And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready by Meaghan O'Connell

There are certain periods in life I would not want to travel back to and one of them is early motherhood. It's amazing the difference between the perceived version (the loving mother tenderly gazing at her newborn child, the child cooing back) and the everyday, well, monotony - desperation for time alone, hating breastfeeding, feeling like a lump and no longer recognizing your own body, the crying (the baby, yourself), the constant attachment. Is it obvious by this point that I too suffered from severe post-partum depression? This is why I praise Meaghan O'Connell's brutally honest look at the everyday side of new motherhood and all of its complexities - the side so many people hide, whether intentionally or not. There is enough of the fluffy romanticized side out there; it needs to be balanced with a dose of reality. No wonder so many of us are thrown into a tailspin when our actuality doesn't match the versions we've imagined. This book nails down the fact that everyone has a unique experience - some mothers love parts that others despise, some women love pregnancy while others can't wait to get the baby out, and even though there are billions of people on earth, every birth story somehow manages to be one-of-a-kind. There is a literal tug-of-war battle that rages within a lot of new mothers - that of feeling more in love than ever yet, with equal strength on certain days, wanting to escape. I have to admit that because I personally found the first year so difficult, it was almost hard to relive some of that time via this memoir, but I appreciate the honest account. Anyone considering parenthood should read this book first - not to change your mind or to be scared off or to lose the fantasy altogether, but to get a glimpse of the real parts that can't be ignored because they don't fit the unrealistic idealized versions that we're often presented with. Parenthood is everything all at once: love and sadness and worry and pain and hard times and best times and fear and happiness and every conceivable emotion rolled up into lives that affect one another in ways you just can't anticipate until you're actually living within your own unique version of it. Meghan O'Connell conveyed this whirlwind of chaos perfectly within her memoir without guilt or apology.