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Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
Audiobook12 hours

Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

Written by Martha Beck

Narrated by Joyce Bean

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

"He says you'll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been by remaining closed."The
messenger is a school janitor with a master's in art history who claims
to be channeling "from both sides of the veil." "He" is Adam, a
three-year-old who has never spoken an intelligible word. And the
message is intended for Martha Beck, Adam's mother, who doesn't know
whether to make a mad dash for the door to escape a raving lunatic
(after all, how many conversations like this one can you have before you
stop getting dinner party invitations and start pushing a mop
yourself?) or accept another in a series of life lessons from an
impeccable but mysterious source.From the moment Martha and her
husband, John, accidentally conceived their second child, all hell broke
loose. They were a couple obsessed with success. After years of
matching IQs and test scores with less driven peers, they had two
Harvard degrees apiece and were gunning for more. They'd plotted out a
future in the most vaunted ivory tower of academe. But the dream had
begun to disintegrate. Then, when their unborn son, Adam, was diagnosed
with Down syndrome, doctors, advisers, and friends in the Harvard
community warned them that if they decided to keep the baby, they would
lose all hope of achieving their carefully crafted goals. Fortunately,
that's exactly what happened.Expecting Adam is a poignant,
challenging, and achingly funny chronicle of the extraordinary nine
months of Martha's pregnancy. By the time Adam was born, Martha and John
were propelled into a world in which they were forced to redefine
everything of value to them, put all their faith in miracles, and trust
that they could fly without a net. And it worked.Martha's
riveting, beautifully written memoir captures the abject terror and
exhilarating freedom of facing impending parentdom, being forced to
question one's deepest beliefs, and rewriting life's rules. It is an
unforgettable celebration of the everyday magic that connects human
souls to each other.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 13, 2012
ISBN9781452676326
Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
Author

Martha Beck

Martha Beck, PhD, is a life coach and longtime contributor to O, The Oprah Magazine. She is a Harvard-trained sociologist and New York Times bestselling author. She has published nine nonfiction books, one novel, and more than 200 magazine articles. Her book The Way of Integrity is a recent Oprah's Book Club Selection.      

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Reviews for Expecting Adam

Rating: 4.115384615384615 out of 5 stars
4/5

26 ratings17 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this memoir. I liked her writing style and the way she really brings you into her head. The journey she undergoes is fascinating and is both believable and unbelievable at the same time. She explores the metaphysical aspect of her experience and describes it all in a truly unique way and manages to do so without alienating the skeptic and nonbeliever, as she is one herself. This book purports itself to be about a woman pregnant with a Down Syndrome baby, but it really explores so much more than this. The quote from Time Magazine sums it up best "Beck's memoir charts the journey from being smart to becoming wise'".
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I went into this book with great expectations. I was mesmerized at first by her writing style and pithy observations. But as I got further and further along in the book I started wondering; is this real? I think not. Further research seems to indicate that she exaggerated and outright lied about many events. She does write well. She is amusing, uses language in a creative and enjoyable way. Too bad she didn't just stick with the truth.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved this book, and I was inspired to read Beck's life coaching books too. She's pretty amazing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I highly recommend this touching memoir of a woman and her decision to keep a child that is less than perfect. I appreciate the view from her background and environment. Insightful and thought provoking. This book will tear at your heart in a most profound way. A must read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A young scholar woman expecting a child with Down Syndrome is able to find joy and discover little miracles in everyday struggles.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I highly recommend this touching memoir of a woman and her decision to keep a child that is less than perfect. I appreciate the view from her background and environment. Insightful and thought provoking. This book will tear at your heart in a most profound way. A must read!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Even though I liked this book and found it humorous and even tender in parts, I had to question the spiritual aspect of the memoir. Finding out that John and Martha Beck were going to have a Down's Syndrome child, she had to battle everyone around her to continue the pregnancy.. Being ambitious and having Harvard degrees,many choices had to be made, especially reconsidering her frenetic, goal-oriented approach to life. Many quips and hard-fought insights were many, but I found it difficult to swallow the belief she had in her son's angels and their out-of-body messages. I admit I am a skeptic of such things such as voices from heaven, but Beck's memoir kept me entertained throughout the book. Beck writes in a self-deprecating humor and you will be hooked from the first page of her memoir. Adam's birth was truly a rebirth of Martha Beck. . . .
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love Martha Beck. Sometimes I feel like she's in my head doing my thinking for me. She is definitely one of the five people living or dead, fictional or real that I would invite to dinner!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I thought I would like this book at first. It seemed like it was going to be a good autobiographical account of one women's journey of having a Down's syndrome son. It was nothing more than a combination of self congratulatory declarations, melodramatic whinings and rantings on Mormonism, grandiose pronouncements of how educated/smart she was, psychobabble mumbo jumbo and cutesy little jokes. Ugh. This book got rave reviews on Amazon, in particular about Beck's style of writing. I think she's a terrible writer! Another reviewer somewhere wrote that there is something false about her. I agree. This book is a waste, pass on this one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The subtitle of this memoir is: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic.John and Martha Beck were both working on their Ph.Ds at Harvard when they conceived their second child. Martha suffered severe nausea throughout the pregnancy, as she had with the couple’s first child, and the pressure to succeed at Harvard caused her to do everything she could to hide her condition from everyone but immediate family way past the time when most pregnant women would happily show their “baby bump.” Still, even that additional stress didn’t fully explain how “different” she felt, or the things she experienced. When she learned the baby she carried had Down syndrome, she fought against her doctors and virtually everyone she knew to continue the pregnancy. She couldn’t explain it, but she knew Adam would be fine. Beck writes well, and she is very honest about what she went through. She has a wonderful way of expressing herself. Her self-deprecating humor is refreshing, and a few scenes had me laughing out loud. Many of the experiences she relates are simply “unbelievable” and yet I fully believe in the sincerity of her memoir.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love it when overly intellectual people have to rely on unscientific phenomenons like faith and hope and magic. I think being able to let go of factual reasoning and open our minds to blind trust stretches our narrow minded boundaries a little wider. Beck speaks to having a premonition before her son, Adam, was born. There had been almost mystic signs he was not going to be an ordinary child. Throughout Beck's pregnancy inexplicable events pushed her to believe in decidedly unscientific miracles. The problem is both Beck and her husband, John, were obsessed with facts. Overly driven to be successful (two Harvard degrees each), they couldn't wrap their brains around giving birth to a Down syndrome baby. Expecting Adam is the story of letting go to perfection; the releasing of ambitions; the saying goodbye to lofty goals...and saying hello to an angel.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I read this book for my neighborhood book group. Based on the reviews I was expecting so much more. The writing and the subject matter are not the problem Beck's attitude the first half of the book left me unimpressed. I enjoyed Adam and how he saw the world around him.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I was primed for this book. Our third grandson, Adam, had just been born (August 5), when I visited a bookstore just down the street from the hospital. So the title, Expecting Adam, quite naturally practically leapt off the shelf into my hands. I originally thought, what a great gift for my daughter (the new mother), but when I read it was a story about having a child with Down Syndrome, I reconsidered. Our particular Adam, although a few weeks premature, seemed pretty much perfect, and I didn't want to needlessly upset the new mom. I needn't have worried. This is an absolutely wonderful book, told with humor, compassion, wit, wisdom and a nearly other-worldy sense of wonder. And did I mention humor? Because this woman is a very funny writer. The numerous references to invisible beings, whether she calls them angels or Bunraku puppeteers, and intercontinental telepathy are the kind of thing that would normally put me off, as I am a natural skeptic. But somehow Beck pulls it off. Probably because she believes it, she makes me believe it too - all of it. My wife wants to read it now. (She'd seen Martha Beck on Oprah some time ago, she tells me.) We will then pass the book along to our daughter to read. We know she will relate, and probably cry a little, when she reads Beck's perfect descriptions of a tiny foot the size of a man's thumb and a head the size of an orange. Babies. Ain't they just the grandest things?! I'll say it again. This is a wonderful book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Martha and her husband were graduate students are Harvard with a little girl when they unexpected got pregnant with second child. As with her first pregnancy, Martha was sick beyond belief during the entire pregnancy, making keeping up with her young daughter and her classwork very difficult – especially when her husband took a job that caused him to split his time between Harvard (for classes) and Asia, leaving the country for weeks at a time. Already somewhat looked down upon for having even one child while at Harvard, many people disapproved of Martha’s second pregnancy, particularly when they became aware that the baby she carried had Downs Syndrome.Until becoming pregnant with Adam, Martha really bought into the whole Harvard mentality. Although she still did her best to keep up with what was expected of her while pregnant, her priorities began to change while carrying Adam. Part of what changed Martha was a series of very serious circumstances, all happening while her husband was out of the country. First she felt too weak and nauseous to make food and eat for long enough that she was effectively starving herself, later in her pregnancy there was a fire in her building, at one point she began bleeding profusely. In all of these circumstances, Martha felt the presence of some other, even mystical being(s) protecting her and Adam. Although everyone around them expected Martha to abort the baby – even her doctors and, initially, her husband – Martha became convinced that she HAD to have him. You do know from the beginning how this book turns out. I believe Martha wrote this when Adam was 3 or older and she makes frequent references to what he is like as a toddler.I read this for book club and, in general, we all really enjoyed it, although we were taken aback at just how hostile Martha perceived Harvard as being towards family life in general and towards a baby with Downs in particular (granted this did take place during the 1980s). We also became VERY frustrated with Martha. She was later diagnosed with an immune disease that made her so sick durnig pregnancy, it seemed as if she was trying to do everything BUT take good care of herself and her daughter when her husband was out of town. If you are feeling nauseous with pregnancy, the solution is generally to eat small doses of whatever does NOT make you nauseous frequently. Knowing how extremely sick she could get, we felt it was inexusable for Martha to allow herself to get to the point where she could eat when she was the sole caretaker for the baby she was carrying and her daughter. She also neglected to go to the doctor when she was bleeding so badly, saying she knew she had been healed, which disturbed us all.Despite some of our gripes with Martha’s actions, this was a very well-written memoir on an extremely interesting topic and I think we would all recommend it. It certainly made for a good conversation at book club, even in a book club where I am the only one married (although others are engaged) and anywhere near children.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Weirdness surrounds this title - it's supposed to be non-fiction but she submitted the basics of the story as a novel and had it rejected. She tells of this magical connection between herself and her husband, but they have since divorced and are both in homosexual relationships. There's some question if the morning sickness she had constantly during her pregnancy was bulimia. Neither her family nor her husband's seems happy with their portrayal in the book. Just weirdness. Makes it hard to truck Beck's version of events, but it was still an interesting read and had thought provoking things to say about Down's Syndrome.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is an account of two parents who have Harvard degrees and are expecting a Down's Syndrome baby. Avery thought provoking book and amkes you see children with disabilities in a new light.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What a great book! It is a memoire that can be enjoyed on a few levels, and I enjoyed it on all of them. The author, Martha Beck, writes about the birth of her second child, conceived when she and her husband were both pursuing fast track, combined Masters/Phd programs at Harvard. Pregnancy brings with it an array of unpleasant physical symptoms that go far beyond simple morning sickness, but also a number of wonderful, unexplainable, otherwordly occurences. Partway through the pregnancy, amniocentesis shows that the baby has Down syndrome. Against the advice of doctors and academic advisors, she and her husband decide to continue the pregnancy. Before the child is born, the couple realize that both of them have been having similar, unexplainable experiences. Over time, they gradually let go of their previous, driven, academic selves and begin to accept a different reality. The changes they experience are profound, as are the lessons they learn from their son after he is born. If this was all there was to the book, it would be a good, worthwhile read. What makes it a 5-star, must-read book is the fact that Marth Beck is very funny. Very funny. This book goes onto my all time favorite book shelf.