MEMOIR MARCH: Knocked Up by Rebecca Eckler

Rebecca Eckler shows women everywhere that while they’re busy offering not-so-casual advice and reprimands to the men in their life, they’ve lost sight of an important fact: they’re not dating a boyfriend, they’re raising a boyfriend.

He wandered away from the checkout, leaving her to cope with an overflowing shopping car. He dashed in front of her to cross a busy intersection without so much as a backwards glance. He forgot — forgot! — to meet her at the airport after a trip. And then an inescapable truth settled in: Rebecca Eckler already had a six-year-old daughter, so what was she doing with a boyfriend who was even worse behaved? There were only two options. Dump the sucker and concentrate on raising her child. Or raise her boyfriend, too.

From making introductions, to offering compliments, to saying you’re sorry, boyfriends need to be raised with the same lessons we use on our kids. As Rebecca writes, “If I can raise a child — a smart, kind and polite one — surely I can raise a boyfriend, too.”

Rebecca Eckler is a popular newspaper columnist who lives the fabulous life and gets paid to write about it. So when a tipsy romp with her fiancé on the night of their lavish engagement party leaves her unexpectedly expecting, she is utterly at a loss. How will a woman who loves nothing more than a night out on the town sipping cocktails with her fellow party girls survive the pregnant life?

Knocked Up is the witty, engaging and refreshingly frank chronicle of a modern woman’s journey into motherhood. We follow Eckler from the first trimester (a.k.a. the longest three months of her life), through the “fat months” of the second trimester, on to the “even fatter months” of the third. Flipping the pages of this Bridget-Jones-style diary, we share in Eckler’ s discovery of prenatal vitamins and nursing bras, ultrasounds and obstetricians. And we experience her growing horror at the physical symptoms of pregnancy: all-day “morning” sickness, fatigue, varicose veins, and cravings. And the weight gain, oh the weight gain. Who knew the day would come when she could no longer put on her own socks?

Along for the ride is a cast of characters as comical as any met in fiction. There’s the Sexy Young Intern, a Sophia Loren look-a-like with her skinny eyes set on Eckler’s job; the glamorous friends who continue to drink Manhattans, while Eckler sips Perrier; and the Cute Single Man who knows just when she needs a carton of ice cream or a game of Scrabble. And then there’s the fiancé, living in another city, who, thanks to the miracle of long-distance phone lines, appreciates better than anybody the highs and lows of the hormonal rollercoaster pregnant Eckler is on.

Lighthearted, intimate, and very funny, Knocked Up is the diary of a modern mother-to-be determined not to let pregnancy and motherhood change her life. Not. One. Little. Bit.