Expecting : One Man's Uncensored Memoir of Pregnancy

By Gordon Churchwell

Gordon Churchwell his a problem he's never faced before-- his wife, Julie, is pregnant. "What is happening to me? It's 6:30 A.M. My Wife is peeing on what looks like a scale model of the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's an early pregnancy test called something like First Alert, or Early Response, some name that sounds like a smoke detector or a piece of EMS equipment." From this unavoidable physiological fact follows the greatest psychological crisis of his life, a story that eventually illuminates the journey of all men and women as they make the passage to becoming parents. What really goes through a "pregnant" man's mind? Combining his personal story with interviews with doctors, midwives, evolutionary scientists, and other fathers-to-be, Gordon Churchwell delivers the gritty, intimate details, as well as important new information, in an irreverent style that mixes poignancy, wit, and laugh-out-loud humor. He covers all the issues without flinching. On relationships: "There are moments when you are not just individuals trying to solve a personal problem, but representatives of your gender, acting out some social drama. Over Julie's shoulder I see a chorus of angry women. . . ." On sex: "While the party line is that Julie remains 'my beautiful partner to whom I am devoted, ' to Mr. Weenie, she is beginning to look like Danny DeVito in Batman Returns. . . ." On why men find change difficult: "Why do I feel like a bystander in the most important 280 days of my life? Where are the stories that make a man feel like he's in it, and not out of it? The answer is simple. When it comes to the stories of fatherhood, our culture has discarded them." When he starts having morning sickness, Churchwell turns science detective and makes some startling discoveries: He finds out that male pregnancy symptoms are extremely common and uncovers evidence of a physiological paternal response-men have hormonal changes, too, which help prepare them emotionally for fatherhood. Does nature make fathers out of men? Working with a leading evolutionary psychologist, Churchwell argues for a revolutionary new perspective on a man's role in reproduction. Parental investment on both sides is not automatic. Pregnancy behavior is part of a continual process of negotiation about parental commitment. A man's response to pregnancy, including sympathetic symptoms, may signal his plans about investing in the child. His behavior can directly affect the mother's own response, including the quality of her maternal care. By showing that men have a physiological transformation of their own that integrates them into the biology of the family, Churchwell restores men to the story of reproduction. Expecting is an important contribution to the new literature of fatherhood that will amuse and inspire men and women as they transform themselves into parents. This personal story ends where it began, with him and his wife, Julie, struggling-this time as a team-through a harrowing thirty-five-hour birth ordeal, and welcoming their daughter, Olivia, into the world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060393459
• ISBN13: 9780060393458
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, excellent

This is not your superficial I-had-to-buy-her-pickles-at-midnight pregnancy book from the father's perspective. If you're looking for a book to introduce your new hubby to the idea of fatherhood, this is not the book for you unless you are both familiar with reading books with footnotes. This is not fluff. This is a frank, frequently humorous, excellently written book that whets my appetite for the wife's side of the story as well if she is even half the writter Churchwell is. As a social scientist, I found the sociobiology chapters so insightful and intelligently written, giving meaning to the physiological and psychological changes both men and women experience during pregnancy. The interviews with various friends, medical professionals and researchers give a voice and personal testimony that validates and humanizes the information in an extremely effective way. The frank responses of the friends especially when asked extraordinarily personal questions was a breath of fresh air compared to the usual I-don't-want-you-to-think-poorly-of-me responses I'm typically getting from people around me. I want to know the TRUE inner experience of a father-to-be, and this book is IT. We are TTC next year, and this is exactly the book I was looking for. Bravo!

Probes beyond the usual - starkingly funny

What you always wanted to know but never dared to ask: Gordon Churchwell tells you in his book "Expectant". I never thought there could be so many angles to becoming father - at least to me everything seemed more simple. Churchwell's book is both a narrative in the best of senses about his and his wife's experiences in becoming parents and a more or less scientific, sometimes even philosophical explanation of all the things happening to men during the pregnancy of their partners. The narrative is strinkingly honest, often very funny and becomes quite dramatic towards the end. The "scientific" probing is interesting (did you know that one-third of men have pregnancy symptoms, too?!) and an attempt at getting behind the superficial level of merely going through an experience (as an "event", something that just happens to you). All in all, though, I found it less compelling, there is a lot of medical jargon and somehow the two parts (the narrative and the essay) do not really fit together. It is two genres in one. Nevertheless, the book can be highly recommended to becoming fathers (and to young would-be mothers wanting to make sense from the strange reactions they might get from their blokes during pregnancy). Churchwell should now write the sequel to "Expecting", something like "Surviving: One man's story of living through the first years as a young father". Pregnancy might have its ups and downs, but, boy, bringing up a child (or children) is something different alltogether! (much more demanding)

lots of wit and insight, a bit too much sociobiology

This was a great read, at least for someone who's recently been through the experience (though on the female side). Churchwell was really very funny, and also illuminating on the topic of men's reactons to their partners' pregnancies. I could have done without the longest chapter, the one on "pregnant" men's hormone levels, evolutionary advantages to active fatherhood, etc. I kept wondering why Churchwell never seemed to find it necessary to consider the possibility that all these physiological changes are related not to some mechanistic biological process but to the choices and attitudes that these men (and women) were developing toward their pregnancies. Like maybe you get high hormone levels because you're anxiously awaiting the arrival of your offspring, and if for whatever reasons you AREN'T looking forward to it, you don't produce those hormone levels. Cause and effect in the other direction.Sociobiology notwithstanding, I'd recommend this highly to anyone who's been through this or is thinking about it. Kudos to the publisher on the title change (I read the uncorrected proofs), and I've just got to ask Kirkus, isn't this Churchwell guy a baby-boomer and not a Gen-X? What's the cutoff here?

Intensely humorous memoir

This smoothly written and extremely funny book presents a surprising bit of news about pregnancy - women aren't the only ones who experience physical symptoms in the months leading up to childbirth. From morning sickness to pronounced changes in certain hormone levels, men have a paternal response to pregnancy that strengthens their bond to mother and child and helps prepare them for fatherhood. The author explains this 'couvade syndrome' through scientific inquiry, cultural comparisons, anecdotes and personal experience, all while tracking his own unfolding saga as an expectant father. The result is a warm and intensely humorous memoir that is also a scientific and biological detective story.