What I Thought I Knew

July 6, 2009
In this chronicle of a late-in-life pregnancy, New York City playwright and theater artist Cohen recalls an unlikely chain of events that, at age 44, transformed her life: "Three weeks ago I found out I was pregnant. Two weeks ago, I contemplated and rejected a late-term abortion. One week ago I was put on bed rest. I accepted my role as a miniature hospital, protecting a fragile life by lying on my left side and drinking Gatorade." Already the mother of an adopted daughter, Cohen's first experience with pregnancy is a minefield of physical and financial dangers: "A woman with no prenatal care for twenty-six weeks is a lousy insurance risk... To an obstetrician, she represents an expensive malpractice liability." Cohen questions herself-health, commitment and emotional readiness-and others while sorting through a growing mountain of advice, ultimately wondering whether one can ever be fully prepared to bring a baby into the world. Compelling, humanizing, and deeply honest, Cohen's narrative will get readers rooting for her growing family.

May 1, 2009
A blackly humorous, deeply personal story from a playwright and solo theater artist.

In 1999, Cohen (Writing and Theatre/The New School) was a 44-year-old divorce raising an adopted daughter and dating a 34-year-old fellow performer. Her gynecological history was bleak—a DES daughter with an abnormal uterus, she had been told she was infertile and believed herself to be on the brink of menopause. When a hard lump appeared in her abdomen, she feared it was cancer. After some absurd misdiagnoses, however, she learned that she was six-months pregnant. In three"Acts," Cohen reveals her reactions to this news and the ensuing complications of a high-risk pregnancy, possibly damaged fetus and lack of adequate medical insurance."Unbridled Good Fortune" ends with the author considering an abortion."What I Know" chronicles the three anguished and often indecisive months that culminated with the birth of her baby. In"An Unexpected Life," Cohen discusses three therapy-filled years and, finally, a malpractice suit against the doctors who misdiagnosed her. Periodically, the author inserts lists titled"What I Know," the items of which change as she learns new"facts" and as her thoughts and feelings about the situation change. At times her humor is harsh, particularly in her caricatures of her endocrinologist and of certain students in her storytelling class. The questions that Cohen deals with—whether or not to abort, to place her baby up for adoption or to sue for malpractice—are serious, even controversial, and her frankness in dealing with them can be disconcerting.

A memoir of a life in crisis that may challenge female readers to face some of their darkest fears.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 11, 2009
Playwright Cohen feared the worst when she developed alarming symptoms-a large, hard lump in her lower abdomen, tenderness in her breasts, morning sickness, et. al. At 44, she was vulnerable to a host of deadly diseases. Apprehensive, she hurried to the hospital and received a startling diagnosis: pregnancy. With a fiancEe and an adoptive daughter, she is wholly unprepared for pregnancy, and, later, for parenting a daughter afflicted by a rare hormonal disease. Nonetheless, she comes to love her daughter, and, ultimately, to value her experience. Readers interested in the emotional hardships of pregnancy will relish this debut.-Lynne Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2009
In 1999, Cohen, a writer and performer of solo plays, was 44, divorced with an 8-year-old adopted daughter, and engaged to Michael, 10 years her junior. Neither wanted more children, and Alice, in fact, had been told she could never conceive due to abnormalities caused by her mothers DES during pregnancy. Thus, when she felt a lump in her abdomen, neither she nor her gynecologist suspected pregnancynot until she was six months pregnant: a 44-year-old . . . in her third trimester, with a deformed uterus and no prenatal care. Its too late for an abortion, though Alice is fearful of all the problems her baby might face, including genital ambiguity, due to the synthetic hormones she had been taking for 14 years. Cohen traces her steps through the medical insurance quagmire, her attempt to keep working despite being placed on bed rest, her daughter Elianas birth with shortened limbs and scoliosis, and her postpartum depression. Eventually the bills are paid, Elianas leg surgeries are scheduled, and Alice is off antidepressants and writing againas evidenced by her compelling and edifying memoir.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)