Author: Sarah Bilston

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0060889934

The following review was contributed by: Penny Watkins

Q and her husband, Tom, are both busy, successful lawyers on the fast track to success.  Both work long hours and manage a frenetic lifestyle that leaves little time for anything but work, but somewhere along the way (Q is not quite sure when) they did find time, and now they are expecting a baby boy in three months.  They have it all planned out.  Q will take a little time off work, and they’ll hire a nanny when she goes back, and Tom will make Partner before the baby’s born.

All that changes when Q leaves her office at 3 pm and trudges the eleven blocks to her obstetrician’s office for her regular appointment.  The doctor discovers she does not have enough amniotic fluid.  Q will spend the next three months lying on her left side in bed or on the couch (most definitely not at the office) or risk losing her baby.

Initially, Q takes it in stride.  She can spend her time reading, catching up on her sleep, cruising the internet, watching Ricki Lake and recapturing her relationship with Tom, who has been preoccupied and harried with this whole Partner thing.  She can also work at checking items off of her Modern Woman’s List of Things to Do Before She Hits Thirty.  She discovers she doesn’t want to read, at least not anything serious.  She can’t sleep.  She scares herself to tears by looking up information about her condition on the internet.  Someone always calls during Ricki.  And she barely sees Tom.  And she’s hungry all the time, and can’t get up to cook, and what’s a woman to do when she’s pregnant and NEEDS chocolate-chip cookies?

Q is not much for journaling, but she wants to remember every moment of this time.  She’s afraid she’ll forget something important, so she obsessively records her days of Bed Rest.  She details the important events, like: 

“Saturday.  Tom working. Watched TV.  Cried.  Ate cookies.” and “…I’ve just spent a vigorous hour plucking my eyebrows into submission.”

She also details her fears, her growing conflict with Tom, her tense family relationships and her unsuccessful matchmaking attempts.

Bed Rest is about the uncontrollable nature of relationships.  Q is trying to connect with Tom, but he grows more distant.  She dreads connecting with her mother, but they grow closer.  She interacts with her sisters, friends, co-workers and the elderly Greek lady from her building, and we watch her figure out that she doesn’t always have great insight into character, that people often do the unexpected.  Q realizes she doesn’t even know her own heart very well, and isn’t sure if she even wants the future she and Tom have so carefully mapped out. 

The settings in Bed Rest are minimalist, with only the beds or couches Q occupies and the food she eats described in detail.  The characters are real people.  Q displays a full range of pregnant-lady emotions:  fear, anger, angst, and despair.  She yells at people, tells them off and cries when she doesn’t want to.  She manipulates people, and is manipulated by other people.  She’s a full, rounded character who would be fun to know. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Bed Rest.  I was once a pregnant woman on bedrest for weeks on end, and Sarah Bilston captures the experience perfectly, including the poignant ending moment when Q and Tom hold their new son, and everything about their lives changes.