How ‘Delicate Condition’ Upends the Tropes of the Pregnancy Thriller

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I’m not sure what the lowest point in my “fertility journey” has been. Was it the time I bought herbal gummies from Target that the garish pink label claimed had been prayed over? Was it all the increasingly personal, desperate posts I read through in the forum of my fertility app — which is apparently being investigated by the FTC? Or was it during one of the several horror movies about motherhood I’ve recently watched in which I found myself jealously musing, “Who cares if I give birth to a demon child? I’d love it anyway!” Because there have been a lot of horror movies about having babies these days, and, for some reason, their makers think we’re all more scared of creepy children than our own bodies.

When I picked up Delicate Condition (Sourcebooks Landmark, August 2023) by Danielle Valentine — the inspiration for the next season of American Horror Story — I was honestly pretty wary. It was described as a feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby centering around an actress on the edge of 40 going through IVF while increasingly becoming wary that someone is out to stop her from conceiving. The paranoia only gets worse after she finally gets pregnant — despite an apparent miscarriage — and gets the feeling that her baby is somehow… wrong.

That description gave me pause. Probably because as a woman on the brink of 39 who wouldn’t mind having a baby I found myself less interested in the various mysteries the book promised and more jealous that a fictional character could afford IVF. Batty, I know, but you go into a psychosis when you’re trying without success to do something you’ve always assumed would be easy. So easy that you spent most of your life trying to avoid it. Sure, I would have liked to have gotten married and started trying for a family years ago, but you never know when you’re going to find your person. I just happened to find mine at 32 and get married at 34. Then I had the audacity to want to secure financial stability — and maybe enjoy marriage for a while — before inviting a tiny tyrant into our home. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that conceiving isn’t all that easy; I have plenty of friends who have struggled. Still, no only really tells you how hard it is to do something that your body was essentially made to do. I mean, people get accidentally pregnant all the time on TV shows! It was kind of a thing when I was growing up, a mechanism to scare girls into avoiding sex, which always led to a baby, which then led to your life being “ruined.” Never mind that we’re never told the mechanics of how a baby is actually made. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I certainly didn’t understands the ins and outs of ovulation before I started tracking mine. And according to my “fertility friends” on that FTC-challenged app, I’m not alone. People are asking some seriously weird things on there, guys. 

And I get it! For some reason, women’s bodies are shrouded in mystery — despite the fact that the Supreme Court has deemed it necessary to regulate them. From what’s safe to eat, drink, and do during pregnancy to why certain people struggle to conceive, it’s all kind of just one big question mark. And we’re expected to just operate under that haze, decanting pints of blood — and money — in doctors’ offices under the spectre of cutesy signs emblazoned with words like “Hope” and “Dream.” And, in the end, a not insubstantial number of couples struggling to have a child are given the oh-so-helpful diagnosis of “unexplained fertility.” Now that’s a horror movie title. And that’s not even getting into how expensive all this is – not only the efforts to have a child but the actual child itself. Daycare is also a good horror movie title.

Despite my misgivings, though, I ended up cracking open Delicate Condition. After all, I’m a fan of both Valentine’s books and AHS. Imagine my surprise when I found myself reading not just a trussed-up reimagining of Mia Farrow’s swan song, but looking into a mirror. Yes, the book’s protagonist Anna Alcott can afford IVF, and, yes, she finds herself doing and eating some very strange things (I don’t want to spoil too much here) that suggest her baby might be a little off. But she also finds herself dealing with just as many mysteries as I have. There’s the frustration with medical professionals who seem completely unable to give you any answers without poking and prodding and doing increasingly invasive tests that seem to only drain your bank account — and your hope. There’s why it’s apparently OK to chide and shame women for waiting to have a child until they’re ready, even if that’s later in life. And there’s just your own body in general, which women are raised to hate and revile until it becomes a vessel for another human.

As I neared the end of the book and inevitable happened — the baby comes and she’s not exactly not evil — I found myself, again, worried it’d end with that old cliché. The one that’s frustrated me during my lowest moments: that this woman had the audacity to want a child against all odds, and, for that, she’d be punished by birthing Lucifer. Thankfully, though, Valentine is smarter than that. The baby comes and there’s something different about her, sure — but Alcott is no spiraling Rosemary, unaware of what she’s birthed and ruled by those around her. Her eyes are open. Maybe because she’s just a great writer, or because she’s had a child herself, Valentine understands that the horror isn’t in the tangible, but in the unknowing. And that’s more terrifying that any demon baby I’ve ever seen on screen.

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