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 [Hardcover]

Peggy Orenstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2007

Waiting for Daisy is about loss, love, anger and redemption. It's about doing all the things you swore you'd never do to get something you hadn't even been sure you wanted. It's about being a woman in a confusing, contradictory time. It's about testing the limits of a loving marriage. And it's about trying (and trying and trying) to have a baby.
Orenstein's story 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, from "fertility sex" to escalating infertility treatments to New Age remedies to forays into international adoption. Her saga unfolds just as professional women are warned by the media to heed the ticking of their biological clocks, and just as fertility clinics have become a boom industry, with over two million women a year seeking them out.  Buffeted by one jaw-dropping obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks answers both medical and spiritual in America and Asia, along the way visiting an old flame who's now the father of fifteen, and discovering in Japan a ritual of surprising solace. All the while she tries to hold onto a marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures and disappointments. Waiting for Daisy is an honest, wryly funny report from the front, an intimate page-turner that illuminates the ambivalence, obsession, and sacrifice that characterize so many modern women's lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap, Orenstein now offers a very personal account of her road to becoming a mother. Orenstein was a happily married 35-year-old when she decided she wanted to have a baby. While she knew it might not be easy (she had only one ovary and was heading into her late 30s), she had no idea of the troubles she'd face. First, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, fortunately treatable. After waiting the recommended recovery period, she miscarried with a dangerous "partial molar pregnancy," so she had to avoid becoming pregnant for at least six months. Soon she was riding the infertility roller coaster full-time, trying everything from acupuncture to IVF and egg donation. She endured depression and more miscarriages while spending untold thousands of dollars. Even her very understanding husband was beginning to lose patience, when, surprisingly, she got pregnant with her daughter, Daisy. While readers don't have to be fertility obsessed to enjoy this very witty memoir (with its ungainly subtitle), for the growing number of women struggling with infertility this book may become their new best friend. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

It was Peggy Orenstein's husband, documentary filmmaker Steven Okazaki, who encouraged her to write Waiting for Daisy—on one condition: she had to be brutally honest. "I couldn't let myself off the hook or make myself look better than I was or make it all OK," she admits. Reviewers praised Orenstein's willingness to put her life, in all its awkward moments and embarrassing details, under the microscope. Her self-deprecating humor and lively prose balance the anguish she describes with such stark sincerity. Though Entertainment Weekly found Waiting for Daisy just another addition to the recent deluge of "Repro Lit" (Washington Post), most reviewers considered it a heartbreaking and surprisingly suspenseful account of the lengths to which people will go.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition edition (February 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596910178
• ISBN-13: 978-1596910171
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #942,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helped me to feel not so alone, February 15, 2007

By 

Berkeley Reader (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

I am in the throws of infertility treatment, and this book was a tremendous help to me. Even though I have been open with my friends and family about what I'm going through (I've just completed injections and am moving onto IVF), and even though they have been sympathetic, I have often felt as though no one can truly understand how painful, draining, and frustrating this process is for me and for my husband. Waiting for Daisy captured many of these emotions perfectly for me, and managed to somehow insert a little spot-on humor into the whole situation that, for the first time, helped me to laugh at the absurd nature of everything I've had to endure. At one point Peggy Orenstein writes about the Clomid spiral, comparing it to cautionary tales of drug addiction -- first you pop a little Clomid, then next thing you know you're taking out a second mortgage on your home to pay for IVF. I laughed out loud at this passage. Just last year I took my first Clomid, thinking that I'd immediately get pregnant. Just yesterday I was calculating whether I should consider a home equity loan for IVF. Likewise, when the author describes how she didn't buy clothes for 3 years because she kept expecting to get pregnant, I was moved by how this little detail sums up the experiencing of being in a holding pattern for years because you know that your life will change at any moment once you get pregnant. For example, I didn't take a "real" vacation for a year and a half, always expecting to need my vacation time to tack onto my maternity leave. Other passages have moved me to tears, since the author gives voice to the pain I am experiencing; the roller coaster of periods coming, of trying to maintain some amount of hope when all I have felt is despair, and of trying to protect my marriage throughout the entire process. Please read this book if you are going through infertility treatments, know someone who is, or even if you just want to read an authentic, beautiful story.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book - Wry, poignant and honest., March 26, 2007

By 

L. Poliski "Lori" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

I must stress that this book is not just for mothers, infertile women etc. It is a book about being human and everyone could benefit from reading it. Would be fathers, singles, grandparents - read it. Mothers -buy it. Women who choose not to have children- read it. Women who can't have children, buy it. You will see yourself in her mirror somewhere in her book. It will make you laugh, squirm and cry and you won't be able to put it down. It is one of those books that sticks to your ribs and you will be thinking about Peggy O and her life for awhile. Her high school boyfriend who has 15 children is great non fiction - life IS better than art in this book.

I too suffered from "unexplained infertility" and went through the fertility mill like the author but sadly I don't have her gift for writing. I now have two beautiful children and I was trying to read the last 14 pages on Saturday morning while my two kids were climbing all over me and begging me to please read But not the Hippopotamus. I selfishly ignored the very children I tried for 4 years to will into being to finish reading a book that touched on that awful, obsessive infertile "I am less than a woman" stale eggs time for me with a sledgehammer. (It was only 15 minutes or so)

Peggy O is my new literary heroine.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Reactions, June 15, 2007

By 

H Lof - See all my reviews

This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

After reading Orenstein's book, I was left with mixed reactions. Her ambivalence about managing motherhood and career captured the struggles so many of us face today. Her tales about the crazy maze of infertility treatments captured the process perfectly. At the same time, the book felt a bit too much like reading someone's journal. It was too self indulgent to be very funny to me, especially when she talked about adoption. I was sad reading about her ability to treat these children as disposable in her quest for pregnancy. As she made the decision not to follow up with the adoption of Kai after learning she was pregnant and learning the process would be difficult, she reinforced the old idea that adoptive parenting is less meaningful and important than biological parenting.