Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood

by Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones, Pamela Ferdinand

Carey, Beth, and Pam had succeeded at work but failed at romance, and each resolved to have a baby before time ran out. Just one no men. Carey took the first bold step towards single motherhood, searching anonymous donor banks until she found the perfect match.

What she found was not a father in a vial, but a sort of magic potion. She met a man, fell in love, and got pregnant the old-fashioned way. She passed the vials to Beth, and it happened again. Beth met man, Beth got pregnant. Beth passed the vials to Pam, and the magic struck again. There were setbacks and disappointments, but three women became three families, reveling in the shared joy of love, friendship, and never losing hope.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, Book Club

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Ciara · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book is really weird. it follows the stories of three friends, all of whom have been unlucky in love, shall we say, & are desperate to have babies while they still can. carey goes first. she just hasn't found a guy that she wants to settle down with, so she decides to pursue single motherhood with the help of a carefully selected anonymous sperm donor. the same day her eight vials of sperm arrive, she meets an intriguing man on an internet dating sight. she postpones the insemination while she gets to know him. she starts daydreaming about him volunteering the father her baby. she's upfront about her plans to have a child, with his sperm or with the donor sperm, & opens the door for him to be as involved as he wishes to be.

long story short: the first insemination doesn't take. carey ends up pregnant via her new boyfriend, but the romantic relationship between the two doesn't last. she gives birth to a healthy daughter, & her ex is really involved in her life. but they know they're not right for each other, so they are having fun dating other people (well, he's doing more dating than she is, but whatever). but eventually carey starts thinking about giving her child a sibling, & asks if her baby daddy would be interested in helping her out with that. he is indeed interested, a romance blossoms again, a healthy baby boy is born, & the two are married.

carey passes her sperm along to beth. beth married before she was thirty, but seven years in, her husband suddenly left her for his personal trainer (a woman). it's a contentious & acrimonious divorce complicated by the ex-husband's impending multi-millionaire-hood. once the dust settles, carey has $10 million in stock options.

she dates around for a while, takes classes, has fun, tries to put the divorce behind her. but she is approaching 40 & starts to hear the siren song of motherhood. one hobby she's really enjoying is mountaineering & ice climbing. on a mountaineering trip, she meets phil. they are interested in each other & start dating. one thing leads to another & beth turns up pregnant after their contraceptives fail. she decides to keep it. phil is pissed at first...but he comes around & throws himself into the idea of becoming a father & building a family with beth.

but beth's amnio reveals that the fetus has down sydrome. beth decides to terminate the pregnancy. quite a few goodreads readers who have rated this book poorly had serious problems with this. i do not. this is a very difficult & personal choice. having been pregnant myself, it's not something i would wish on my worst enemy if it wasn't something she wanted, & i can't even begin to imagine the anxiety & stress of knowingly bringing a special needs child into the world, not knowing how long you will live to care for the child (remember, these are late in life mothers), not knowing how serious the child's needs will be. i know the issue is complicated, & that healthy, "normal"-seeming babies do not always stay that way. but it's a fact that later in life mothers are at a somewhat elevated risk of chromosomal abnormalities, miscarriages, et al, & the fact that beth was faced with this choice...well, it's not something to judge her over, in my opinion.

beth goes through with an abortion. both she & phil are pretty devastated. but after a few months, they decide to try for another baby (after a rocky patch where phil decided he didn't want a baby after all), & their son gareth is born, happy & healthy.

beth passes her vials of sperm on to pam, a hopeless(ly naive) romantic. pam is accepted into a scientific journalism fellowship at MIT, & while there, meets some welsh dude whose name escapes me even though i just finished the book like ten minutes ago. he's married, but he & his wife have "an understanding," ie, an open marriage. the wife suffers from bipolar disorder, & welsh dude sticks around to basically take care of her. pam is way into him, & he's way into pam, but she insists that he end his marriage & start therapy before she'll consider a relationship with him.

in case i haven't mentioned already, all of these people live in boston. of course they do! where else, besides maybe california, would someone insist on therapy as a pre-condition to a first date?

some negative reviewers have also been upset that welsh dude is married. shit happens, okay? it doesn't sound like it was a great marriage. if dude was smart, he would have ended it a long time ago & stopped letting his wife use her mental illness to control him, but hey. he ended up with one of these ladies (this book is chock-a-block with crazy relationship dealbreakers, as far as i'm concerned; these ladies all have full-blown cases of baby rabies), so obviously he's not so smart. anyway, he agrees to pam's rules & things go on.

also, i have been divorced in massachusetts & it's kind of a crazy process. you have to fill out paperwork, wait for a court date, attend a court date, & then you have to wait for six months after that before you are considered legally divorced. so technically, i was still married for six months after my husband & i stopped communicating with one another. & you better believe i went on dates too. anyway.

pam tells welsh dude that she wants a baby & he kind of freaks. he says he just got done taking care of his ex-wife, he's not ready for a baby. but somehow she ends up pregnant. she takes six pregnancy tests in one morning to conform. which...are you kidding me? those things are like $10 a pop. way to literally piss money down the toilet.

when pam goes in for her chromosomal screening, she learns that the placenta is positive for trisomy 22, a really serious chromosomal abnormality. she is counseled to abort, & she does. the odds of her having a live birth, let alone a healthy child, were almost nil. she is destroyed, as is welsh dude. it really takes a toll on them personally, & their relationship. yet another reason why all the pro-life crazies condemning this book need to shut the fuck up. there are plenty of things to dislike about this book besides this, okay?

after a while, they pull themselves together. they get married. they travel. after a miscarriage & a bout of dengue fever, they conceive again & end up with a healthy daughter.

they pass the sperm on to their friend liz, but it doesn't work for her & she also fails to meet a man. sad trombone.

& that's pretty much the whole book! there's definitely a lot of crazy here, of the sort i see in my own friends suffering from baby rabies. you know, shit like taking pregnancy tests five days after having sex, just to see if you're pregnant. shit like buying an advanced at home ovulation predictor machine & learning for the first time that your cycle is actually NOT 28 days. there are other, cheaper, FREE ways to find that out. shit like having babies with random dudes you barely know just because you want a baby. this whole book is like an insane testimonial for how babies really do cement shaky relationships (please note: they don't; these ladies either lucked the fuck out or will be divorced within five years). i can't imagine that this book would really fill me with hope & positivity if it was poised on the cusp of 40 & suffering from baby fever. it seems like every bad thing that can happen to a later-in-life mama happens to one of these ladies. & i applaud their honesty & frankness, but damn. screw my big plan of having a baby by the time i'm 35. i'm having one by the time i'm 32! (okay, not really, because that's only ten months away.)

but probably the #1 thing i disliked about this book is that it was portrayed as being about three women who decided they wanted children come hell, high water, shady men, or single parenthood, & they took the initiative to make it happen. but in the end, all of them had babies with men they fell in love with & eventually married. i think they were going for a "sisterhood of the traveling donor sperm" type thing here, but it just ended up reinforcing the idea that, like, if you just "let go & let god," your dream man will find you & rescue you from spinsterhood & give you a dream baby. i just don't find this idea very affirming or aspirational. & i feel bad for liz, the one that was rejected by the magical sperm, who got nothing but a passing footnote for an episode in her life that was probably incredibly difficult & emotional. "sorry, liz. no man & no baby? you don't rate. this book is for women that MADE IT HAPPEN," the authors seem to say. it smacks me as more than a little smug.

[Carly Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

My main problem with this book is that all 3 women wrote in the same style and it was hard to distinguish one author's voice from another (perhaps this was due to them all working as journalists). I also think if I was ten years older and really wanted to have a baby, I would have related more to the characters and cared more about their journeys. The way the publisher presented the book was slightly deceiving; having the donor sperm was only a small part of the story and didn't directly lead to a great relationship for any of the women. Some of the personal details came across as Too Much Information (buying sex toys for Valentine's Day to use with her boyfriend, who was married at the time)and the women seemed too self-involved to be sympathetic. While the focus was on the happy endings (all of the women had late in life pregnancies and established happy loving partnerships with their children's fathers), the early terminations of two of the pregnancies and the turmoil of having children before a committed relationship had been established were included. Not at bad book, but not one to recommend either.

[Helen]

A nice story but somewhat unrealistic. Even though it's true, I can't imagine that a lot of other women can relate. These people seemed to have unlimited resources and luck. I also felt they were a bit spoiled. I want, I want, I want.... And they did EVERYTHING they knew to get it. Having sex with strangers, second trimester abortions. I also felt that they were a bit egotistical. One woman breaks up with a boyfriend because she finds that he has written that she is "kind of pretty". However, the same woman writes of her current mate that he is not handsome in the "conventional way". Isn't that the same thing? I'm anxious to discuss this one with my book group and see what everyone else thought of it. I'm feeling a bit jilted.

[Gaby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our generation of women have had more opportunities than our mothers. Women have spent more time in school and establishing our careers and waited longer to be married or start families. By the time many of us felt ready for that next stage, we faced a quickly shrinking window of time. In Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood, three successful women journalists Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones, and Pamela Ferdinand tell their stories. They’d each had terrible luck with men. Each of them wanted to have children and, in their late thirties, they were no longer willing to wait for the right man.

Former Boston bureau chief of the New York Times, Carey was ready to try a nontraditional path to motherhood. After much consideration, she decides to do it on her own and finds an anonymous sperm donor. The same day that vials arrive, she meets a man, falls in love, and gets pregnant the regular way. Carey offered the vials to her friend Beth who was recovering from a difficult divorce. Before Beth can use the vials, she meets someone during an ice-climbing trip -- and falls in love and also gets pregnant. Beth passes on the vials to their friend Pam, the eternal romantic. Suddenly, Pam’s luck changes too -- and she finds herself in love and a mother. Three Wishes is a true story of best friends who find that when they stop waiting for fairy-tale endings, their “happily ever afters” begins.

Three Wishes spoke to me. I loved that these women became friends in their late thirties, when it seems like we have our own set of friends and are unlikely to branch out. While the book tells their stories of love and motherhood, it's the friendships that engaged me, drew me in. I saw Three Wishes as a book that celebrates the varied and difficult journeys that we each go through.

ISBN-10: 0316079065 - Hardcover $24.99
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (April 6, 2010), 288 pages.
Review copy provided by the publisher.

[Carla Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had I heard about it any other way, I would've been skeptical of this book's premise. Three women decide, individually, that they're prepared to become mothers on their own. The first orders eight vials of sperm from a sperm bank, and quickly falls in love and gets pregnant the old-fashioned way. As they pass the vials between them, the other two women do the same. Unlikely? Perhaps. True story? Yep.

I heard an interview with the authors on their publisher's podcast, and quickly went home and requested the book from the library. Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones and Pamela Ferdinand are all journalists, and their award-winning skills show in this beautifully written memoir. They brought me close to tears several times. Though I don't expect to ever take such monumental steps toward becoming a mother, myself, the search for love and family is universal. As these friends share their heartaches and successes, their stories encouraged me.

[faith ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished Three Wishes. It is exactly the style of book I enjoy reading, an autobiography of a short period of a woman's life. However as I come to the end of it I'm really dissatisfied. The woman's stories have only slight variations and they all write in practically the same style. They all set out to become single mothers at around age 40.
However this is not a story about single motherhood. Through the ups and downs of making a baby with, at times, almost complete strangers. Through divorce, abortions, getting involved with a married man and "surprise" pregnancies this is not a story with a moral high-ground.
It is a very real life story of heart-break and hope through lonliness, miscarriages and late-in life finding happiness. However I don't recommend it. For anyone who has been through a similar set of circumstances I am sure that it is a comforting and enjoyable read but for me I am just thankful that I got married young and had my four children before I turned 30.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a single 30-something woman I have been thinking about marriage and children. Not having much luck in the dating world I have also thought of having a sperm donor. This book was a good read and well written, however I found it extremely unrealistic. If I knew purchasing sperm would guarantee me finding a partner I would have bought sperm years ago. Putting this aside the story of friendship, ups and downs of life, love, and loss was touching. I would be interested in reading this book again in ten years to see how my view might change.

[Cate · Rating 1 out of 5]

hated. wish I did not read.

spoiler: 2/3 of the women in this book terminate a pregnancy because of trisomy. (One down syndrome, one trisomy 22.) Not at all what I expected going into it -- the cover seems like a "three single women decide to have babies! how sweet!" The terminations are just part of the story, not the main focus, but it was unexpected. I don't like being blindsided like that. Obviously my own personal issue, but there you go.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well...I'm not 100% sure that as a 33 year old, single, and childless woman, with no chance of the above happening any time soon, this was the best choice of book for me to read. Although maybe it was. It was full of hope. It showed how these three women's lives intertwined and how each ultimately did get what they dreamed they wanted.

[Kara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Three female writers become friends in their late 30's, early 40's. They each decide to be a single mother because time is running out on them. Each is self-centered in her own special way.

Also, at times, this book starts to seem like a paid advertisement for Clearblue Fertility Monitor. Lots of very specific name dropping for this fertility monitor.

[Isabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fascinating book. At times I found it hard to believe it is a true story: too many really good men available - yet this is America - the fact that the three women stories are so similar... - people being so wealthy... yet, it is an interesting book that reflects on relationship with their complexities, and how times have changed... For me too the incredible life of America with all its testings and science even behind having babies...
I wish I could read the same story but written from the men's perspective too....

[Carol Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure why I read this book, as a 71-year-old, 48 years married, living not in the urban East of the US, but in the somewhat remote northwest of British Columbia--not much in common with these 30 and 40-somethings and their privileged lifestyles. Guess I was just curious. Glad for them that they all got what they wanted in the end--a man and a baby. Yet somehow it all seemed a little shallow, or hollow. And was the baby just another acquisition, another achievement? By the end of the book I still wasn't sure.

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I knew this was the account of the lives of the individuals, I found the content of the book disheartening. I read the book to gain a greater knowledge of why modern women make decisions outside of the parameters which God has given us. It did give me some insights into the way women who are caught up in our current culture think.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this at an old book sale........really really good. True - to how women's friendships are, the struggles of women who choose to be mothers later in life. A fascinating tale of 3 women who are very different but are very close friends. A quick read but a lifetime book for how the choices make us, rather than our making the choices. Loved it.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

*** 3.5 out of 5 stars***

The title and subtitle of this book explains largely what this book is about, but to elaborate just a bit, it is a memoir co written by three friends who have found themselves at the same cross road of life and how they proceed to make at least one of their wishes come true---to be a mother and everything else that happens to them during their journey to motherhood. Carey, Beth and Pam are all successful journalists, each with a string of failed relationships behind them and now in their late thirties, feel very strongly about pursuing motherhood as a single parent. Carey is the first to start on the road to motherhood by purchasing eight vials of sperm from an anonymous sperm donor. But just as Carey prepares for insemination, she meets someone and is soon pregnant. The vials then get passed to Beth who has finally put a difficult divorce behind her, but she, too, meets a man who might just be the one and also gets pregnant. Finally the vials get passed to Pam, the romantic of the three women who is always on the lookout for true love, but is not willing to let the chance at motherhood pass her by before she's too old to conceive. Happily, she, too, finds love in the nick of time. This is a very simplistic overview of what these three women go through in their unconventional pursuit of motherhood. They experience uncertainties in their relationships, challenges with balancing their jobs with their pursuit of motherhood, as well as heart wrenching losses and deep felt sorrow that will be a part of them forever, but in the end this memoir tells the story of how three women found true love and motherhood perhaps later than most women, and maybe in a different order, but not at all too late to live "happily ever after."

The chapters rotate between narrations from Carey, Beth and Pam pretty much in chronological order as they each pursue their ultimate goal of becoming a mother. They share pertinent anecdotes about their careers, living arrangements, their extended families and of course their mutual friendships. They also share their past relationship failures, the experiences and challenges of their current relationships, terrible losses and tremendous joys that make the journey to love and parenthood worth every emotional scar we ever bear.

The writing in this memoir flows very easily, and Carey, Beth and Pam include a lot of conversations they've had with friends, family, lovers and other significant people in their lives, and that dialogue helps the book read like a story and not just a string of events, the latter of which could easily lead to boredom with a memoir. While reading the first few chapters, I admit that I felt quite removed from the women's situations, largely because my life path was so different and I couldn't quite relate to being 40-ish years old, a wealthy career woman, single with no love interests on the horizon and no child of my own in my heart. However, the more chapters I read in this memoir, the more absorbed I became in these woman's lives, the more I empathized with their situations and the more I grasped onto the hope that they would not only become mothers, but also find permanent love in a healthy marriage.

One of "issues" that I have with this book --and it's not even really an issue, but more of an observation-- is that Carey, Beth and Pam were all financially well off and could easily afford to pursue the medical avenues of getting pregnant on their own as well as the child care expenses after the baby's arrival. It just doesn't seem realistic that there is a large demographic of 40-ish women out there who can afford such lifestyles and the freedom to pursue single motherhood like these women did.

Also, Carey, Beth and Pam's stories were so similar and their narration voices so similar that at times I had a difficult time keeping track of whose story I was reading and I found myself flipping around a few pages to jog my memory.

Ultimately, I found Three Wishes to be a thought provoking and very personal look into the lives of these three modern women who were so determined to have children of their own. They survived many difficult situations, made life altering decisions and learned to live with those decisions, and above all they were very lucky to have had their three wishes come true.

In closing, I'd like to end my review with my favorite quote from the memoir. It is a quote from Pam, the final recipient of the donor vials around the time she decides with certainty to pursue having a child on her own. I think this passage captures the essence of what each of these three women feel and why they were so incredibly determined to become mothers. I think I would have felt the same if I were in their place.

"Finally, at thirty-seven years old, I confronted myself. I considered what I could not live without and immediately knew it was a child. That for me, life would have a far lesser purpose if I could not be a mother. I once read that the ancient Egyptians described childless women as "mothers of the missing ones," and that imagery wrenched me to the core. I could almost feel an ache in my bones for the child who would be missing to me." --Pam [p. 108]

[Meenakshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost unbelievable unless you personally know the authors, which I do 😊

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Local!

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A genuine journey of women supporting each other.

[Kim Olsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an interesting and uplifting story, almost hard to believe it's true. Each woman shares their incredibly personal experience in details that aren't often shared.

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a true story about three friends, Carey, Beth and Pam who are nearing the age of 40 and want to become mothers. Each chapter is written by one of the women and the chapters go back and forth between the stories they share, together and separately.

The main connecting piece with these three friends is their desire to become mothers even though they are single. They all make decisions at different times that they will go the sperm donor route. Each one ends up getting pregnant by a different means and then decides to pass on the sperm donation to another one of the friends who is desiring to become a mom. Each woman finds love and a child.

Some of the stories that were shared were very raw. Everything from being blind-sided from a divorce to miscarriages hitting these women as they pursue their motherhood dreams. Each woman finds support in wonderful ways through their friendships.

It was an interesting true story but one that I had a hard time connecting with on some levels. First being, they are East coast women who are able to jet set off to all kinds of vacations and take off on outdoor adventures. I can't connect with that as I don't have the means to just get away as they did, a lot. I also wanted to feel more of the emotions they went through in the process of becoming mothers and the heartache they had as they hit so many stumbling blocks but the way it was written left out some of that emotion for me.

Favorite Quotes from the Book:
But the moral I take from this story is: So what? Your institution owes you nothing. It is not your family. It doe not care if you help create humanity's next generation; in fact, it might well prefer you didn't. Beyond a brief maternity leave, it has no obligation to support you, In fact, you become less valuable if your new responsibilities limit your ability to go anywhere at any time. As a new mother, I asked for an accommodation. Let me be more honest: I hoped for kindness. But institutions, of course, are not about kindness, though individual managers may try.

We learn from loving our children that none of them is perfect, but that they are the wellsprings of the deepest, truest love-and it is such a short jump to the fact that we all are children, and all worthy of love even in the depths of our imperfection.

Maintaining friendship requires work, but the very best kind. There are so many things we give each other: laughter, companionship, unyielding support, emergency childcare, prescription drugs, advice, our hearts, in ways we never give to men.

Carey described how her family is like a closed electrical circuit. I know the feeling. My own power dims when something is wrong with Emma or Mark - a runny nose, a disappointment at work - and shines brighter in their moments of joy - a new word or a beautiful photograph.

[bibanon1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher.


THREE WISHES appealed to me right off the bat because it is the story of three women and their search for love and motherhood in their forties. You often hear people say pithy things like "40 is the new 30" but it is nice to read a book about real women in their quest to "have it all" and the sometime bumpy path that it took to get there.


THREE WISHES follows the lives of three journalists who have achieved their career goals and are now hearing the ticking of their biological clocks. Carey Goldberg makes the first move. Unwilling to wait any longer for Mr. Right to come along, she begins the process of in vitro with some donor sperm. In an unexpected twist of fate, she becomes pregnant the old-fashioned way. Carey passes the sperm on to her friend Beth who has also decided to delve into single motherhood in her early 40's. Soon after, Beth meets someone and becomes pregnant without even trying. Beth passes the donor sperm on to Pam who also finds love and motherhood without using it.


Although the idea of this seemingly magical sperm is amusing, the best part of the book is the struggles that these women go through to achieve their dreams. Motherhood does not come easily. There are tragic losses involved in several cases. And love doesn't arrive looking like the fairy-tale Prince Charming. The women have to kiss a lot of frogs. They struggle out what they want and to avoid compromise in the face of a biological ticking clock. The book is also about women supporting one another as each individual boldy marches towards single motherhood.


Even though I am married and have a child before age 35, I found this book to be really moving and engaging. More and more women are waiting to have children and then are faced with daunting infertility issues. Sometimes, a pregnancy can go horribly wrong and difficult decisions must be made. Add to this the difficulty of finding a partner as one gets older and you can truly see the difficult odds these women faced. The book remains hopeful and funny to the very end.


BOTTOM LINE: Recommended. Especially for women in their late 30s and early 40s who despair of ever achieving love and motherhood. The greatest part of this book is that none of three women ever compromised in order to achieve their dreams. It's nice to see that.

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an entertaining, but emotionally-laden book about three women's lives. The three stories are separate, connected by their friendship. It's a fairly quick read, although I read it in short spurts throughout a week's time. I borrowed this ebook from my library to read while on the road.

I have the strangest coincidences while reading. I often mention it here, but it never ceases to amaze me. I just finished reading the book Relax - You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left: Using the power of humor to overcome stress in your life and work and I noted the poem by Emily Dickinson as worth mentioning in my review on Goodreads. But then, after I finished that book, I started reading this one, and I discovered the exact same poem here on p. 69. Very odd. Here is the poem:

"Hope is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all-"

Overall, I thought the tales were compelling and well-written. It seemed a bit too confessional at times, but perhaps that's just a symptom of our Facebook society, where everybody shares too much. Still, I am sure that women who are in similar situations will feel comforted by their experiences. I had a different experience from them, married at an early age and a mother in my early thirties, but I still appreciated their candor and sincerity. I also loved that they relied on each other for support during good times and bad. It's a good homage to the strength of female friendship.

interesting quote:

"But he wasn't perfect; he was a registered Republican." (p. 148)

"I did not know, I could not understand in advance, that my life would fill with richness - and change, and change, and change again, as babies grow into children, as marriage wore off its rough edges, as the years marched forward not for me alone, but for all of us together." (pp. 268-269)

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book from Goodreads and am surprised by how much I liked it, since it's not the kind of thing I usually pick up, a true story of three friends in their quest for happiness.

Carey, Beth, and Pam are single women approaching 40 who decide, separately, that they're tired of searching for a husband to start a family. Carey, wanting a baby with or without a husband, goes to a sperm bank, but right after her vials arrive, she meets a man and starts a family with him. She passes the vials to Beth, whose own life then follows suit; with Beth no longer needing the vials, she gives them to Pam, who ends up not needing them either.

The book reads like a love story to their husbands, their children, and their lives. I especially liked a part near the end where Beth writes, ...the world is full of people I want to meet. They details their frustrations at how their personal lives turn out at times and how things seemed to fall into place (maybe not immediately, but eventually) when they stopped trying to force life to be the way they'd hoped, finding love and new friendships along the way.

The story itself was simple and one that I'm sure a lot of older moms could relate to, but it's the writing that really sells the tale. All three women are excellent writers (which, I suppose, is to be expected, since they all are/were journalists), and they tell their stories in a way that draws you in and makes you root for them to have their dreams fulfilled. It's definitely a happy story (with sadness along the way) that leaves you feeling optimistic. Very well done.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

From My blog...[return][return][return]Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones, and Pamela Ferdinand have compiled an intriguing look into their lives, describing at times in very vivid detail the good along with the bad in Three Wishes. I typically am rather fond of memoirs and while Three Wishes was an interesting read, I had a difficult time relating to the women as individuals. The book is told in alternating voices yet the writing was exceedingly similar making it difficult for me to separate the women. Granted all three of the women lead different lives each struggles with approaching 40 years old, the desire to have children, and each is looking for a loving relationship. My biggest obstacle with this book is probably my inability to relate to these women, possibly because I am older, married and my children are no longer young, so the struggles Carey, Beth, and Pam write about, such as online dating, sperm banks, divorce, therapy, and pregnancy termination are completely foreign to my world, the last topic actually has given me nightmares. I truly wish I enjoyed this book more. With that stated, I do think single women in their twenties and thirties will be able to relate well with these three women and the struggles they face having full-time careers, finding Mr. Right and their respective desires to have children. I do believe Three Wishes would make an excellent choice for a discussion group considering all the choices and life changes that occur throughout the book.

[Leonie Macdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book - it is an almost unbelievable true story - except you'd never make up anything like this so it must be true! The women have led a completely different life to me and their choices, their dilemmas and their challenges are not ones I have had to face but they share their stories and experiences with candour and I was drawn into their lives.


I would not recommend reading this book if you are hoping to conceive soon or are pregnant as it contains experiences and images of pregnancy, miscarriage and labour that may be very distressing (I thought they were) and that will not reassure you or give you a healthy and balanced view of what to expect or what is likely to happen - even for women who are conceiving after 35 or 40. If it had been a fiction book I would have been unhappy about the representation of pregnancy risks, abortion, labour and birth - but the stories are true so it is simply saddening that this is the way it was for them. I found it confronting, upsetting and self-defining when they each went through amnio and other genetic testing and I realised I would not make the same choices as they did.


My only other issue was telling the difference between each of the voices as sometimes they seemed very similar and the women's stories were so intertwined and similar in places that I did get a little muddled every now and then. Or maybe that was just from reading with many interruptions of small children.

[Kelley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book held my attention, but I found it hard to relate to these women. I live in a bubble, I suppose, of people who share my views of life and family. No matter what else the authors had to say, I can't seem to get past the pro-choice message. After aborting their first baby due to a down's diagnosis (absolutely heart breaking to read about--I was SO angry), and upon testing during a second pregnancy, one of the authors said, "We didn't want to know the gender, same as with the first pregnancy, because to us, gender was identity, and that was too scary." Maybe the guilt would be too much if they were faced with the reality that she was carrying a baby and not just a mass of cells. I couldn't help but think that abortion is one of the most selfish decisions anyone can make. And selfish doesn't even begin to describe it as far as I'm concerned. To me, that defines this book. I can't see beyond it to recommend this as "good" reading material.

[Tori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't have chosen to read this book, but was pleasantly surprised. This is the true story of three single women in their late thirties, who have individually decided that they want to have a child - with or without a husband. They are all professionals in journalism, I believe, and one of them buys vials of sperm from Donor 8282. Each of the women writes a chapter, so the reader goes back and forth between three kind of interconnecting stories. (that part was kind of confusing for me - I kept getting the women mixed up).
I enjoyed the thoughtfulness of their writing. It really is a shame when some women want a child so badly - and others in the world have children that they do not want and really aren't prepared to raise.
I can't imagine, though, how many intimate details of their lives that these women share - parts of it were a bit off-putting to me. Overall, though, the book was fascinating.

[Clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I was initially worried i would not be able to relate to these three women and the way life has led them to decide to be single mothers by choice. However, I found the book to be mostly about the universal fears, concerns and sometimes tragedies that go hand in hand with the decision to become a parent. I also deeply enjoyed to read about the way all three women seemed to find more balance, peace, and happiness through their decisions to become mothers. I am usually not a sucker for happy endings but I found the reflections in the last chapters really convincing and plausible. The book also made me consider again how the concept of universal design applies to so many areas of life. In this case, the medical solutions designed for infertile couples seem to bring happiness to a group of people they were not originally designed for. this book is definitely a good read.

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finding and keeping love isn't quite as easy as it looks. This is true for Carey, Beth and Pam want to get pregnant but they are missing one important piece of the puzzle, a male. Carey decided that she wasn't going to let this stand in her way - she checked out a sperm bank. Before she was actually able to impregnate herself, she ended up falling head-over-heels with a man who loves her in return. She tells Beth to use the vials but the same thing happened for her. She then passed the vials to Pam and she found a man and became pregnant. Life throws different obstacles in your way and what matters is what you do with them.

I cannot believe that this is a true story. This is so much like a fairy tale! Friendship and love go hand-in-hand. This is an inspiring story that touches the readers soul.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this in a giveaway and knew only the title and that the person giving it away enjoyed it. When I read the flap after it arrived, I was a little disturbed by the lucky sperm thing, but gave it a chance anway.

I HATED, HATED, HATED this awful book. First of all, all three women are so self-involved and each one has an excruciatingly annoying trait. Also, Sprax? Really? Someone's name? The part that just totally ended the book for me was when one of the women decided to abort her baby, basically crushing him to death on the way out, and then complained about how agonizing it was to hear the woman in the room next to her having her baby. This might not bother someone pro-choice, but as a pro-lifer, I was so disgusted and devoid of any sympathy. Never want to read this drivel again.