream franchise on board? Skeet Ulrich as the obstetrician? Neve Campbell as the now 40-odd “mature age mother” expecting her first baby and experiencing EVERY SINGLE nightmare scenario outlined in What To Expect? Or maybe it could be darker and spookier, a kind of Rosemary’s Baby where a woman is haunted not by her neighbors and devil spawn but by the contents of a book. Maybe that catatonic cardigan-wearing mommy on the rocking chair comes to life! OMG, the mind reels.
Let’s hope Tina Fey, Samantha Bee or some other clever mother gets a go at the script. There’s so much in this book that could make for great drama, but please, make the Halloween release that it was meant to be.
And PS, thanks for the shout-out Mira. She writes that she prefers From The Hips, the pregnancy and birth book I co-authored. This is quite heartwarming as one of the big reasons Rebecca and I wrote this book was to provide what we hoped would be a much needed antidote to What To Expect.
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[...] What To Expect When You’re Expecting AKA Call The Doctor, Your Whole Family Is Dying Posted by ceridwen on October 29th, 2010 at 10:03 am [...]
What To Expect When You’re Expecting AKA Call The Doctor, Your Whole Family Is Dying « princesspipersmama commented on Jun 10 11 at 7:57 pmMarlene commented on Nov 01 10 at 11:31 amI hate WTEWYE, as do most midwives I know! Someone suggested we buy up all the copies & burn them, but I won’t do that, ’cause then, they will think they are such a bestseller, they’d just go and print more! I don’t want to fund this book, nor would I stoop low enough to steal it, so I just ignore it! It’s not on my list of recommended pregnancy books, that’s for sure. #1 on my list is Jennifer Vanderlaan’s “The Christian Childbirth Handbook”, It’s definately worth the read, even if you’re not Christian, a “must have” for anyone who is!
Susan Jenkins commented on Nov 02 10 at 4:00 pmOh the horror of it all!!! Thanks for blogging about this, Ceridwen. I just posted this to the Big Push list and on my facebook page. Readers, check out From the Hips and also the Our Bodies Ourselves pregnancy book. These are the two that I recommend to newly-pregnant friends and family members.
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