Surprise Child

Unplanned pregnancies happen to women in every season of life: the newly married, the never-married, the empty-nester, the teenager, the overworked mother, the career woman. Yet we rarely talk about how lonely and confusing this experience can be.

In Surprise Child, Leslie Leyland Fields, who experienced two unplanned pregnancies in her forties, lyrically weaves her own story with the stories of other women who understand the isolation you face as expectations and plans are turned upside down to make room for a child.

“Each year, more than three million women discover themselves pregnant–at a hard time, the wrong time, at a difficult place in their lives. I am one of those women.…”

Together, these women walk with you month-by-month through the physical and emotional stages of pregnancy, voicing with startling honesty their own anxieties and struggles. Here you will find the companionship and hope you need to journey toward new life.Leslie Leyland Fields is the author of numerous books including Surviving the Island of Grace. She has received the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Fields divides her time between writing, mothering, commercial fishing, and teaching in Seattle Pacific University’s Master of Fine Arts program. The mother of six children, ages seventeen to three, Fields lives with her husband and family on Kodiak Island, Alaska.