I'd been wanting to read this for some time, but never got around to it. I'm not sure that there was a right "time" for me to read this, but I think it may have given me (more) anxiety if I read it while I was pregnant. Yet, perhaps its truths would have prepared me more. It's an honest book about becoming a mother; I have not read a lot like this. It's hilarious, because you have to laugh when your mind and body are in that special time of post-partum crisis. It's a difficult book to recommend because there are just so many opinions and sensitivities surrounding birth and child rearing, but that's part of what the novel attempts to demystify. The main character is not one that everyone will like, but after months of reading pregnancy/motherhood non-fiction/advice books and blogs, this is all I wanted. Someone to tell it straight without all the pretense. She *gets it*.

She also gets female friendships. I was reminded of so many of my own. The women who kind of disappear when you get married or have children not because you don't make time for them but because they think you are too happy for them (as if getting married or having kids means happiness, oyyyy). The necessity of having women around who know what you're going through in birth and after birth. Who understand and can help when everything is very isolated.

I don't know where I'm going with this review. I loved this book, I don't think everyone will, but it's glorious in it's brutal, forthright language. I highlighted practically the entire thing.