Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family

Waiting for Birdy is really very funny, and an easy and fast read.

My current situation overlaps quite a bit with that of the author during the period covered in the book (I'm a parenting/birth blogger currently pregnant with my second child, parenting a very verbal little boy, doing many of the same unconventional parenting things, married to someone I like a lot, etc.)--and yet I don't identify with her at all. She's just so worried. Her dark thoughts make my dark thoughts look like bunnies skipping across a field of daisies; I've been blessed since my child's birth with the firm assumption that he's just fine, and I assume we'll be fine once there's another person in our family, too. But this unexpected distance didn't make the book show more frustrating or unpleasant for me.

I do have a hard time with Newman's insistence that it's silly and strange for a woman to care whether she gives birth vaginally or via cesarean section, an insistence she repeats a couple times in the book. It's especially tricky given how utterly terrible her automatic-repeat-c-section sounds: the OB who guilt trips her about scheduling a c-section despite the fact that the practice told her she wouldn't be allowed a VBAC; the carelessly mixed-up lab appointment; the consent form that sounds to her like 'I will probably die on the table'; the wildly insensitive anesthesiologist; everybody's apparent lack of regard for Newman's fear and crying; the unsettling image of Newman lying alone on a hospital bed, cut open and drugged, while family and friends ignore her and party around the new baby in her hospital room; the physical recovery itself. She describes these situations pretty happily, but they sound really terrible to me. show less

Hi-LAR-ious! I don't often laugh out loud when reading, but this book had me chuckling and giggling at every turn.

I knew this was going to be my kind of book when I got to this part on page 11:

"I once sat up late with a friend, enjoying a shot or two of Jagermeister and imagining a special line of Hallmark cards called 'Womanly Thoughts' or, maybe, 'Gynecological Moments.' These would be designed around moody little watercolors of women with their feet in stirrups, women skulking around ovulation kits at the supermarket, and greetings like 'Sorry to hear about your ovarian cyst. / If I had one, I'd be really pissed.'"

The author tells it like it is, and no topic is taboo. While on the whole it's a very funny account of her life raising show more a toddler while being pregnant, the author also addresses more serious issues. For example, she talks about losing her patience and then temper with her son Ben and how she feels horrible afterward.

My favorite take-away from the book is that it reminds you to try to live in the moment even when that moment seems unbearable. The author's mantra is "This, Now." I find myself reciting that mantra when I'm bouncing my 8-month-old daughter on the exercise ball for the third time after trying to put her down for a nap unsuccessfully two times already. Because one day, she's not going to need me to help her fall asleep, and I'm sure I'm going to miss these days looking back.

The only part I didn't love about this book was frequent assurances from the author that she wasn't kidding before she shared a particularly funny or outrageous tidbit. When someone is constantly saying that they're not kidding, it makes me wonder if all the other things they're saying but not prefacing with "I'm not kidding" are true or not.

So I could have done without that quirk, but I still loved, loved, LOVED this book! show less

Newman writes about her growing family with both a sense of humor and a sense of wonder--a refreshing balance that not all mommy writers are able to achieve. I'd recommend this book to any mom, expectant or otherwise.