Rating: 
Summary: Too many angels, not enough Adam
Review: I have to admit my bias up front: my natural skepticism about paranormal experiences almost kept me from purchasing this book. However, as the mother of an infant with Down Syndrome, I was desperate to read a first-person account which might give me some hope and optimism about the future. Unfortunately, while Beck's insights and observations about Down Syndrome (and society's reactions to it) were painfully funny and right on the mark, the constant parade of angels, helpers, disembodied voices and "puppeteers" became monotonous and ultimately ruined the book for me.While I won't go so far as to say I don't believe Beck's supernatural experiences, they certainly took away any suspense or dramatic tension the book may have had. There was seemingly no situation so dire that it couldn't be fixed immediately by her "angels". They pulled her out of burning buildings, stopped her hemorrhaging, lobbied her husband on her unborn baby's behalf, even travelled across the world to deliver messages to her husband. These situations occurred with such numbing regularity that after awhile I felt like I was reading a Superman comic. Beck is a talented writer and her writing really shines when she remains in the here and now. I found the few passages about Adam to be moving, fascinating and funny - but just when I was getting into them, the book would revert back to a droning catalogue of psychic phenomena. I would love to read a book about her experiences raising Adam and how he has affected the day-to-day life and value system of her family. Ultimately, those of us "in the trenches" without supernatural assistance will find this book less than helpful.
Rating:
Summary: My Inability to Suspend Disbelief
Review: I just finished reading Expecting Adam and I think Dr. Beck is a very talented writer. I had enormous trouble, however, believing some of the stories! Not so much her claims about paranormal acativity, although those did strain my credulity a bit. Rather, it was her description of the persecution she went through from the Harvard community and the medical community. Twenty-two years ago I worked at the Frank Porter Graham child development center in NC, and I KNOW there were all kinds of publications available about Down Syndrome and early intervention. I find it really hard to believe that Cambridge didn't have any of them 10 years later! Dr. Beck makes it sound as though it were a really new phenomenon to have a Down Syndrome child and not put him/her into an institution! Frankly, I found her perception that every dr. was against her decision to keep her baby to verge on the paranoid. The description of "Professor Goatstroke" and others seemed to be caricatures. I don't doubt that she perceived her interactions that way, because perception is everyone's reality, but I doubted the lens I was looking through. I perceived that a lack of self condidence in her personal life caused her to hear and see only certain parts of conversations. It also bothered me big time that she re-told personal experiences that happened to her husband as if she were omniscient. I would have been a lot happier having the point of view shift back and forth between them, with John telling things that happened to him. I want truth. I can accept her saying, "This happened to me," but it made me nervous having her say, "This happened exactly like this to John." I was also bothered by her insistence on calling her family her "family of origin." What was that supposed to mean? That they were not her "true" family? Having completed a Ph.D. myself (not at Harvard)I suspect that the process is difficult at any major university. My dissertation director was not thrilled that I had a very weak semester after my mother died. It didn't make me think people hated me and my children and my mother-it made me think that an academic life requires all kinds of yucky sacrifices. Her disdain of her upbringing, her family, her previous religion, etc. seemed really childish to me. I just kept seeing a disturbed, selfish, spoiled brat. All of this said, I still thought the book was thought-provoking and worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: thoroughly wonderful read
Review: So wonderfully written. Beck trusts the reader enough to share virtually all her thoughts and feelings, good and bad, about her pregnancy. I found myself crying and laughing out loud from the same page. When I wasn't reading about Martha and her family, I was wishing I could get back to the book and read more.
Rating:
Summary: Special Educator's Point of View
Review: As a special educator, I felt that this book allows people outside the realm of those who deal with children and others with disabilities, a glimpse into the very special world of a family such as this one. I recommend this book to anyone; my mother, who has never dealt with issues even remotely close to this one, loved this book and she feels that it taught her empathy and respect for anyone who must learn to advocate for children with disabilities. Two thumbs up!
Rating:
Summary: The Heart of the Matter
Review: The magic of this book is NOT how the family comes to "accept" their son's "disability", "Down Syndrome", or "retardedness". These are the words of the judgemental society that she spoke against. The heart of the matter is that, with the help of the angels and the puppeteers, she realizes her son IS a perfect child BECAUSE OF his genetic differences. I have thought this before-that there are still things to learn from and love about all people, especially when they are different from the "normal" people. And who are we to judge what is "perfect" and "normal" anyway?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book is terribly mis-categorized under "parenting". While the author tells about her time while she's expecting a baby, it's all about how her life changes and how she changes spiritually. I don't have children, & plan not to; yet this book is one of the best up-lifting reads I've had in some time. Gave three away for Christmas.
Rating:
Summary: A great and interesting journey
Review: very thought provoking book about woman studying at harvard yet expecting a child with down's syndrome. makes you realize what's important in life.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, persuasive, transformative.
Review: You begin this book with a certain amount of doubt. But it soon becomes clear that no one is more doubtful than the author herself, and this gently reassures you, allowing you to open up to the miracles in her life as she, in the book, is gradually coming to understand them. The characterizations are especially apt, and you feel you're in the cramped, grim office of the aging Harvard professor who cannot begin to fathom why anyone would keep a "defective" child. You feel the author's mixture of prickly attention and uneasy resistance when a crazy-sounding woman goes into a trance and afterwards mentions that her (the author's) son is an angel. All the unbelievable parts of the book - the hemorrage that would have killed any other pregnant woman, the author's "seeing" through her husband's eyes when he was on a trip halfway around the world - ultimately have the effect of making you wish for such miracles in your own life, rather than disbelieving that they have occurred in hers. It is a measure of the book's extreme honesty and ultimate reliance on faith - the author's and the reader's - that this book has not been a huge best seller. It just may be too intelligent, and too "irrational," for most professional book reviewers.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone should have some of those Bunraku puppeteers...
Review: Expecting Adam is not the story of a child with Down syndrome. It is the heart-felt confession of one woman's personal journey from fear to grace. As the mother of an eight year old boy with an autistic disorder, I fought and wrangled with her story for about the first half of the book, and found myself saying "Come on, Martha, tell me something I don't know." Having conceived my second child while my husband was completing his doctorate, I found eerie similarities to my own experience, from questioning mysticism and other-worldly phenonoma, to being in complete awe of our son when he does what we call his "God Thing." Even so I felt she was exaggerating her own experience,and taking liberties with the academic environment in which she lived. Since most readers won't have an insider's understanding of what it is like be the parents of a "non-perfect" baby in the halls of academia, I felt that I would qualify any recommendation that I made by saying, "Take in all the parts except Harvard - she went a bit overboard there." But then, somewhere in the middle of the book, it was as if Martha was right there whispering in my ear, "open your heart..." And so, I did. The next morning, after finishing the book, I was shouting orders to my four children, doing my best Captain von Trapp imitation, and getting nowhere fast in readying them for school. There was spilled juice, slopped cereal, and a screaming baby. My "disabled" son, sensing my mounting frustration, asked just at the wrong moment to have his shoes tied. I threw down the kitchen towel in exasperation and left the room for a few minutes to collect myself. I then sheepishly returned to the rallying cry of, "Lets all be chickens!" And there he was, my son, making the others laugh and smile, clearing away the mess, collecting backpacks, and all the while flapping his arms like wings and making his best chicken sounds. We all piled into the car, slightly late, but smiling, and as he got out he gave me a wet, sloppy kiss. He took me by the shoulders and said, "Mommy, if I ever lose you, my heart will not feel so good." He walked away, doing his best imitation of a man walk, and I drove back home, crying and laughing at the same time. And then I felt them. Martha's Bunraku puppeteers. Or at least, my own version of them. Because at that moment I have never been happier to be parent, let alone the parent of a child with very special needs. All my fears for his future (and mine) were obliterated by a wonderfully calm place in my heart, something I have felt many times before, but could never have expressed as beautifully and honestly as Martha Beck. Thank you, Martha, for putting into words so many of the feelings that I have, but have been too fearful to admit and put down on paper. I hope that I become more graceful in time with my own journey, as you have shown the world that you are with yours.
Rating:
Summary: Read the whole thing in one sitting
Review: Martha Beck dubs her tale "A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic" and sets the imagination churning with her wit and wisdom. An account of a Harvard sociology graduate student from Utah who decides not to abort her Down Syndrome baby sounds more like the recipe for a tragedy than a satire, but Beck is full of surprises. For me Beck's book was a witty critique our success-oriented society, on academia, on pretense and on parents. Beck dreads the mindset that leads our society toward perfect babies, perfect students, and perfect breadwinners, and away from perfect content. This story carries you high and low over the hurdles and under the weather with Martha all through her pregnancy. You feel the harsh sting of the truth, the terror of the unknown, and the crumbling of life-long plans. Over and above all else this book is a secret look at one of the ways in which life manages to outwit our calculations. The strong survive because they bend, because they stretch to fit the life that chance throws in their path. Perhaps those of us who plan our life events as though they were dinner parties are really weak, weak because we do not know how to rejoice in the unexpected.
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