Motherlike

by Katherine Leyton

We’re shapeshifters, women—beasts, but everyone likes to hush that up.

As soon as Katherine Leyton discovered she was pregnant, a powerful reckoning began. Motherlike is both a feminist memoir of new motherhood as well as a rumination on womanhood. A book for anyone interested in an honest and revealing look at a process that is essential to our experience as humans, and yet is routinely unexamined and dismissed.

Sharp and intensely candid, funny, and deeply poignant, Leyton weaves her own experience of becoming a mother to her son (the shocks, the strangeness, and the pleasures) with historical research and cultural commentary. Everything from the history of the birth control pill and the objectification of women's bodies to the risks of labor and the realities of being postpartum. Leyton invites us into a very personal story that reflects a larger picture of ourselves.

Genres: Nonfiction, Canada, Memoir, Feminism

230 pages, Paperback

Published March 19, 2024

About the author

Katherine Leyton was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the Al & Eurithe Purdy A-Frame in the summer of 2014. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications, including the Malahat Review, Hazlitt, the Globe and Mail, and the Edinburgh Review. She is also the founder of the highly unorthodox video poetry blog, HowPedestrian.ca. A native of Toronto, Leyton has lived in Rome, Montreal, Edinburgh, and Forlì.

Reviews

[Shannon A · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and unflinching memoir of the author’s first year of motherhood that will make you appreciate what it really means to raise a child.

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give this 105 stars if I could.

[Kendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can relate to so many of the pre- and postnatal ponderings in this book. I wonder why we don't talk about the terror and the discomfort and the pressures that we feel as we become mothers and grow humans in our bodies. I felt like a weirdo for thinking and feeling anything but flowers and sunshine throughout my pregnancy and these first 17 weeks of motherhood.

Yet I know that two opposing things can be true. I can be thrilled to have a daughter and, at the same time, afraid of how dysfunctional my brain is right now.

This book is a mirror.

[sarah ☾⋆⁺₊⋆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I anticipated this being a 5 star read and am happy to report that I was not wrong. 

This book is an honest and vulnerable exploration of motherhood. The author draws on her perceptions, experiences, and expectations of motherhood from conception to her son's first birthday, and how they intersect with the various other roles and identities she takes on as a partner, daughter, working professional, and woman. It also provides valuable insight into the ways in which women have been perceived historically, and how these perceptions have worked to cause harm to women in the areas of health care and social policy.

I would recommend this book without a doubt. It is guaranteed to educate you or shape your perception of motherhood profoundly. It explores motherhood in a way that is not discussed in popular media or in North American culture, period.

[Dominika Grzelak · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in 4 hours, but it took me over 7 weeks to finish it. I'm 10 and 8 years postpartum now, but the intensity of becoming a mom for the first time was captured so insightfully in this book, that I really had to take my time to digest it all.

It was so raw. The book, motherhood, pregnancy, birth, the loss of identity, the loneliness, the rebirth. I've never seen such an incredibly complete account of all of it, the grief and the unfairness of the way we are treated as women, as mothers, as female employees with children... And also the incredulity of it all - our body's ability to grow and birth and breastfeed an entire person and somehow be able to let them go out into the world without us.

Truly moving.

[Gabby Sequeira Lucero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: made Omar read it with me and he learned a lot of new things LOL

Update: second time reading through this and it still makes me cry :’)

This was the parenting book I needed to read— emotional musings of a woman’s experience from pregnancy through the first year of her child’s life, full of worry and doubts and not knowing, addressed to her son. It’s beautiful, and even though I’m not a mom, the author’s thoughts and reflections made me feel seen.

[Allie Tierney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew this book would get 5 stars from page one. I could’ve easily read this in one sitting but really wanted to take my time and digest it slowly. Beautiful insight on womanhood & motherhood.

[Paul Sutter]

MOTHERLIKE is a most moving and fascinating book, a sort of love letter to the author's firstborn son Jude. It speaks to all people who ever experienced pregnancy, not just from the woman’s point of view, but how it changed their life and the lives of all around them.
Katherine Leyton holds nothing back, when she talks about the joys and the traumas of carrying a new life inside her body. She stopped taking birth control, but was not prepared to become pregnant quite so quickly. It definitely made it all the more challenging at that time, with herself and her husband. She is happy and also seemingly traumatized about being prepared to bring this child into the uncertainty of the world.
It was a daunting task to monitor the growth inside her body, even renting a Doppler device to make sure that the child inside her was all right. She says she was obsessed with thoughts of death constantly, and the Doppler reassured her that the fetus’ heartbeat was steady and strong. When she reached the second trimester, she was still tempted to keep her pregnancy secret. She says, “Announcing my pregnancy feels like handing myself over to the public for scrutiny.”
What makes the book even more intimate and quite personal, are her thoughts that often are like a rollercoaster of moods. There is the joy of imminent motherhood, mixed in with the trepidations of what might go wrong. She seems to think well ahead of the birth, even considering what type of child she might be giving birth to.
She found out it was going to be a boy, and she admits that sometimes boys are not always the more social and congenial to others in the world, especially to women. Before she found this out she said, “No matter what your sex, I want to raise you to be an empathetic human who does not intentionally harm others.” And she does admit she would have preferred having a girl, because she states, “I wanted a girl. I wanted to raise a strong confident girl who would become a proud feminist woman. I worry about raising a boy because I think about the harm men do and worry about contributing to that.”
When she does give birth and a son enters their world, there is also concern over raising a newborn. It has changed both their lives with feedings, lack of sleep, and so much more, contributing both elation and trepidation to their lives. Yes the book is filled with dark thoughts and what ifs constantly, but life is journey for all, and Jude has offered the opportunity for that journey to be eventful and wonderful. MOTHERLIKE is most powerful and moving.

[Enid Wray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well… I think we have a sleeper hit here. Spread the word.

I wasn’t sure about this one - until I was.

Initially I found the little vignettes to be most unsatisfactory - like teases… I wished things were more fleshed out. But there was a moment - not exactly sure when, maybe 25 or 30 pages in - where I found myself so caught up in these same little vignettes that I knew that this was special.

Hardly surprising that much of the author’s prior work has been poetry. This is beautifully crafted and her use of language is sparse - everything stripped to its barest, most relevant, essentials.

A beautiful and nuanced exploration of women, womanhood, motherhood, gender politics and so much more. She covers heaps of territory in just over 200 pages (many of which might have only one line on them at that!)

Give this to every woman - and man! - in your life.

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital review copy.

[David Horton · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a parent who has borne witness to ordeal of pregnancy and birth and post natal reality, it was very moving to revisit those strange and scary and marvelous times through the words of Motherlike. Ms. Leyton has a gift for "screen capturing" the fleeting thoughts and moments that pile on and then are gone during the the 9 months of pregnancy and the year following. I really wanted to keep drinking in the stories and the memories she was willing to share and was sad when I came to the end. As in reality, there's only so much story to tell before baby is no longer a baby anymore. It surprised me that in spite of how willing she was to open up her heart, Ms. Leyton held back the darker things that pregnancy does to a woman's body and mind. There are clinical manuals that cover those matters but it would have been interesting to me to read a poets take.

[Madison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I read this in one day! I love the vulnerability it took to write this. This was like reading someone’s diary. It was invasive yet welcoming, cluttered with moments some would consider “tmi” but that’s the beauty of motherhood, you’ve reached the end of human capability and come back unashamed, powerful.

Every woman should read this, mother or not, because it opens the door to the stigma related to pregnancy and motherhood. Motherlike taught me that I will survive motherhood and in the end, I will thrive.

[Nikki M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A criticism of societies views of motherhood today, cynical but not overly so. I was reminded of Rupi Kaur’s writing voice/ style.

[Annahid Dashtgard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulously insightful read.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very real and very good. The author doesn't shy away from the hard things but she also paints a beautiful picture of the good parts, too.