~ SUMMARY ~

“CONSIDERING A BABY?”

Considering a baby? is a hypertext narration written by the North American writer, Adrienne Eisen. It talks about the different periods or stages that women can have while they are pregnant. I could even go further and say it can be a funny manual for every woman who is expecting a baby. It is not saying true facts; it’s not saying that IT is what is going to happen, but just gives some advice for women so they know what to “look forward”. The best of Adrienne’s works is the way she talks. She is not ashamed to say what she wants to say. Sex, vaginas, relationships with mothers, friends and husband… Those topics are in our lives constantly, at least in where I am from, Spain. However, in a country as conservative as the United States of America, it seems to be a bit strange for the author to talk about those issues so openly; usually we would think they are taboo, but in this narration the author brings them up easily.

The hypertext is divided in 9 parts. The 9 months that a woman has a baby in her uterus. Each month talks about something different. These various topics are discussed:

Month one:

Your finances | Your sleep | Your skin

Month two:

Your Mood | Your Friends | Your Spice

Month three:

Your Naps | Your Amnio

Month four:

Your Clothes | Your Worries | Your Discharge

Month five:

Your Model | Your Cobra

Month six:

Your Outbursts | Your Mucus

Month seven:

Your Husband | Your Sex Life | Your Vagina

Month eight:

Your Moods | Your Mother | Your Instincts

Month nine:

Your labor

Each chapter has the same options to choose what you can read. This makes the book have the same ending any way you read it, I mean, any way you follow it will always take you to the same place (chapter number 9 “your labor”). In a first reading you will never find the same option, which makes the reading easier. At the same time, it gives you the possibility to read different readings as long as you choose different options each month. (Right now I’m talking about just one reading, and how it will always have different choices). And although this hypertext has that advantage, it also has some disadvantages. That way that it’s written by having every month the same options restricts the book for further readings. For example, in month three there are only two options. If you want to read the hypertext more that two times you will have to repeat one of the topics already picked. What I’m trying to say is that there is not a diverse variety of choices for further readings.

I think it is worth it to talk about her writting skills. In each chapter, or as I like to call it commentary, we can see several similities in the way she writes. Humor, sarcasm, irony, and even exaggeration are her most linguistic styles used in Considering a baby?. She uses colloquial words and american slangs which can difficult the reading for a foreign person like me; but at the same time it is good for the reader to learn a different vocabulary or expressions. She has a way with words that makes the readings seem like monologues about the pregnancy. Usually each chapter (or month) deals with the subject which has been picked, and always ends with an unforeseeable touch.

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This is a summary of the different topics I dealt with through my reading. This is going to help us to understand all what I was talking about earlier.

Month one: “Your finances” – It talks about how much money the woman is going to spend in pregnancy tests. First because it will be too early to test herself, but she will want to know anyways so she will spend her money on it, and then because when she knows for sure that she is pregnant she will want to check with different brands, just to make sure. At the end she says that by the time she believes she is pregnant she will have spent all the money for the kid’s college.

Month two: “Your friends” – It talks about friends and how she will sarcastically loose them because she is pregnant and they are not. They give her books that she will not read, and then they will tell her what she shouldn’t do and that she should know because she was supposed to read those books. She will get mad at them for not understanding her and giving her advice while they are not even pregnant or have children at all.

Month three: “Your naps” – It is a commentary about being pregnant and taking naps. The author uses humor to describe women’s thoughts during pregnancy. She says that women will hate other pregnant women in magazines because they look so beautiful when they are pregnant. Women will feel jealous of the rich women and desire their lives until they realize that those rich women have messed up their lives.

Month four: “Your clothes” – This time talks about the clothes and how much you will hate them. She won’t want to buy any of them, but at the end she will because she won’t fit in any of hers or her husband’s clothes.

Month five: “Your model” – It talks about all the thoughts that the woman will have when she sees the cover of a magazine with a pregnant woman in it. She’s not the only person with a huge belly so that will make you feel better. Models will pose three months after the baby is due; therefore, they need to loose weight quickly. She will need some incentive, and the only one she will find we’ll be having a surgery. In another magazine she sees a model uses the baby to cover the belly, so she will have hope again.

Month six: “Your mucus” – That is a funny commentary about how the women’s vagina will be feeling. There are different adjectives, pretty slang-ish all of them: “squishy, thick, juicy, springy and saggy”. What she is trying to say here is that the vagina will be originating some kind of mucus, that will scare women by thinking it’s a miscarriage. But when they find out it isn’t, that will make them happy so they will want to show it to their husband, who doesn’t really want to see it, but he will because he has to be supportive.

Month seven: “Your husband” – Funny commentary again about the relationship between the woman and her husband. It is summarized by talking about her breasts. They really hurt, all bras are small, and also the husband will want to play with them. She doesn’t want him to at all, but she will have read in a magazine it says not good to change the relationship with your husband; therefore she will end up giving him a blow job so he keeps his hands away from her breasts.

Month eight: “Your instincts” – It talks about the woman getting worried because she wants to have the baby early. She doesn’t want to be one of those women whose babies are late. She will say she was very active, whereas she will be doing nothing at all. As its the last month she is even more and more worried about everything, and the pain doesn’t help either and it doesn’t let her go on. She will say things she doesn’t mean to, and her husband, who thinks the same, will try to help you out.

Month nine: “Your labor” – Finally I got to the due day. The pain will be unbelievable paintful. And although each labor is unique, there will always be a common thing: The pain. She will try to think of other women who have passed through this but she won’t care. She won’t think of the satisfaction of seeing the baby because the pain won’t let her be herself. But then the author says that when she has the baby she forgets about the pain. Little by little she will be forgetting about how horrible it was and when she doesn’t realize… she will be pregnant again! As she says “because your memory of the pregnancy will be short, disjointed pictures of things gone bad, and those memories will not add up to anything substantial.”

[Second Paper]

[Index] [Adrienne Website] [Biography] [Works]

[Considering a baby] [Summary] [Internal analysis] [External analysis]

[Conclusion] [My blog]