Review: Operating Instructions

“How on earth can anyone bring a child into this world knowing full well that he or she is eventually going to have to go through the seventh and eighth grades?” from Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott

I loved this book. It was recommended to me soon after I gave birth, but for some inexplicable reason I remained number three on the library's waiting list for the last 10 months. Now that I switched libraries, I put it on hold there and got it in less than a week.

I wish I had been able to read it before giving birth--and every day in the first few months of being a first time mom. Instead of being inundated with how to books and articles on parenting an infant, I wish I had just had this brutally honest account from one neurotic first time mom to reassure me that I was not the only neurotic first time mom. I'll certainly read it again.

A word of caution--although I loved this book and wish I could recommend it to every mother I know, be aware that there is a lot of cursing in it and if that bothers you, this book is not for you. I personally don't know how anyone gets through the first three months of a child's life without cursing a bit, but I know many people are more sensitive to it than I am.

Whether you read this book or not, here are a couple quotes I gleaned from it:

On the postpartum body:
“People kept trying to prepare me for how soft and mushy my stomach would be after I gave birth, but I secretly thought, Not this old bukerina. … Oh, but my stomach, she is like a waterbed covered with flannel now. When I lie on my side in bed, my stomach lies politely beside me, like a puppy.”

On breastfeeding:
“It’s mind-boggling that my body knows how to churn out this milk that he is growing on. … I’m going to have an awards banquet for my body when all of this is over.”

Anne Lamott

When my daughter was first born, a friend recommended that I read Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott. I was finally able to find it from the library. I wish I had found it earlier--my baby is almost one years old, and I wish I had been able to have Lamott's book as my warning beforehand and my companion throughout this first year. A glowing review will follow when I finish it, but last night I was particularly struck by a passage. Lamott wonders if she is crazy to have ever believed in Jesus and then she recounts this experience:

Then something truly amazing happened. A man from church showed up at our front door, smiling and waving to me and Sam ... after exchanging pleasantries he said, "Margaret and I wanted to do something for you and the baby. So what I want to ask is, What if a fairy appeared on your doorstep and said that he or she would do any favor for you at all, anything you wanted around the house that you felt too exhausted to do by yourself and too ashamed to ask anyone else to help you with?"

"I can't even say," I said. "It's too horrible."

But he finally convinced me to tell him, and I said it would be to clean the bathroom, and he ended up spending an hour scrubbing the bathtub and toilet and sink with Ajax and lots of hot water. I sat on the couch while he worked, watching TV, feeling vaguely guilty and nursing Sam to sleep. But it made me feel sure of Christ again, of that kind of love. This, a man scrubbing a new mother's bathtub, is what Jesus means to me.