First-time novelist Elaine D. Fox tells the story of a long-suffering couple eager to have children in No One Should Get Pregnant Alone. Emily Vance, a successful woman with a loving husband and friends she adores, cannot get pregnant the easy way and must resort to infertility treatments that make her feel inadequate, anxious, even unwomanly at times. Not to mention what the treatments do to her husband, Brad, who starts to feel more like a machine than a man.

But with the help of her good friends and her sister, a freewheeling type who keeps Emily laughing, she finally manages to give birth to a little girl named Sam. That’s when the real chaos starts. Emily must now deal with being a mother, taking care of a friend who suspects her husband is cheating, and trying to keep her own husband happy, too. Oh, and she wants ANOTHER baby right away.

Eventually Emily and Brad suffer through some real ups and downs in their marriage, even as their little girl becomes ill. But Emily plods on in her quest to reproduce again, almost blinded by her obsession to give birth, and it costs her dearly.

Ultimately, this is a story of what many women go through, dealing with children, with men who act like children, and with their own needs and dreams, which often get relegated to the lower end of the priority scale. No One Gets Pregnant Alone is about women we all know, or may even be ourselves, and reminds us that we must reach out to others to have what we really want, but never at our own expense.

This is a charming novel with plenty of warmth and wit. At times it can be a bit whiny, and you wonder if these privileged people realize there are mothers and fathers out there suffering far worse fates than they are, but in the end the story makes you smile in recognition. Indeed, no one ever gets pregnant alone, but sometimes having a child means learning how to survive alone, or together, whatever the case may be.