Path to motherhood fraught with unexpected turns

In the new book ‘‘Not What I Expected: The Unpredictable Road from Womanhood to Motherhood,” writers share poems, essays and short stories that reveal how having and raising children can alter a woman forever.

Motherhood ‘‘changes everything, in ways you can’t even imagine,” says co-editor Hilde S. Block, 40, who lives in Arlington with her husband and two children, ages 3 and 7.

Co-editor Donya Currie Arias, who will be 39 later this month, has three children, ages 4, 7 and 9. She lived closer to Block at the start of the project in 2001 but has since moved several times, most recently to Fredericksburg.

The editors each read contributions from 1,000 writers after publishing a call for submissions six years ago.

Currie Arias says it was humbling to see the sheer amount of time and logistical challenges involved in publishing a book.

‘‘We thought it would take a year,” she says.

Within a year, the editors had selected works from 90 contributors, including six writers from Montgomery County.

When deciding which pieces to include in the book, Currie Arias says, she and Block would ask each other, ‘‘Does this make you weep?”

The selection process reinforced the notion that writers can’t take rejections personally, Currie Arias adds. Plenty of good works didn’t make their way into the anthology simply because they didn’t fit the narrower theme. And she’s willing to admit that other editors may have chosen differently from among the 1,000 submissions.

When you’re busy caring for young children, she says, ‘‘It’s hard to have a complete thought, let alone make a judgment call.”

The book opens with an essay by Silver Spring writer Elizabeth Roca. She was confined to bed rest for several months before her twins were born in November 2001. Her doctor had told her she was at risk of losing her babies. Roca started writing the essay ‘‘Now I Lay Me Down to Wait” the following spring, and it was published in a journal ‘‘for thinking mothers” later that year before being reprinted in the new anthology.

‘‘This was part of my children’s history that they wouldn’t know unless I told them,” Roca says. ‘‘I felt very strongly my children should see that in some way. Their beginnings were so important to me and my husband and everyone I knew.”

Roca’s twins were conceived with the help of in vitro fertilization. Her third child, born while the twins were 2 years old, was a surprise.

‘‘We were thrilled,” Roca says. ‘‘It seemed so amazing, a miracle. She’s a really delightful child.”

When the children were still babies, Roca, now 37, wrote because she feared forgetting what her life was like then. She carried around a notebook and wrote down a few sentences at a time until she had enough for an essay.

Germantown writer Lynn Stearns, 58, teaches at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda and recommends that her students ‘‘always, always carry writing instruments and paper.” She recalls a time she found herself in a dentist’s chair with a thought but no paper. She grabbed a paper towel and started writing, despite the nurse’s urging that it was OK for her to talk.

In helping to promote the anthology, Stearns had fun meeting other writers at a recent reading in Virginia.

‘‘There was surprisingly little talk about children, and more about writing,” she says.

Stearns’ piece of flash fiction, the very short story ‘‘A Butterfly’s Wings,” is told from the point of view of the smallest of four fetuses within a pregnant woman urged to choose selective reduction. The mother of two grown sons and the grandmother of three, Stearns says she could not imagine wanting children so much and then being in a position of being asked to give one up.

Stearns has published 40 or 50 short stories, she says, and tends to revisit motherhood in her writing frequently.

Silver Spring writer Viva Hammer, 40, has a 9-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. She wrote about her days-long labor in her essay ‘‘The Demon Who Delivered Me My Daughter.”

The essay, she says, ‘‘is my longest gestation.” She started writing it right after her daughter was born. Hammer tends to write primarily on domestic topics inspired by family and personal events.

‘‘They’re pieces that spring from the soul,” she says.

She admits to having very little time to read for pleasure while her children were young, finding it hard to get lost in a fantasy world amidst constant demands for attention.

Hammer thinks anthologies like ‘‘Not What I Expected” are good not only for young mothers, but also for ‘‘pre-mothers” who are busy working.

Kensington writer Molly Ruskin, 38, has three children, ages 8 months, 7 and 10. Her stream of consciousness poem ‘‘Ice Ages” was written after she recovered from cancer treatment.

‘‘We really don’t know the time we have here, but the time we have is precious,” she says.

Ruskin says the anthology takes a wide view of parenthood, childhood and personhood. She insists that once women become mothers, ‘‘there’s no returning to that life they had before.”

Readers who want to know what to expect from this anthology — or from motherhood — should simply expect the unexpected.

‘‘Not What I Expected: The Unpredictable Road from Womanhood to Motherhood” ($15.95, Paycock Press) is available online at amazon.com and www.gargoylemagazine.com.