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

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Table of Contents

Advance Praise for Catherine Newmans Waiting for Birdy

Catherine Newman captures poignantly, powerfully, and honestly that wondrous roller-coaster called parenting. Waiting for Birdy might be the funniestand most astuteaccount of a mothers first years with her child since Anne Lamotts Operating Instructions. Pure and simple, this book is a laugh-out-loud gem.

Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives and Before You Know Kindness

I laughed and cried reading Catherine Newmans wonderful Waiting for Birdy. Sometimes I laughed until I cried. As a book about parenthood, it is smart, funny, beautiful and excruciating, which means it is perfect. You will read it with the profound pleasure and relief of knowing you are not alone. Newman is there. Phew.

Cynthia Kaplan, author of Why Im Like This

It has been a long time since Ive enjoyed a book as much as Waiting for Birdy. Reading it is a little like a pregnancy itselfif you are a parent or about to become one, youll find yourself laughing out loud, sobbing in public, and literally vibrating with resonant emotion. You know that little instruction manual you wished that your children had arrived with? Here it isand if its not filled with answers, then its packed with joy, love, anticipation, and a heady dose of the knowledge that when it comes to the mystery of parenting, none of us are in it alone.

Jodi Picoult, author of My Sisters Keeper

Catherine Newmans new book about the rock and roll life of newborn parents is hystericalin both senses of the wordand so dead-on honest that, as the mother of six, I wanted to have it made into a pillow. Waiting for Birdy proved my own grandmothers adage that one is like two and two is like five, and I nodded like a bobble-head doll as Newman described the delicious, neurotic hostage situation that attends the pregnancy and infancy of a child (Is it a cold? Is it cystic fibrosis?) Dont give birth without it.

Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Baby Bats Lullaby

Catherine Newmans memoir of the year in which she parented a toddler and prepared for the birth of her second baby (envision Ann Lamotts Operating Instructions as written by David Sedaris) is hilarious, neurotic, intelligent, reassuringand, yes, laugh-out-loud funny.

Andrea Buchanan, author of Mother Shock

With her artful reflections on toddler metaphysics, the anxieties of parental mindfulness and the imbalances of fortune, Catherine Newman turns the fantasy of idealized maternal love on its head. Be prepared to furrow your brow, nod, and to be caught off-guard by your own laughter.

Meredith W. Michaels, coauthor of The Mommy Myth

Frank, hilarious, sometimes agonizing and always delicious, Catherine Newmans account of early parenthood will ring true for all who have been there, and provide rare insight to those on their way. Waiting for Birdy is a gem.

Claire Messud, author of The Last Life

PENGUIN BOOKS

WAITING FOR BIRDY

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir Catastrophic Happiness and the blog Ben and Birdy . She is also the etiquette columnist for Real Simple magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Times Motherlode blog. Her first middle-grade novel will be published in 2017. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.

For Michael,
Patron Saint of Babies
(and of me)

summer

It feels like Im babysitting in the Twilight Zone. I keep waiting for the parents to show up because we are out of chips and diet Cokes.

Anne Lamott
Operating Instructions

Last weekend, we took Ben, our two-and-a-half-year-old, out to eat at a country inn. There was a hunting trophy on the wallan enormous antlered headand while we waited for our baskets of fried chicken, Ben stared and stared at it. His father, Michael, and I exchanged surreptitious grimacesHow would we explain this?but before we even waded out into the dreary details of hunting and taxidermy, Ben offered his own interpretation. Hey, he said cheerfully, through a mouthful of dinner roll, why do you think that billy goat is peeking in through the window?

Thats exactly how it is to be two. But thats also exactly how it is to become a parent: the world is new and illegible, and you scramble to make sense of things as they appear; every sign is loaded with meaning and impossible to decipher. Until it happened to us, I didnt understand that having a baby would feel like falling in love, but like falling in love on a bad acid trip. With an alarm clocka pooping alarm clock. I wasnt prepared to lie awake by the sleeping babe, my heart pounding audibly and so swollen with passion that I could barely breathe. I hadnt realized that my mind would scan constantly for disaster, like a metal detector casting around for the big stuff and turning up endless bottle caps. What is that? Pneumonia? A brain aneurism? Woops, okay, no, just a little cold.

The thing is, friends and strangers had actually tried to brace our expecting selves for the plunge into parenthood: Kiss your lazy Sundays good-bye! theyd warned, or Enjoy your last movie of the decade! or Farewell, sex life! Well, sure. That may all be true. But I happen to think that those are the wrong things to warn people about. Not a little bit wronglike its really restaurants, and not movies, that youll missbut categorically wrong. Absurdly wrong.

Maybe you just cant warn people about the real things. Oh, good luck with the baby! Enjoy eating out, while you still can! And, you know, enjoy your mind, before it liquefies. In fact, enjoy your whole life, before it turns into a disorienting blur of love and crushing anxiety. Nobody mentioned the way my heart would be brought to its knees, a thousand times a day, by my love for the baby. What is it Woody Allen says to Diane Keaton in Annie Hall? Love is too weak a word for what I feel. I luuuurve you. You know, I loave you. I luff youtwo fs. I wasnt prepared for my terrortwinned freakishly with this lovethat we would lose him. I was so anxious all the time that I wanted to have the baby put to sleep, but in the veterinary sensejust so I could quit worrying that he would die. Youre still here! was my first thought every morning. Oh my God!

So heres the question: Why, now that Ben is two and Im finally learning to function in this grief-stricken stupor of doting, are we expecting another baby? The short answerand its one that kind of begs the decide questionis that birth control doesnt actually work by osmosis. Run and tell your teenaged daughters! Its not enough to keep some stashed in the drawer of your bedside tableyou actually have to use it.

I thought I had decidedbefore this inexplicable round of the unprotected hokey-pokeythat I didnt want to have another baby. Not only because I didnt want my body to turn back into a giant, barfing kiln. Nor because I wanted to deprive Ben of an accomplice when Michael and I become old and impossible with Alzheimers. Nor because I didnt like the idea of having, how shall I put this, a

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