The Southampton Press
October 23, 2003

Miracle of Life in Graphic Detail
Book lifts pregnancy’s veil of mystery
By Hilary J. Larson

If you are the delicate flower type, then Frankly Pregnant—the website and the soon-to-be-published (with any luck) book—is not for you.

"Be forewarned, my methods can sometimes be brutally blunt and explicit (not for the dainty mannered gal)," writes Stacy Quarty, a Water Mill mother of two, in the manuscript for Frankly Pregnant. "If you share my mentality and really enjoy a good "Ewwwww! Really?" among girlfriends, then read on!

"I will tell you when I wet my pants in public, what the contents of my underwear are and the story of my third nipple. Yup, third nipple."

These and other graphic details make up the majority of Ms. Quarty’s new book, written in weekly diary format and appropriately subtitled The Reality Journal of Pregnancy. The first-time author, a graphic designer by trade, does not pretend to be a medical expert. Instead, she portrays herself as the intimate and candid girlfriend every pregnant woman wishes she had, the voice of female experience who has been through it all—twice—and is willing to share the gory details.

Ms. Quarty says she came up with the idea for Frankly Pregnant during her first pregnancy in the late 1990s, when she found the available information incomplete. Doctors, family members and popular guides like What To Expect When You’re Expecting offered comprehensive medical information, she says, but omitted some of the more personal, embarrassing and sometimes hilarious aspects of pregnancy.

"I never found a book that told me everything I wanted to know," Ms. Quarty, 37, explained during an interview at her Southampton office. "Some things"—the aforementioned gory details among them—"are alarming because you aren't expecting them."

When she became pregnant for the second time, in 2001, Ms. Quarty began keeping a detailed weekly diary, beginning each entry with a list of symptoms and moving on to explore her own and others’ mental, emotional and physical states. She finished the manuscript last year, began sending out query letters and soon realized that getting a publisher interested would be harder than she had thought.

So she created franklypregnant.com, a website that offers sample chapters and a chance to ask questions and receive answers regarding any aspect of pregnancy. The website receives nearly 3,000 hits a day, Ms. Quarty said, and she is using this statistic as evidence that a market exists for the corresponding book.

"Not only have I extensively interviewed every one of my girlfriends who’s ever had a child, but my voice is very friendly, open and honest," said Ms. Quarty, a slim, attractive blonde. "I discuss the most embarrassing things that nobody else wants to bring up."

Ms. Quarty compares her manuscript to The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy, a popular guide that has a similar informal and humorous tone. But although she enjoyed reading that book, she is convinced that her own effort offers more exhaustive research that readers crave.

"The market for pregnancy is really hot right now," she explained, citing What to Expect’s 150 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list as evidence. "And when you’re pregnant, you’re really obsessed with getting all the information you can find."

Ms. Quarty, who says she had been searching for a book topic when pregnancy became the obvious choice, has not been daunted by the difficulty of getting published. She regards the website as market research and spends her days fielding e-mail questions, soliciting celebrity endorsements and writing book query letters.

Her graphic design business has waned in the slack economy, so Ms. Quarty, a Southampton College graduate, has focused on being a writer. She joined a writers’ group, is hunting for an agent and hired an independent editor to review her manuscript. ("I have little comma problems," Ms. Quarty confessed.) She has even begun work on another non-fiction book, although she declined to discuss the topic.

And she seems willing to go to great lengths to capture readers’ attention. Of her decision to try to for a vaginal delivery after having previously undergone a Caesarean section, Ms. Quarty writes: "When the doctor was once again urging me to get the C-section, I considered, just for a moment, telling him that another C would be anti-climactic for my book. Did he really want to be the cause of my publishing downfall?"

Although the Quartys had planned to stop having children after the births of daughters Karmen, now 4, and Devon, 1, Ms. Quarty said she might even risk her enviously trim figure for a third child. "If it'll help our book tour, I’ll have another one," she said, only half in jest.

In her fantasy, Frankly Pregnant is snapped up by an agent, becomes fabulously successful and allows her husband to retire and become a golf pro. "I hope it’s like the Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy—a gift that girlfriends give each other when they’re pregnant," Ms. Quarty said dreamily. "And then I’d like to do a novel someday."

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