Beth Newell - There’s No Manual: Honest and Gory Wisdom about Having a Baby

New moms and pregnant women are bombarded with unsolicited advice from every direction. We hear it from our family, friends, coworkers, the internet, and that unhappy-looking woman in our apartment building who keeps telling us to put a hat on the baby before he catches a cold. In August. With so much conflicting advice, its hard to know who to listen to. Heres our advice: fuck advice.

Theres no real manual for motherhoodexcept this one.

Other books will tell you how to make your ascent into motherhood a streamlined, predictable process, of nap time, sleep training, and feeding schedules. Not only is it impossible to live up to all that advice, but surrounding ourselves with a series of boxes to check gives women an entirely misleading idea of whats in store for them. The reality of bringing life into the world involves exhaustion, pain, tears, and so much milk, spilled, splattered, and spewed all over everything you own. And there are moments when youre awake in the middle of the nighttiredly nursing your baby while you google photos of newborn rashthat you feel totally helpless and alone, in spite of all your preparation and research.

But you also get to be a literal goddess, capable of creating human life, which is pretty cool. No one talks much about that part either.

This having-a-baby thing is hard. And not in the ha ha, diapers are really stinky, oh boy, I am not ready to be a father way youve seen portrayed in the movies. Like really hard, in a gut-twisting, bone-shifting, perineal-tearing way that is impossible to fully convey to anyone who hasnt crawled through the baby trenches. Its hard enough as it is down here in the shit. Dont add to that stress by trying to perform motherhood to other peoples standards and regimens. Instead, focus on survival. And laughter. Thats what were aiming to help you with in this book. Dont get us wrongmany of those other parenting books are filled with gems of wisdombut we want to cut the BS and give it to you straightthe way your best friend would. Were here to tell you that those early days of parenting might include as much sobbing into a pillow about your boobs and the fact that your husband doesnt have any as it does staring lovingly at your newborn. Thats normal.

And its normal to have pregnancy and baby problems that bear no resemblance to your friends pregnancy and baby problems. Its also normal to confuse your babys first fetal movements with fart bubbles. And its normal to confuse your early contractions with bad gas. A lot of this mom stuff is confusing and farty, but dont worryyoull get through this. We wrote this book while our babies were letting out some pretty distracting ass burps (please forgive the tupos). We can do anything. Women are fucking magic.

This book is meant to help you get through all the difficulties of having a baby. But it will not do justice to what some go through. That group includes, but is not limited to: single mothers, mothers of color, women undergoing in vitro fertilization, adoptive parents, surrogates, trans men carrying babies, mothers carrying multiples, and mothers suffering miscarriages or other health issues. We wanted to speak to the common burdens of pregnancy and childbirth, which we felt were not being fully represented in popular literature. We hope you get something out of this, and that somewhere a tired mom is finding a way to speak to the issues we were unable to cover. We see you, and we support you.

This book is divided up into sections, but we recommend reading it all at once. You may think now, Ill read that part once the baby arrives, but trust us, you wont. Youll be too tired. Theres lots of stuff thatll be easier to emotionally and physically prepare for in advance rather than in the moment. You wont need all of this info, but we want you to make the most of whats helpful. You can always skim now and refer back later. You got this!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BIRTH UNTIL NOW

On our journey to try to tell you everything that everyone forgot to tell you about having a kid, we may as well start at the beginning of human procreation, with a brief history of how women have been making life with their bodies.

160,000 BC A Homo erectus woman births the first Homo sapiens baby. While she doesnt have the language or ability to recognize his larger brain, she does note to herself that Fuck, this head is huge, and This one seems needy. Evolution charts will later write women out of the story of evolution, depicting mans emergence as a feat unto himself, with hairy apes and men striding confidently across time into existence, their tired cave wives forgotten.