Love Works Like This

Publishers Weekly

Pregnant women will find much food for thought in Lauren Slater's Love Works Like This: Opening One's Life to a Child. Psychologist Slater (Prozac Diary) remembers how she made the decision to have a child. She made a list of pros and cons, and upon siding with the only "pro" ("learning a new kind of love"), began the journey toward motherhood. In a diary-like format, she tells of her violent mood swings, disturbed appetite and uncertainty at holding a child's dress in her hands and "finding it definitely not cute." Largely a personal, biological and psychological history, Slater's book is ultimately uplifting. (May 21) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Slater (Prozac Diary) prefaces her latest work by emphasizing that it is a "travelog" rather than a diary. This results from her choice of format: an abridged daily planner charting the expansion of her belly, the age of the fetus, and the sometimes beautiful, sometimes scary thoughts of a woman whose life is slowly changing. At the heart of this piercing memoir is Slater's struggle to become a mother in the face of bipolar disorder. At once sad and miraculous, the text reveals the quandary an expectant mother faces when she must take drugs that could harm the unborn child (she stopped taking Prozac during the first trimester but then resumed). It is clear that Slater wrote this not only for women like herself but also for her daughter. In the end, she realized that having a child was as important to maintaining a normal life as was her medication. An original take on an oft-discussed subject, this is highly recommended for all pregnancy and mental health collections. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

From practicing psychologist and noted memoirist Slater (Prozac Diary, 1998, etc.), an unflinchingly honest and evocative account of her decision to have a baby-and its consequences. Happily married, fulfilled by her writing and practice, enjoying the emotional stability her regimen of drugs provides, Slater is ambivalent about becoming pregnant. Her husband Jacob has always wanted a child, but she is wary of maternity. Estranged from her own unstable and vituperative mother, Slater worries that her own mental illness will prevent her from being a good parent. She fears her medications might harm the fetus, but when she stops taking them, all her symptoms return. The progesterone flooding her body in the first trimester, she learns, can bizarrely affect a woman's brain. Prescribed a mix of lithium, Prozac, and Klonopin, she feels more stable but is still apprehensive about her underlying condition and the medications' potential effects. Amniocentesis and two ultrasounds are reassuring, though Slater remains concerned about possible postpartum depression. As she records the usual physical milestones of pregnancy, she also confesses her irrational fears: that Jacob is smitten with an artist who makes mobiles from car tires, that perhaps she should be "an aunt" to the baby and live in a different part of the house. Her labor is long, and she has to undergo a Cesarean. Slater feels proud that she doesn't suffer any postpartum depression, but she takes a few weeks to bond with daughter Eva. When she does, she falls as deeply in love as most mothers do and appreciates that "like so much in life, being a mother is entirely undramatic, filled with small pleasures and multiple inconveniences thatonly over weeks and months leave marks of any significance." Thoughtful and unsentimental, with just a few well-earned warm and fuzzy moments, and particularly encouraging for those taking similar medication who are contemplating pregnancy.