Baby, It's You

When Anne Makepeace "can't get pregnant the fun way," she embarks on a tumultuous journey through the maze of contemporary fertility science.

Series
POV
Premiere Date
June 2, 1998
Length
60 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    1998 Chicago International Film Festival-Gold Plaque
  • Nominated laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    1998 South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW)-Runner-up, Documentary Feature
    • Producer

    Anne Makepeace

    Anne Makepeace has been a writer, producer, and director of award-winning independent films for more than 20 years. After years of working in the narrative feature world, Makepeace made her first documentary, Baby, It’s You, in 1998. An intimate personal film that explores the world of fertility intervention through the lens of her own experiences, Baby It’s You… Show more premiered at Sundance 1998, was the lead show on POV’s 1998 season, and was also screened as part of the Whitney Biennial 2000. Her films include We Still Live Here - Âs Nutayuneân, I.M. Pei: Building China Modern, Rain in a Dry Land for POV, Eleanor Roosevelt: Close to Home, and Coming to Light. Makepeace also wrote the screenplay for the successful Thousand Pieces of Gold, and the American Experience documentary Ishi, the Last Yahi. In addition to many festivals, her films have been screened at the Whitney Biennial, the Smithsonian, the Musée de l’Homme, the Museum of the American Indian, and many other museums, schools, colleges, and movie theaters around the country. Her work has been funded by the Pulitzer Foundation, the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ITVS, the NEA, the NEH, the Ford Foundation, American Masters, Showtime Networks Inc., HBO, A&E, and the American Film Institute. Show less

    Other ITVS Films
    I.M. Pei: Building China Modern
    Rain in a Dry Land
    We Still Live Here - Âs Nutayuneân

    We fund untold stories for public media.

    Learn more about funding opportunities with ITVS.

    MORE INFO

    The Film

    "I'm in my 40s, so it's really hard to get pregnant the fun way," explains award-winning filmmaker Anne Makepeace at the start of Baby, It’s You, an unflinchingly intimate account of the tumultuous year she and her husband, Peter Behrens, spent undergoing modern fertility procedures. Poignant, thoughtful, and often amusing, the film examines how the couple's efforts affected not only their marriage, but their family relationships past and present.

    Chronicling the couple's foray into the "brave new science" of reproductive technology, Baby, It’s You follows Makepeace and Behrens from their most intimate moments to tense scenes in the operating room. But their roller-coaster ride through the labyrinth of the fertility maze is only part of the story. With a cast that includes the couple's unconventional baby-boomer siblings, Baby, It’s You also paints an absorbing portrait of a generation that is creating families in ways their parents would never have dreamt.

    Raised in a conservative family in the early 1950's, Makepeace was taught never to discuss sexual or emotional matters. In tense and touching conversations with her elderly New England relatives, she reveals a painful 30-year-old confession that has made motherhood unthinkable for her—until now. "I had to go into a dark and terrifying personal place to confront my demons and uncover a secret I held for a very long time," says Makepeace. "Only after that did I feel I could be a good mother."

    By the film's end, many choices are made, and life has changed for everyone involved: a sudden death is mourned; a marriage is celebrated; and new family bonds are forged. As more people turn to modern reproductive technology to enable them to have children, Baby, It’s You tackles the timely issues of infertility with candor and grace and offers a fresh, touching exploration of new definitions of family in the 90's.

    Topics