Eckler, Rebecca

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ECKLER, Rebecca

PERSONAL: Engaged to Stephen Chetner (a lawyer); children: one.

ADDRESSES: Office—National Post, 300-1450 Don Mills Rd., Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3R5, Canada. Agent—Bukowski Agency, 14 Prince Arthur Ave., Ste. 202, Toronto, Ontario M5R 1A9, Canada.

CAREER: Writer and journalist. Calgary Herald, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, former entertainment reporter; Modern Manners (television show), former host; Pamela Wallin Live, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, former producer; Global television, reporter; National Post, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, columnist and feature writer.

WRITINGS:

Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-Be (memoir), Villard (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to Elle, Fashion, Lifestyles, Canadian House and Home, Mademoiselle, and New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS: Journalist Rebecca Eckler was already writing about her personal life in a column for Canada's National Post newspaper when she was confronted with an unexpected pregnancy in 2003, so few were surprised when the pregnancy became fodder for her writing as well. Her readers eagerly followed along, with hundreds sending her congratulations via e-mail after the National Post ran the column in which she announced the pregnancy. Eckler later reworked her columns from these nine months into a memoir titled Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-Be. The story begins the morning after Eckler and her fiancée's engagement party. (Throughout Knocked Up and Eckler's columns for the National Post, her fiancée is referred to simply as "The Fiancée"; in real life, he is Stephen Chetner, a Calgary-based lawyer.) Eckler is convinced that she has gotten pregnant the night before, and a few weeks later she takes four pregnancy tests just to be sure. At first Eckler dreads the changes pregnancy and motherhood will bring to her carefree, partying lifestyle and to her previously petite body—she weighs one hundred pounds the night of her engagement party, she informs her readers, and 140 when she finally gives birth. Does she really have to give up alcohol, cigarettes, tuna sashimi, designer clothes, partying with her girlfriends, and hip Toronto for a healthy diet, sack-like maternity dresses, early evenings, and provincial Calgary?

Even the titles of Eckler's chapters convey her dread: the book's three sections, divided by trimester, are "The Longest Three Months of My Life," "The Fat Months," and "The Even Fatter Months." In the end, as Eckler reports, she reaches compromises and comes to terms with the changes in her life. She cuts back on the drinking and smoking but does not quit entirely, begins drinking cranberry juice when going out with her friends, and finds McDonald's the answer to her cravings. She also, finally, moves to Calgary to be with The Fiancée. "Sometimes this mommy memoir feels like a humorous crash course in maturity," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor, and Booklist reviewer Beth Leistensnider called the book "a fast, light read that will either entertain or infuriate readers interested in pregnancy and child rearing." Others, however, were more charitable toward's Eckler and her dilemmas. "There's something sweet in Eckler's ability to skewer and mock not only those around her but also herself," Anne Glusker commented in the Washington Post Book World, and "something touching about her innocent (doomed?) determination to remain 'herself' while becoming a mother." A Kirkus Reviews contributor also praised the book, declaring that Eckler's "frankness, quirky style and light touch are a winning combination."