Rating: 
Summary: An Incredible Read!
Review: As a mother of an eight month old baby with Down Syndrome, I avoided this book at first because I thought it would be too wrenching and close to home. It had the opposite effect. It has been an absolutely incredible experience. Martha Beck bravely and genuinely shares her true account of her pregnancy and experiences before and after her son Adam's birth. She discovers he has Down Syndrome before he is born but cannot even consider abortion. Throughout the nine months, Martha (and her husband)experience many paranormal/spiritual events. This might seem unconvincing or even wacky from any other source, but as a Harvard trained academician, Martha makes her story not only plausible but grippingly real. Her sense of humor is hilarious and I openly laughed out loud several times! I also openly wept at her raw and vivid descriptions of the revulsion so many of us have for those who are different. I think this book is a fantastic tool for parents of children with disabilities to give to the outside world. This is how we see our children, truly! It would also be a terrific book for any teacher or educator to read. To me, it's been a hope, a salve, an inspiration.
Rating: 
Summary: My experience at Harvard was very different
Review: As an LDS woman, Harvard alum, mother, and friend to someone who has Down Syndrome, I anticipated loving this book. I somehow imagined that Beck's experiences might have mirrored mine, that I would find in her a kindred spirit. I was wrong.
Beck's Harvard is inhabited with mean-spirited, intensely competitive, narrowly focused, hamsteresque charicatures. None of the students or professors has the wisdom, perspective, and insight of the author.
My experience at Harvard was different. I recall a lot of kind, warm, loving people. I remember conversations that lasted late into the night, about spirituality, love, dreams for the future, personal struggles, and more. Study partners who were happy to help me better understand a difficult concept or prepare for a test. Lots of people who volunteered with kids in the inner-city, at soup kitchens, hospitals, homeless shelters, on crisis hotlines. A lot of good people trying to find a way to make a difference in the world. A vast array of religious, ethnic, & ideological backgrounds, all kinds of ways of imbuing their lives with meaning. Complicated people, people with ambitions, insecurities, moments of stress, sure. But overwhelmingly, I remember people with good hearts and a desire to do the right thing. I'm sorry that Martha Beck couldn't see more of that in the people around her.
The recurring theme of this book is that Beck was blind, but now she sees. She once was self-absorbed and obsessed with academic prestige, like everyone (sic) around her. But during her pregnancy with Adam and subsequent to his birth, she claims to have discovered the true meaning of life, & found joy and wonder and truth. The problem with her writing style is that stage one comes through loud and clear, while I'm still straining to detect the joy, the profundity, and the warmth that should characterize stage 2.
Rating:
Summary: Enchanting Read...
Review: I found this nonfiction book enchanting. Martha Beck does a wonderful job recreating the magical and sometimes frightening days of her pregnancy with her Downs child, Adam. The everyday miracles and paranormal events she and her husband encountered during and after the pregnancy are both incredible and unbelievable at some level. However, woven as they are throughout the tapestry of Ms. Beck's rich and poignant memoir, you can't help but believe in and truly experience the mysterious and wonderful changes this unique child brought to his ambitious, Harvard-educated parents' lives. I recommend this book to anyone who is or hopes to be a parent, and anyone who has ever found themselves running on the fast-track treadmill of corporate or academic over-achievers.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply disliked this book
Review: I had two pregnancies (and babies) as a graduate student at a prestigious institution and I'm also quite familiar with the culture at Harvard. Granted this was recently and not a decade or so ago, but her portrayal of Harvard's culture is ridiculous and frankly offensive. I'm so tired of our society's anti-intellectualism and this just feeds it. My experience of graduate school is indeed stressful, but very supportive and my deans, professors, and advisor have been truly patient with my progress and doting on my babies.
This book just seemed over-the-top contrived and emotionally manipulative. I was given it as a gift and was unable to be genuinely greatful to the giver once I read it.
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: Magical! Wonderful!
Review: I read Martha Beck's book in virtually one sitting - I simply couldn't put it down. I feel that this book had less to do with a family coping with Down Syndrome and more to do with the family's spiritual awakening for which their Down Syndrome baby was a conduit. Beck's experiences in the world of academia were alternately amusing and outrageous. Her amazing physical and emotional strength throughout such an arduous pregnancy is inspirational, her spiritual awakening enviable. I have no doubt that the metaphysical events Beck described actually occurred. I happen to be a believer of such instances, that they are common occurences but that the vast majority of people are simply unaware of them most of the time. Beck writes with humor, sensitivity and astounding honesty. You can't help but feel you know her while at the same time wishing you could actually meet her face-to-face. You walk away from this book realizing how truly blessed Beck and her family are - and how fortunate we are for having had the privilege of reading her story.
Rating: 
Summary: I enjoyed this book a lot
Review: I read this book a few years ago and enjoyed it thourally. Handicapped children bring an aspect to their parents lives that so called normal children cannot. As a mother of an emotionally handicapped child I could totally relate to the author's feelings and had I known about my son's handicapped before his birth like Martha did, I would have never been able to abort him.
Rating:
Summary: Wacky, touching account of an expecting mother
Review: I've just completed Expecting Adam which my wife calls her favorite book she's ever read. This high praise echoes my own sentiments although, I did find it was a bit hard to get into the book. But once it happened, I was whisked into the wacky world of a self admitted overachiever from Harvard who is expecting a Down Syndrome child.. As I read I grew to love many things about this book. First and foremost, here we have a master crafter of language weaving her story from past to future.,giving us a glimpse of Adam at his 2nd birthday or a troubling moment. Then gracefully returning you to the present or recent past. Her honesty is slightly raw but frankly I feel that it is something that you begin to trust deeply as the story progresses. If she's telling you the truth about her fears and problems with her pregnancy, she must be also telling the truth about her paranormal experiences. I have read some of the other reviewers who accuse Martha of being a whiner and I can actually understand where they're coming from. I don't personally think of her as whining but someone without a certain kind of background might interpret her self criticism and problems at Harvard this way. My way of viewing her "whining" is that she freely details her frustrations, fears and feelings around stereotyping of down syndrome kids and her problems with her health and raising a family. My reactions to this evolved with each chapter. I felt I grew to understand her frustrations more as I got to know her and in the end grew to love every complaint that she cared to share with us because it seemed to invite me deeper into her intimate world. Beyond this very intimate portrait of Martha and her family, this story also let's us view a spiritual story which began with her pregnancy. This kind of patchwork spirituality was, by the middle of the book, credible and compelling. It's another reason that whinner doesn't quite fit. One more thing that pervades the book is this woman's sense of humor. Her humor happens only occasionally in her book but when it happens it is utterly suprising and delightfully offbeat. I found myself laughing out loud many times. Finally, there is a part of the book which no one I've read talks about. The relationship of Martha and her husband. It's not a big part of the book, but I found myself crying (something I rarely do), over their relationship problems and the way they worked through their issues. These things made the book come alive to me along with her struggles. There are many reasons to criticize this book. It's cursory and yet bizarre treatment of Mormonism, her weird family and her portrait of Harvard as a harsh world. But to me, these are merely footnotes to an inspirational story that touches very deep.
Rating:
Summary: So many skeptics
Review: It's a little hard to access the veracity of someone's magical experiences, but the veracity of the rest of the book seemed to lose me with each passing chapter. Beck's descriptions of Harvard reminded me of the movie Good Will Hunting - where the academic moral was that the folks who are janitors are in fact the truly smart people and the professors are inadequate boobs. But lucky for Martha, she has it both ways. (she's the OUTSIDER - making her smart - but with the 3 degree credential for her 165 IQ.) And did anyone out there buy the story about the Smurfs??? (This was my first tip off that she was inserting transparently ludicrous scenes that could be easily adapted to a Hollywood screenplay.) And the books she claims were at the Harvard Coop - such as "Pre-Law for Preschoolers" and "Toddling Through the Calculus" are certainly not in print here at Amazon. It certainly made me doubt a lot more incredible material when she was willing to fabricate such seemingly trivial details. Does anyone believe there is a daycare center that signs up parents 5 years before the birth of their child? And if Dr. Goatstroke was anything but a character out of cental casting, I'd be amazed. (apparently Goatstroke is the name of a town in Utah.) The litany of improbable events - near death experiences, strangers at the door with grocieries, car accidents, drownings - combined with the obvious factual fabrications - began to make me think this was supposed to be a satire. Somehow, though, from reading most of the other reviews here, people took this book SERIOUSLY. Perhaps like Martha, there is a profound desire for people to believe what they want to believe.
Rating:
Summary: So many skeptics
Review: It's a shame that people are unwilling to accept possibilities simply because it's beyond the scope of their experience. In reading the reviews here, I understand why people have trouble believing. But, they shouldn't completely discount someone else's experience just because it's different from their own. While I've had nothing in my life nearly as miraculous as Martha Beck's experiences, I've had enough strange occurrences to know that what she writes is absolutely possible. And, there are many people who have had extraordinary experiences. I wish the same for the rest of you who are too closed-minded to open up to the possible. Your life will be forever changed for the better.
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