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

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A memoir is a success when it transcends the personal incidents about which it is written. So, while it's true that mothers expecting their second child will find the most to relate to in this exposé of domestic life, Newman's volume is a success because it never gets mired in self-centered pity or satire. Rather, hers is an honest and tender exploration of a particularly vulnerable and lovely period in life, a work that all readers can enjoy. Adapted from Newman's online journal, "Bringing up Ben & Birdy," the book opens with the author's discovery that she's pregnant for the second time. "Run and tell your teenaged daughters!" she jokes. "It's not enough to keep some birth control stashed in the drawer of your bedside table-you actually have to use it." Along with waves of nausea and strong food aversions, Newman's pregnancy provokes worries about the ways in which the coming baby will alter her treasured relationship with her first child, a toddler named Ben. But as the unborn baby, known as Birdy, becomes more of a reality, Newman realizes that the love she feels for her first child is only expanding. The author bravely endures every mother's worst trials, from suspicious prenatal test results to angst of the more philosophical nature, but her sweet, self-deprecating humor keeps the book rolling lightly along. And once Birdy arrives, Newman ushers readers through the early milky days of babyhood, her insight casting a gentle light on both the ugly and transcendent moments. Honest, tender and funny, this book is so good that readers will look forward to reading more about this marvelously ordinary family.

Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives and Before You Know Kindness
Might be the funniest--and most astute--account of a mother's first years with her child since Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions.

Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Baby Bat's Lullaby
Catherine Newman's new book about the rock and roll life of newborn parents is hysterical... Don't give birth without it.

Book Description
To fifty thousand readers, Catherine Newman is the beloved author of "Bringing Up Ben & Birdy," a weekly column on babycenter.com. Now in the delightfully candid, outlandishly funny Waiting for Birdy, Newman charts the year she anticipated the birth of her second child while also coping with the realities of raising a toddler. As she navigates life with her existentially curious and heartbreakingly sweet three-year-old, and her doozy of a pregnancy, she lends her irresistibly unique voice to the secret thoughts and fears of parents everywhere. Filled with quirky warmth and razor-sharp wit, Waiting for Birdy captures the universal wonder, terror, humor, and tenderness of raising a family.

About the Author
Catherine Newman is the author of the column "Bringing Up Ben & Birdy" on babycenter.com. A contributing editor of Family Fun Magazine, her work has been published in numerous anthologies.


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With agreeable emotional disorder, Web columnist Newman ("Bringing Up Ben and Birdy" on babycentre.com) describes the everyday terror of stewarding young children. In the world of the new parent, all seems unknowable, every sign loaded with meaning and impossible to decipher. Newman already has a cherished son, Ben, when one of those acts of fate-forgetting to use the diaphragm-brings another offspring into her future. She is as ready as any mother who expects every twinge in her child to be a sign of cystic fibrosis. But she realizes that her anxieties are part of the process and, imagining herself on an ocean, says, "I sleep in a little rowboat. In a thunderstorm, during a war, with cannons going off all night long. And also sharks." Like most parents, she happily thinks her son Ben is a marvel ("When did I do a good job at the typewriter?" he asks her at two years of age, and, later, when motherhood a deux looms, "Why are those tears drip-dripping from your eyes?"). But then Birdy comes and the world goes atumble. Ben no longer gets all he deserves, and Birdy doesn't show any measure of appreciation for everything her parents are doing for her. What sustains the reader is the steady humor displayed in Newman's benignly wacko voice, crisp and always ready to deflate: "Ben averages an epiphany a minute . . . 'Hey Mama! Water comes out of a hose!' or 'Daddy is a person!' . . . Which isn't to say that Ben's learning process isn't fascinating . . . [but] just that it can be fascinating in this kind of dull way." Newman produces parenthood real and up-close, even remembering the smell of "Gorgonzola crossed with pond water" nestled in the folds of a baby's neck. Laughing through the fears ofmotherhood, even when the fearer is driving and the laughs are in the back seat.


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