It Sucked and Then I Cried

by Heather B. Armstrong

The subtitle says it all: How I Had a Baby, A Breakdown and A Much-Needed Margarita.

I will confess: I read her blog. It's on the list of blogs that I read every morning when I get to work (when, in all reality, I should really be starting my WORK!). I ended up at her blog after reading about her on other people's blogs and finding that she was both admired and hated by a good number of people in the blogging community. And I have to say that, while not my favorite blog out there, I do continue to read her and she doesn't elicit strong emotions from me one way or the other. I find her amusing and her pictures are fabulous.

So I expected her book to be much of the same stuff I've been reading from her for the last year or so. Or at least, I expected a long look into the drama of postpartum depression and her "hospitalization" for such. But it didn't really seem to be that way. It was almost like she was trying to play down the depression and hospitalization, which was not at all how I had perceived her personality. And not why I wanted to read the book.

She spent a lot of time discussing common baby stuff that anyone who has had a child can recognize. I failed to see how her situation or experience was unique. Babies need attention, don't sleep well, and sometimes don't eat right. Most parents will nod and say "Yeah, been there" with most of the stuff she described. I would like to have known more about the depression that led her to check herself into a mental hospital. All she really says is that she cried, made her husband came home from work early and had a habit of throwing things at his head. And of her hospitalization? She claims to have gotten her medication squared away and slept for most of her 4 days in residence. Not really the "here-I-am-in-your-face" stuff I had come to expect from her.