Books -- 'Waiting for Daisy'

Author and journalist Peggy Orenstein's new book, "Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother," is the story of her six-year struggle to have a child.

Orenstein was online Tuesday, March 13 to discuss the book.

The transcript follows.

Read an excerpt here.

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Peggy Orenstein: Hi, Thanks so much for inviting me to this online discussion about "Waiting for Daisy." Eager to chat about whatever you'd like. I feel very passionately about this book, perhaps more so than anything I've written. Of course, it's my actual LIFE not just a book, but it's beyond that. As a writer, I feel that this is one of the few times where I said what I really wanted to say the way I really wanted to say it. I hoped the book would be a comfort and a validation for those in the midst of some of the things I went through (and hopefully, you'll never have to go through ALL of them), would help resolve old issues for those who are on the other side, but mostly I wanted it to just be a great read--funny, poignant, interesting--for anyone. I certainly believe that its larger themes about marriage, women's lives, tough choices and the ways that the one thing you DON'T have can define you (making you devalue all that you DO have in your life) are universal. That's why I gave it that baggy subhead that the Post Reviewer mocked!

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Arlington, Va.: My wife and I were fortunate to have a child after only one cycle of IVF. I'm not kidding about this; we had a friend complain to us how annoyed they were that it took them two months to get pregnant the natural way. It only took them a month to get pregnant with their first two children. Does it make you angry when other people complain about how hard it is for them when in reality they have it easy?

Peggy Orenstein: I think that would probably amuse me in a dark way rather than annoy me. Most likely I'd make some joke regarding my own experience to lightly let them know that, just perhaps, their perspective is a little....off. But honestly, women in particular really freak out when things don't go as planned, even in these ridiculously easy situations like you describe. These days it seems women think they're infertile until proven fertile. So, in WFD I talk about how I started to freak out after 3 months of trying. Not long at all.

Also, I think that pressure, that assumption of infertility, pushes people into treatment that perhaps sooner than is warranted. In fact, the rates of infertility in this country are the same as they have been, but the percentage of folks seeking infertility treatment has sky-rocketed. Maybe that's becuase more people who need it seek treatment, but I think relatively fertile people also rush to the doctor's because they're afraid NOT to. And I totally understand that, but it puts those of us trying to conceive in a real bind.

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Washington, D.C.: I just read the review of your book, and now I am curious to go get a copy from the library! I also went through the infertility dance, losing three singletons and a set of triplets. I remember wanting to hit people when, unaware of my situation, they would ask me when my husband and I were planning to have kids. If I told them that I had experienced a miscarriage, many would then say "Don't worry; you're young and can have another." That made me want to hit them even more! My husband and I did finally manage to have a child, who is four now. Now people ask me when/if we plan to have another. But we tried the infertility dance again, and nothing worked. We have toyed with the idea of adoption, but I think we are learning simply to take joy in our son. I'm worried he is a bit overindulged, though, because he is our only child after so many attempts, and the only grandchild on both sides!

Peggy Orenstein: People struggle to find the right thing to say after miscarriage. They end up saying things like, "it will work next time." Or "It's nature's way." Yeah. Thanks. One of the things that I talk about in Waiting for Daisy is having a miscarriage in Japan. It was really hard and awful (I was alone) but it gave me the opportunity to participate in a ritual they have that is like nothing here: I made an offering to Jiao, an enlightened being (bodhisattva) who watches over miscarried and aborted fetuses (they have a word for those, which we don't--mizuko, which means water child). It didn't make everything better, but it really helped to acknowledge it in a ritualized way. So I was grateful for the experience, even though I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Oh, the library? Please don't say that! Wouldn't you like your VERY OWN copy?

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Arlington, Va.: I haven't read your book, so bear with me. After so many years of trying, how does it feel now? Do you feel like you could do it again? What have been the outcomes -- besides having Daisy in your life? Is that too broad of a question?

Peggy Orenstein: Honestly? I don't think I could do it again. I think the part I couldn't do is face another miscarriage. I just couldn't.

I worked very hard in this book not to make Daisy the happy ending. I mean, she IS the happy ending (beginning!) but not the only ending, not the POINT of the book. It was truly redemptive, after years of feeling my body was defective, to give birth to her. But it didn't erase what I went through, what I put my marriage through, to get there. We're okay now, but the hairline cracks remain. And I wish I'd remembered that the things that could've sustained me through the experience -- my marriage, work, community -- would be the things that I would have regardless of the outcome and needed to cherish and nurture. And I wish I could've remembered that it was my life no matter WHAT happened, not only if I could make this ONE THING happen. It's really hard to hang onto perspective, though, once you get medicalized and go into the infertility vortex.

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Washington, D.C.: At any point in your journey, did you ever say "Well, it just wasn't meant to be?" What made you continue in your quest, even after every conceivable barrier was put up against parenthood?

Peggy Orenstein: ha! "conceivable barrier?"

Gosh, I suppose there were healthy and unhealthy reasons for that. I'm a very single-minded person. Where my work is concerned, that's great. It takes a lot of focus, discipline and persistence to be a writer. But it can get me in trouble in other areas, like pushing and pushing and pushing in my personal life.

I think more than that, though, you don't really realize that you're being obsessive, or that you're going too far or any of that. I never, ever would've thought I'd do the things I did (I say that this book is about "doing all the things you swore you'd never do to get something you weren't even sure you wanted...."). But somehow, incrementally, it all made sense, it all seemed inevitable, doable, the only recourse.

But of course, sometimes I just thought, well, to heck with it. We were doing a lot of other things, a lot of fun stuff in our lives and I wasn't obsessed ALL of the time. But overall, yeah, I wasn't about to give up. And I'm not sure that was a great thing.

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Washington, D.C.: Just a comment -- after going through multiple miscarriages, I managed to have twins. They were, however, 11 weeks premature. This was 18 years ago, and the experience is still fresh in my mind. They are both heading off to college in the fall, so their outcomes were very positive. I am amazed that the majority of women seem to give birth effortlessly. And I still marvel at the miracle of my twins. Do you look at other women and just wonder why this had to happen to you?

Peggy Orenstein: That's a pretty common response, especially when you're going through it. I'd also had breast cancer, so there was the "why me" of that, too. And I know at the time that I thought it wasn't fair etc. I mean, it WASN'T fair. And I don't believe that "God gives you only what you can stand" or whatever people say. I think this stuff just....happens. So what do you do with it? For me, the answer was to make meaning from it, make it into a story that had some greater theme than just my own, personal pain. That helped me a lot. I never forget what happened, though. I think of it every day. And what I say at the end of the book (though I hate to give that away!) is that I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone, I'm not glad it happened to me, but it did beat gratitude into me. And I do feel grateful to have that sense of gratitude for my life, even though I wish all of this never happened.

I'm always amazed when someone just gets pregnant. It seems so foreign and impossible. And I'm sure they're grateful, too. But I don't know if they can ever look at their kids, the way you do, and feel that true sense of miraculousness. I'm so glad that your twins are healthy and have done so well. Congratulations!

Also, I mentioned earlier that I made an offering to Jizo. I actually also bought a Jizo statue for my garden (it's little, a couple of feet high) after my 3rd miscarriage. I stil lhave it there and find it weirdly comforting. I got it from a monastary in Oregon that works with abused children and is run by a female monk who is a pediatrician. you can find out more aobut it at www.jizo.org. They make little and big statues. I found it very helpful to get one.

Man, I'm starting to sound really New Age. Maybe I've been living in Berkeley too long!!!!

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Cherry Hill, N.J.: Peggy -- After having read your amazingly moving NY Times Magazine essay on your own experience with breast cancer, and your excellent and insightful treatment of different approaches to motherhood "in a half-changed world" in "Flux" (in which I was privileged to have been a tangential character), I can't wait to read WFD. Are you thinking yet about maybe trying to attempt the same type of focused examination of your own mothering experience and distilling it into an exploration of your own personal "flux"? I hope so. That would be another read I would love to see. Good luck with the book, and even moreso, with Daisy.

Brian

Peggy Orenstein: Are you my mother in disguise?

Thanks, Brian, I appreciate it. It's tempting to write about motherhood, and I have some (you can see articles on my web site www.peggyorenstein.com) but I really worry aobut using my daughter for material and having her look back and be upset with me some day. Right now she can't consent. So I don't know. I try to tread lightly and really think about it.

Thank you again so much for the positive feedback!

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Washington, D.C.: Since you went through so much trouble to have Daisy, do you sometimes feel overprotective?

Peggy Orenstein: I think in general parents today tend to micromanage their kids. I try very, very hard not to do that. Do I succeed? I have no idea. I've been on a book tour for 2 weeks, though, away from Steven and Daisy. That's been a really interesting experience. I miss both of them a lot, but it's been nice to be on my own and it's been a wondeful time for the two of THEM to be together without Mom intervening. So I sort of try to tell myself, treat the first kid like she's the third. But I'm also from a long line of over-protective mothers, so it's a struggle!

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River City: I so fight that identification of women as childbearers. I didn't marry til I was 42, so I couldn't have children and resent the implication I'm a failure as a woman since I didn't have kids. I can contribute so much to this community, I reset the implcation that I amount to nothing. That's why I chose NOT to do infertility treatment, because I didn't like the implication that any happiness or sense of fulfillment was dependant on giving birth. My life is full.

Peggy Orenstein: Rats. I just wrote a long answer to this and lost it. I'll try again. I firmly believe a woman can live a full, rich life without children. We live in a pro-natlist time when we're told otherwise, despite our vast buffet of choices. There's a chapter in Waiting for Daisy (chapter 10 I think) where I talk about this and about the book and campaign to urge young women to marry Mr. Good Enough, back burner their other dreams and have babies. Also, I talk a lot abou tthis in my second book, Flux. But I am TOTALLY with you on the way you feel! And I think for a long time after having a baby, because I was 42 at the time, i sort of felt like a childless woman with a child. I still identified very strongly as a woman without kids and believed (and still believe) in the importance of that. If singleness and/or childlessness isn't a real option, then we're just like our moms' generations--we just have a few more years before the panic sets in....

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Philadelphia: Not knowing your story, I wonder if you considered foreign adoption. I know someone who was engaging in a foreign adoption when the government changes which led to a heartbreaking several months addition to be allowed to leave the country with her child. I can easily see how stories such as these can become involved and interesting to pass along to others.

Peggy Orenstein: Yeah, we did. We did pursue foreign adoption. We were offered a baby through contacts in Japan (my husband is Japanese American and we've done a lot of work with Hiroshima survivors, which is also a part of this book). We were pushing forward as hard as we could on it, but there was one woman, the head of adoption in what was then called INS in San Francisco, who was blocking Japanese adoption. Only INS in the country where this was the case, but she had total control and power and we were screwed. Other people we knew had babies in Japan that were stuck there indefinitely (though after 6-8 months they eventually got them out, but we didn't know that would happen at the time). So we went to Japan, spent time with the little boy, and in the end had to make a very painful decision, and it was truly heart-breaking.

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Washington, D.C.,: My husband and I have just made the painful decision to stop infertility treatments and for the time being we are not thinking about adoption. I feel a blessed sense of peace that I haven't had in the 4 1/2 years since we first started trying to conceive and I'm not ready to start another emotionally exhaustive process such as adoption.

My question though, is how did your journey with infertility affect your relationships with friends who were able to start their families? I love my friends as much as I ever have but I've struggled with jealousy of their new "status" as moms and dads and unjustified resentment that they now have no time for me. I am trying hard to work through it, but its not easy.

Peggy Orenstein: That is a REALLY common feeling. And it's strange, I would've said that I stayed tight with my friends with kids ,that I felt strongly about it because they may be the only kids I'll have in my life. But my mom heard me say that on the radio and said it wasn't true, that she remembered when I visited them once after my nieces and nephews had left, she found me crying in the guest bedroom and I just wept and said, "it's not fair, it's not fair." I have no memory of this (I still think she made it up :) but it may well be true. So I think it IS hard and friends need to be super, super understanding, which is hard for THEM. I don't mean this to sound self-serving, but people who've had kids easily have said the book really helps in understanding their friends who haven't/can't/don't. So it might be worth giving it to particular people....

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Chevy Chase, Md.: Peggy -- I can't wait to read the book. As a man, and as one fortunate enough to have become a father with relatively little difficulty and obstacles, I'd be interested to know to what extent you think you and your husband had different approaches or drive to have a child. If so, and presumably having thought about it some, do you think it was gender-based, cultural, or just who the two of you are as individuals?

Enjoy being a mother -- if you are a fraction as good a mother as you are a writer, Daisy (and you) will be just fine.

Peggy Orenstein: That is such a great question. I think, as a rule, men and women tend to react VERY differently. I mean, studies bear tha tout, it's not just my opinion. Women tend to experience infertility as a blow to their feminine identity and be much more prone to pursuing motherhood at any cost (to pocketbook, self, marriage). I feel like my husband was saying all along, "I want a baby, but I want a relationship more." And I was sort of saying, "Yeah, yeah, now how do we have a baby?"

Actually, more than anything I think this book is the story of a marriage, of what happens when two people who love each other very much can't reach each other and how they find their way back. I've been getting a lot of feedback from women readers who have really seen their husbands and marriages differently after reading it and I'm grateful for that .I hope they can go through this (or wahtever their crisis is) better than I did!

On another note, I need to apologize because I've had a cople of uqestions I've tried to answer and accidentally hit something that erased the answers and then can't answer them again (am told by the program I can't)! So please don't think I'm ignoring you!

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washington dc: mother of twins (again) - thanks for pointing out the jizo reference. i realized, as i read your comments, that the miscarriages are still very much a part of my experience...it seems all intertwined, somehow.i had read about the jizo statues..maybe it's time for me to get one.

Peggy Orenstein: Thank you and this will also give me an opportunity to answer another question someone asked that I messed up on, which was saying she had read the original Jizo piece that ran in the Times Magazine (it's in the book in a different form). One of my motivations to write Waiting for Daisy was the response I got to that piece. I got HUNDREDS of emails and still receive them from men and women who've experienced loss. I felt so honored and moved by them. So when I considered writing about my entire experience, making myself so vulnerable and being so intimate, those emails were part of what encouraged me. I was committed in Waiting for Daisyto being scrupulously honest, to writing about the experience without sugar coating how I went through it, what happened to my marriage etc. So I really appreciate the response to my work. It makes a HUGE difference to me!

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Washington, D.C.: I remember not wanting kids when I got married. Then, when some friends asked me to be a godmother to their son, I was honored but also a little freaked out because I had NO experience with kids -- I didn't do any babysitting growing up. My godson modified my attitude toward having kids; I went from "No, I don't want them," to "This isn't so bad, and I won't mind if we have a child." Then, as I grew older, we began to try to start a family in earnest, but nothing happened. After several months we went to a primary care physician who dismissed our concerns even though I had a history of irregular menstrual cycles. Finally, after a year of trying we went back to the doctor and demanded a referral to a specialist. Then began three years of fertility treatment, including Clomid, fertility shots, and other medications. I finally did have a healthy baby, but I immediately developed some postpartum problems (mostly severe anxiety). I had gone through such a long time trying to get pregnant that I kept expecting to have a miscarriage, and when I didn't and had the baby, I didn't know what to do with it and I kept expecting it to die. Did you have any feelings like that?

Peggy Orenstein: I did. And I think they're pretty common. When you've had to be so INTENTIONAL about having a baby you think when you finally get it that all should be perfect. But it's been such a long, traumatic haul. I had some serious post-partum depression after Daisy was born. I sought help for it which was the best thing I could've done. I think after so much trauma and loss and years of holding it together I just finally broke down. Also, I know what you mean re: fearing miscarriage during pregnancy. I used to say that I'd believe the pregnancy was viable when Daisy graduates college!

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Washington, DC: Don't you think US society places too much emphasis on child-birthing and that the strides made during the Women's Movement, wherein a woman didn't have to give birth to still be a woman, have ebbed tremendously?

Peggy Orenstein: Yes I do. One of the themes in Waiting for Daisy (if I may wax intellectual) is how the deisre for children, or the number of children we have, is in part culturally mediated. So after my first miscarriage I visit an old boyfriend who became an Orthodox Jew and now has 15 (yes 15) children with his wife (no multiples and all biological kids). I go to Japan because I'm writing about the so'called "parasite singles" phenomenon in which women are NOT getting married and having babies, but are living at home into their 30s and beyond, working in jobs rather than careers and using their disposable income to buy designer stuff, go on great vacations ,have fun. They feel no desire or interest in being mothers. They were just getting "Ally McBeal" and were mystified by the whole dancing baby thing. They're called parasites beucase japan has oen of the world's lowest birthrates and these women (rather than how society views or treats women/mothers/working mothers etc.) are being blamed.

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Apropos of nothing: A friend told me she wanted to do a fertility rite to mark her daughter's begining to menstrate (ick anyway), and I told her I was worried she'd establish in her daughter's mind that her primary/main role on earth was to bear children. what if there is a problem, or she'd rather not? It seems like it's setting a girl up for a limited view of her role and a sense of failure.

Peggy Orenstein: That's a really interesting notion. I can see your point, but I also think that girls learn in so many ways that their bodies are inadequate -- not beautiful enough, not sexy enough -- and their bodies are commodified and they're alienated from how they actually WORK. They tend to see their periods as such a negative that it may be a good thing to give it a positive spin, to welcome them to the mysteries and beauties and capacities and strength of the female body. How they use that body and capacity is up to them. That said, I would hope those parents are celebrating their duaghter's body and mind in a lot of ways that help her feel strong, healthy, and proud. you have to work hard to combat Paris, Britney and Lindsay these days....

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Washington, D.C.: We just terminated a pregnancy because of chromosomal problems and are still grappling with that. We have a 2-year-old, but before our child was born, I had a miscarriageand before that, my husband had surgery to correct his plumbing (for want of a better word).

We're lucky that we have a child. And we're lucky, I suppose, that we had the option to learn about our baby's development and terminate. I struggle now with many things, but chief among them is the question -- are we a couple struggling with infertility? Is that the tribe to which we belong? We've had several bad experiences, but also one incredibly great experience.

Peggy Orenstein: I think you're a couple struggling with loss. I wouldn't say you're struggling with infertility at this point. And I'm so, so sorry for the losses you've had. It's hard to get sympathy when you have a healthy child. It's another one of those things people say. "At least you have the one." But it doesn't help your heart. Again, there's very little discussion of miscarriage in this country, which is why i was so grateful to find that Jizo ritual. Not to harp on it. I wish you luck in the future...

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Me again: Yeah, I've seen women get so caught up in pursuing motherhood at any cost (to pocketbook, self, marriage), as you say, and feeling so bad during treatment, I swore I didn't want to become that woman, particularly feeling jealous of pregnant women, or strain my new marriage -- as much as I love kids. I saw one of my sisters NOT spend time wiht our joyous nephew because she was jealous... I swore I would never do that. so I live wiht the way things panned out.

Peggy Orenstein: You're a wiser woman than I was!!!

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Washington, D.C.: Did you go to any RESOLVE (infertility support group) or MIS (miscarriage-infant death-stillbirth) meetings before you had Daisy? I went to a few when we were trying to conceive, but I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or jealous now that we do have a child. At the same time, I miss the friendships I developed when we were all in the same situation.

Peggy Orenstein: I didn't go to RESOLVE though I think they're a great help to many. I'd already done support groups etc. for breast cancer and, frankly, just oculdn't take being further medicalized or further therapized. But I know that's a problem with resolve--what happens when you have a bayb and others don't? I don't know how they address that, do you?

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Anonymous: Doesn't this obsession with fertitlity and having a baby damage the romantic and sexual element of the marriage itself (which is the most important aspect to me)? I personally don't think that the benefits of having kids in America these days are all they are cracked up to be. Kids these days are very greedy, disrespectful to the parents and highly influcenced by already spoiled peer groups.

Also, why do so many women in their early 40s--often still very pretty, who have never been married or had kids, think they can so easily have kids?

Peggy Orenstein:

YES IT DAMAGES YOUR SEX LIFE! Seriously damages. Sex feels cruel--like you can't make it do what it's supposed to. I think every couple struggling to conceive has that issue. If you're lucky, it comes back afterwards, but some marriages can't take the strain. Many people divorce over infertility. It's really hard.

As to the benefits of having kids? That's in the eye of the beholder I guess!

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Bethesda, Md.:

Just wanted to write to say that your article on miscarriage, from the NY Times Magazine in 2002, was referenced on a blog I stumbled upon after suffering a miscarriage myself last year. It was really an amazing and helpful account of your experience. I shared it with several women in a support group and we all related to the sentiments you expressed in the article. In particular it really resonated the idea that society and the people around us here in the US treat the unborn like its own little person...until it is lost. Then people can be very dismissive. Anyway I wanted to say thank you for your beautiful writing and I'm sorry for your losses. All the best to you and your baby.

Peggy Orenstein: I'm sorry for your loss and thank you so much for your comments.

I sort of answered this above (this was the question I lost) but I did want to say one other thing. I took notes while I was going through the Jizo experience because even in my grief i could see it was something important and special that I might want to write about (and maybe the inability to stop observing oneself is a bit of an occupational hazard...). But I didn't think about actually writing the story for a year. Then I called my editor at the NY Times Magazine and asked for the name of an editor at another publication which i wont' name. She said, "why do you want that?" And i said ,"Becuase they have a smaller circulation, not so many people will read it." She responded, "Well, if you're not ready to write it for the largest possible audience, you're not ready to write it." She was right, of course. I didn't look at those notes again for another year. I just couldn't. I wasn't ready. It seemed really scary to put myself out there that way. But I'm awfully glad I did. And I'm awfully glad I did it again with Waiting for Daisy. I hope you all enjoy the book. And thanks again for your quesitons.

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Peggy Orenstein: I want to thank you all so much for your questions. I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to talk to you all--it's a great treat for someone who spends 99% of her time sitting alone in her room. Please feel free to visit my web site if you'd like more information or have more questions. Many of the articles we've discussed (and more) are there and more info. on Waiting for Daisy. Thank you again and best wishes!

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