You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother

FROM THE PUBLISHER

About the Author

Judith Newman writes a monthly column for Ladies Home Journal and is a contributing editor for Allure and Self. She also writers for Vanity Fair, Harper's, Discover, and the New York Times. She lives in New York City with her sons and her golden retriever.

SYNOPSIS

Veteran journalist Judith Newman wanted to write the book jacket description for You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman. She really did. But every time she sat down to describe her unflinching, ruefully funny look at later-life pregnancy and motherhood, something came up. One day, one of her sons, Gus, coughed up a hairball, the result of enjoying a pacifier that had been stuck for several days to the fur of their golden retriever. The next day she had to calm down her other son, Henry, who was convinced his head would be sucked down the bathtub drain. Spending the day shouting YOU HEAD IS BIGGER THAN THE DRAIN is not what she envisioned several years ago, when after seven years and $70,000 worth of infertility treatments, she was told, at forty, she was expecting twins. For this she spent eight months throwing up?

Today the number of women having their first child over thirty-five has increased by a bazillion fold, or some equally scary large number, and Newman is the first to write a book that tells what it's really like when a trip to the drugstore entails the purchase of both diaper cream and wrinkle cream; when "getting your shots" means both immunization and Botox. You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman is not only about having children later in life: it's about what happens to a marriage�and to the spirit, when even the most sought-after baby comes. Wry, warm, and brutally honest, this is the book for any woman "whatever her age" who has awakened at 3AM to the insistent shrieks of her darling and thought: Oh man, I'm too old for this.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Everyone...will be rolling in the aisles, reading out funny parts to perfect stranger.

Quirks Reviews

Newman shares all in her debut memoir, a chronicle of the heart-stopping perils and fierce joys of motherhood in the fifth decade. An edgy appreciation of the way children take over your life, your space, and your heart, no matter your age.

Publishers Weekly

"Geezers with children," Ladies Home Journal columnist Newman calls herself and her husband, "whose cumulative age exceeds one hundred." Being older may have complicated Newman's attempts to get pregnant-it took seven years and plenty of technology-but it also may have relaxed some inhibitions. Other women may joke about fertility treatments ruining their sex lives' spontaneity, but few would describe their husbands gazing at them "with about the same degree of pleasure as Sisyphus looks at a rock"-which he immediately denies, making her feel even worse because now "I'm making my husband fake it." After a hilariously nauseous pregnancy, culminating in the birth of twin boys, Newman looks at them and thinks, "I wonder if they'd look less like space aliens if I penciled in their eyebrows." Breastfeeding? She knows it's good for the immune system, but "for that I have the dog. I figure that having a golden retriever lick your head every day must have immune-system-enhancing qualities." Apart from the irreverence, Newman's older mom status allows her to take a more critical perspective on parenting. Watching herself get sucked into anxious observation of her boys' motor skills, she wonders where "this wild obsession with developmental milestones" comes from. She realizes parenting has turned her into a homebody, which is fine, because just "[l]iving, in the sense of breathing and functioning, becomes way more important than having a life." While humorless and/or politically correct readers may bristle at Newman's antics, everyone else will be rolling in the aisles, reading out funny parts to perfect strangers. Agent, Mark Reiter. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Ladies' Home Journal columnist Newman shares all in her debut memoir, a chronicle of the heart-stopping perils and fierce joys of motherhood in the fifth decade. Nearing the end of her 30s, living in New York and married to John, a retired British opera singer in his mid-60s, the author felt it was time for motherhood. After several miscarriages and failed fertility treatments, she tried in vitro fertilization and soon found herself pregnant. At 40, she gave birth prematurely to twins Henry and Augustus, who at first remained in the neonatal unit while Newman returned to her one-bedroom apartment. Builders were in the process of linking that apartment to the one above it she'd recently bought, but of course the babies came home before the work was done. Her living room became the nursery, and her husband spent more and more time uptown in his own apartment, leaving Newman to cope alone. John's initial hands-off attitude to his sons-he claimed the children made him feel trapped-made the first 18 months Newman describes even more fraught. As she addresses the tensions in her marriage, she also notes the other sea-changes in her life: no sleep, no regular schedule, and constant worrying about money, the twins (Augustus is underweight and shows some developmental lags), and her relationship with their excellent but critical nanny. New York caregivers, she learns, are as competitive about their charges as the mothers: "to the nannies of Manhattan, their child cannot have too much; it's the other children who are spoiled." Though determined not to use TV as a sitter, the author happily admits to relishing the peace provided by baby videos and Teletubbies. An edgy appreciation of the waychildren take over your life, your space, and your heart, no matter your age. Agent: Mark Reiter/IMG

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus

In this enchantingly hilarious book, Judith Newman balances stellar wit, warmth, and unflinching honesty as she invites us all the way into mommyhood in the new millennium. — authors of The Nanny Diaries