What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen

From the Publisher

A personal and medical odyssey beyond anything most women would believe possible

At age forty-four, Alice Eve Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she was engaged to an inspiring man, joyfully raising her adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Alice tells her fiancé that she's never been happier. And then the stomach pains begin.

In her unflinchingly honest and ruefully witty voice, Alice nimbly carries us through her metamorphosis from a woman who has come to terms with infertility to one who struggles to love a heartbeat found in her womb - six months into a high-risk pregnancy.

What I Thought I Knew is a page-turner filled with vivid characters, humor, and many surprises and twists of fate. With the suspense of a thriller and the intimacy of a diary, Cohen describes her unexpected journey through doubt, a broken medical system, and the hotly contested terrain of motherhood and family in today's society. Timely and compelling, What I Thought I Knew will capture readers of memoirs such as Eat, Pray, Love; The Glass Castle; and A Three Dog Life.

Publishers Weekly

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.
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Kirkus Reviews

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 divorcee 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. Author events in New YorkCity

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