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Making Babies: Stumbling Into Motherhood
Anne Enright, one of Ireland's most remarkable writers, has just had two a girl and a boy. Her new book, "Making Babies", is the intimate, engaging, and very funny record of the journey from early pregnancy to age two. Written in dispatches, typed with a sleeping baby in the room, it has the rush of good news - full of the mess, the glory, and the raw shock of it all. An antidote to the high-minded, polemical 'How-to' baby manuals, "Making Babies" also bears a visceral and dreamlike witness to the first years of parenthood. Anne Enright wrote the truth of it as it happened, because, for these months and years, it is impossible for a woman to lie.
196 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
64 people are currently reading
1924 people want to read
About the author
Anne Enright
54 books1,383 followersAnne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published three volumes of stories, one book of nonfiction, and five novels. In 2015, she was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her novel The Gathering won the Man Booker Prize, and The Forgotten Waltz won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews
October 10, 2011
Maybe you need to read this book on a plane, with your breast exposed for two hours so your sleeping 10 month old baby has somewhere to rest his head between fretful, half waking sips. Maybe you need your other two daughters and your husband to be sitting two seats back, playing a loud game of bingo with a stranger's child they have adopted called Gemma, so you can reflect on how charming they sound when they are not under your jurisdiction. Maybe that vulnerable breast is also your heart, is also your nerves, exposed. Maybe you need to see so few degrees of separation between your mother-writer-self and Anne Enright's mother-writer-self that it seems she is merely reading back your own thoughts. Maybe you need to secretly think she is you, but a better writer and Irish, the bitch. Maybe you need to love her gleaming knife-edge brilliance so much you forgive her for it. Maybe you want to thank her for writing down the things you were too tired to write. But you know you won't, because the baby needs changing and the kids need picking up from school and feeding and there's a novel to write somewhere between all that, only you can't remember what it is.
June 8, 2012
After eighteen years of childless marriage, novelist Anne Enright was shocked to find herself pregnant. Being the sharp observer of human behaviour and honest writer that she is, she decided to keep track of her own thoughts and reactions on her pregnancy and the birth of her first (and very quickly, second) child. The result is a very clear eyed, rational, and terribly funny memoir of a woman who is surprised by life, fiercely in love with her kids, but very honest all the while
I absolutely loved this book. Too often (for me, anyway), birth and early childhood stories tend to the saccharine, leaving me feeling a bit guilty for perhaps not appreciating my little miracles enough; perhaps they get at the little voice that always wonders if I'm 'mother-enough'. Those that don't leave me feeling somehow lacking often leave me afraid for the children of these women who clearly don't enjoy motherhood at all. Enright gets it just right, in my book. As a mother who also had her children later in life,and who tends toward the honest (wondering if there's something wrong with me that I don't find newborns lovely, not even my own. They look sort of like turtles to me.), I found Enright's clear eyed view of pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood very motherhood-credential affirming. Enright very clearly loves her children with all her heart, but she's not afraid to say that not every bit of it is lovely. Her observations on the various bodily fluids that leak from the baby (and the mommy), the sleeplessness, even the loneliness of the modern new mother rang so many bells for me, just as many as her thoughts on the soft skin, the baby smiles, the cuddles and giggles that we hear about much more often.
Maybe it's her Irish practicality that allows her to be this honest, maybe it has something to do with being a mature mother; either way, I've never nodded along with a book about motherhood as often as I've done with this book. I've already told my teenage daughters that this is the book they need to read to know what real early motherhood is like (in fact, I'm buying a copy for each of them). I don't know why this took two years post UK release to be released in the US, but I'm very glad to have chanced upon it. A lovely book!
I absolutely loved this book. Too often (for me, anyway), birth and early childhood stories tend to the saccharine, leaving me feeling a bit guilty for perhaps not appreciating my little miracles enough; perhaps they get at the little voice that always wonders if I'm 'mother-enough'. Those that don't leave me feeling somehow lacking often leave me afraid for the children of these women who clearly don't enjoy motherhood at all. Enright gets it just right, in my book. As a mother who also had her children later in life,and who tends toward the honest (wondering if there's something wrong with me that I don't find newborns lovely, not even my own. They look sort of like turtles to me.), I found Enright's clear eyed view of pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood very motherhood-credential affirming. Enright very clearly loves her children with all her heart, but she's not afraid to say that not every bit of it is lovely. Her observations on the various bodily fluids that leak from the baby (and the mommy), the sleeplessness, even the loneliness of the modern new mother rang so many bells for me, just as many as her thoughts on the soft skin, the baby smiles, the cuddles and giggles that we hear about much more often.
Maybe it's her Irish practicality that allows her to be this honest, maybe it has something to do with being a mature mother; either way, I've never nodded along with a book about motherhood as often as I've done with this book. I've already told my teenage daughters that this is the book they need to read to know what real early motherhood is like (in fact, I'm buying a copy for each of them). I don't know why this took two years post UK release to be released in the US, but I'm very glad to have chanced upon it. A lovely book!
December 11, 2012
You know that friend who always makes you ask the journalistic Five W's? Like, where in the world did you find her? What just came out of her mouth? Who actually says that? When will she lighten up? Why do you keep hanging out with her? How will you explain her appeal to your other friends? Meet my new pal Anne Enright, an Irish author with accolades to spare and a several-tour veteran of her own grisly psychological war.
Enright recorded her first few years of "Making Babies" (i.e., motherhood) in a stream-of-consciousness that varies in degree from babbling brook to rushing river. At one point she writes, "Finished feeding, I go back on the cigarettes. I am addicted to nicotine, but I am also addicted to slipping away for two minutes every hour, and being alone." At another she asks, "Why do we assume that babies are happy in the womb? They come out looking for your face, so who is to say they are not lonely, all those weeks when there is no face there? And maybe . . . growth []hurts, in the womb, as it does outside, and all that squawking in the early weeks is not a mourning for paradise lost, but just making up for lost time." The resulting part-journal, part-blog format - overlayed throughout by a literary sensibility - continually perplexed and intrigued me.
I found many of Enright's descriptions accessible, relatable, and marked by that brand of funny that's not just smart-funny or dark-funny, but smart-dark-funny, like the chocolate raindrop from Godiva that's filled with ganache and almond praliné paste. For example, she writes: "I measure [other mothers] against myself for age, sudden fat, and despair"; and "[i]f you are a woman and you clean, society thinks that you are fantastically well balanced and sane, . . . which is sort of unfair for the people who have to live with you and are not allowed to wipe a spill off the floor with the cloth that is used to wipe the counter."
But I often emotionally recoiled in response to the harsh honesty and uninvited intimacy of her confessions, in the way that one dodges a mirror when she suspects her reflection won't be flattering. Like when Enright says of playing with her children: "I have no problem filling this smiling shell, most of the time." Not exactly a barrel of laughs. Yet every time I decided I wanted out of her head and fast, Enright pulled me back in with a particularly witty and impersonal observation such as, "I was reared in the seventies, by a woman who had been reared in the thirties, and we were both agreed that getting pregnant was the worst thing that could happen to a girl"; "[i]t is the job of families to reject each other's memories"; and "I would swap several college degrees for a degree of patience."
And there's no denying Enright's capacity for purely brilliant prose. As a mother and a writer, my favorite line reads: "I am besotted by a being who is, at this stage, just a set of emotions arranged around a gut." So true, so freaking true. It's one of those descriptions that once set upon paper seems so correct, that it's retrospectively self-evident.
In the end, I'm still not sure what I think of her, or the book that seems to be essentially a purchasable, inanimate extension of her, sort of like a discarded wooden leg that bears the nicks and smell of its user's experiences . . . or something slightly less creepy. So I'll do what I do with that one friend, I'll introduce you to her and let you judge her charms for yourself. Try not to be put off by your first impression; she doesn't exactly put her best foot forward, chapter-wise. If you keep reading, you'll get to know the real Anne, a mother of two who just wants to relax: "I have eleventy-one gins. . . . I wave across the room, and hulloo and tell everyone they are looking great - though they all look one year older, and for some it is the year that made the difference. . . . Sometime around 10.30 the damaged little [f%#$er] who has been tracking you all night comes up with the same sneer as the last time you were out, and you realise, with the predictable, drunken slump, that you have changed while the wide world has remained the same. I've had a baby! I'm not! really! interested! any more! Drinking is a group thing and you don't have a group now - you have a family (damn). It is time to wander out and lose your handbag in a taxi."
Enright recorded her first few years of "Making Babies" (i.e., motherhood) in a stream-of-consciousness that varies in degree from babbling brook to rushing river. At one point she writes, "Finished feeding, I go back on the cigarettes. I am addicted to nicotine, but I am also addicted to slipping away for two minutes every hour, and being alone." At another she asks, "Why do we assume that babies are happy in the womb? They come out looking for your face, so who is to say they are not lonely, all those weeks when there is no face there? And maybe . . . growth []hurts, in the womb, as it does outside, and all that squawking in the early weeks is not a mourning for paradise lost, but just making up for lost time." The resulting part-journal, part-blog format - overlayed throughout by a literary sensibility - continually perplexed and intrigued me.
I found many of Enright's descriptions accessible, relatable, and marked by that brand of funny that's not just smart-funny or dark-funny, but smart-dark-funny, like the chocolate raindrop from Godiva that's filled with ganache and almond praliné paste. For example, she writes: "I measure [other mothers] against myself for age, sudden fat, and despair"; and "[i]f you are a woman and you clean, society thinks that you are fantastically well balanced and sane, . . . which is sort of unfair for the people who have to live with you and are not allowed to wipe a spill off the floor with the cloth that is used to wipe the counter."
But I often emotionally recoiled in response to the harsh honesty and uninvited intimacy of her confessions, in the way that one dodges a mirror when she suspects her reflection won't be flattering. Like when Enright says of playing with her children: "I have no problem filling this smiling shell, most of the time." Not exactly a barrel of laughs. Yet every time I decided I wanted out of her head and fast, Enright pulled me back in with a particularly witty and impersonal observation such as, "I was reared in the seventies, by a woman who had been reared in the thirties, and we were both agreed that getting pregnant was the worst thing that could happen to a girl"; "[i]t is the job of families to reject each other's memories"; and "I would swap several college degrees for a degree of patience."
And there's no denying Enright's capacity for purely brilliant prose. As a mother and a writer, my favorite line reads: "I am besotted by a being who is, at this stage, just a set of emotions arranged around a gut." So true, so freaking true. It's one of those descriptions that once set upon paper seems so correct, that it's retrospectively self-evident.
In the end, I'm still not sure what I think of her, or the book that seems to be essentially a purchasable, inanimate extension of her, sort of like a discarded wooden leg that bears the nicks and smell of its user's experiences . . . or something slightly less creepy. So I'll do what I do with that one friend, I'll introduce you to her and let you judge her charms for yourself. Try not to be put off by your first impression; she doesn't exactly put her best foot forward, chapter-wise. If you keep reading, you'll get to know the real Anne, a mother of two who just wants to relax: "I have eleventy-one gins. . . . I wave across the room, and hulloo and tell everyone they are looking great - though they all look one year older, and for some it is the year that made the difference. . . . Sometime around 10.30 the damaged little [f%#$er] who has been tracking you all night comes up with the same sneer as the last time you were out, and you realise, with the predictable, drunken slump, that you have changed while the wide world has remained the same. I've had a baby! I'm not! really! interested! any more! Drinking is a group thing and you don't have a group now - you have a family (damn). It is time to wander out and lose your handbag in a taxi."
June 3, 2012
It is remarkably hard to find intelligent, well-crafted writing on motherhood. Many glorify the role, while others snark about it. Most seem to reduce it to a whirlwind of puke and vomit. Anne Enright writes bluntly about the beautiful and sublime aspects of becoming a mother as well as the humbling and crass bits. She takes on the scientists and sociologists who seem to be constantly finding new shortcomings in mothers, as well as the sadism of women who seem to take pleasure in the suffering of other women. Lots of sharp insights throughout.
June 7, 2021
I'm rather mortified to be seen with this cover and this title, but it gave me a taste of what I'm looking for. Older mother, artist, not too much wonder-of-life nonsense, a good dash of morbidity, depression, and drudgery, but not TOO much. Like, I can imagine just fine on my own how awful motherhood has the potential to be. There's a reason I was firmly against it for most of my life. Now that I'm uh, mom-curious, if you will, I want a balance of realness but also reassurance that it won't totally ruin my life. This book strikes the balance alright.
December 7, 2024
This was a good read! I liked the humour in it. Lots of good one liners that I highlighted. Preferred it to her novels that I've read tbh. I think I am finally ready to read something not about motherhood...
May 27, 2023
“In short, it would be lovely if everything was lovely. In the meantime, f*ck off”.
Beloved Irish author Anne Enright is best known for her award winning-fiction, but in “Making Babies; Stumbling into Motherhood”, she gives us a sobering, but equally hilarious account of pregnancy, childbirth and how she raised her two children.
I’m actually super impressed at how she managed to write at all as she established breastfeeding during those long sleepless nights, but write she did, and in her inimitable style too.
The very first chapter is partially about UFO’s, but otherwise, you’ll find some fairly recognisable parental experiences described throughout. I find Enright is always such a keen observer of human behaviour, and that’s no different here, even when the behaviour in question is mostly her own (her husband, mother, and children do feature too, but this is ostensibly a book about motherhood, something I’m enjoying reading about lately, from a variety of perspectives.)
While there’s lots of that aforementioned humour in this book, and plenty of details to nod your head along in agreement to, there are some somber moments too.
Peppered throughout are critiques of Irish society, and women’s place within it, none of which I would necessarily disagree with, but veer on the darker side at times.
There’s also frank discussions of mental health issues, especially towards the end of the book, that feel in-keeping with Enright’s honest narrative throughout the rest of her writing here.
I think if that’s your particular cup of tea, you’ll enjoy this too. Equally though, if you want to reminisce abut those early days of motherhood that feel deeply nostalgic to look back on, then here’s the book for you.
Funny, smart, sarcastic, and honest.
I enjoyed this one.
Beloved Irish author Anne Enright is best known for her award winning-fiction, but in “Making Babies; Stumbling into Motherhood”, she gives us a sobering, but equally hilarious account of pregnancy, childbirth and how she raised her two children.
I’m actually super impressed at how she managed to write at all as she established breastfeeding during those long sleepless nights, but write she did, and in her inimitable style too.
The very first chapter is partially about UFO’s, but otherwise, you’ll find some fairly recognisable parental experiences described throughout. I find Enright is always such a keen observer of human behaviour, and that’s no different here, even when the behaviour in question is mostly her own (her husband, mother, and children do feature too, but this is ostensibly a book about motherhood, something I’m enjoying reading about lately, from a variety of perspectives.)
While there’s lots of that aforementioned humour in this book, and plenty of details to nod your head along in agreement to, there are some somber moments too.
Peppered throughout are critiques of Irish society, and women’s place within it, none of which I would necessarily disagree with, but veer on the darker side at times.
There’s also frank discussions of mental health issues, especially towards the end of the book, that feel in-keeping with Enright’s honest narrative throughout the rest of her writing here.
I think if that’s your particular cup of tea, you’ll enjoy this too. Equally though, if you want to reminisce abut those early days of motherhood that feel deeply nostalgic to look back on, then here’s the book for you.
Funny, smart, sarcastic, and honest.
I enjoyed this one.
January 3, 2013
Cute and funny. Made me remember what it was like to have a new baby. I especially loved her description of a newborn baby's eyes and how it looks at you when it is first born. Oh my gosh, how could I forget that?! It's been a loooong time.
I would have liked to know more about how the author decided to have a baby after 18 years of marriage and then fall into it so naturally. That part wasn't explored at all. But I certainly could relate to just about everything else in the book. It's funny to read a book like this when my kids are so much older and I am so far past the baby stage. It was a trip back in time.
I would have liked to know more about how the author decided to have a baby after 18 years of marriage and then fall into it so naturally. That part wasn't explored at all. But I certainly could relate to just about everything else in the book. It's funny to read a book like this when my kids are so much older and I am so far past the baby stage. It was a trip back in time.
August 25, 2019
I was very much enjoying this funny and irreverent set of reflections on reproduction and parenthood right up until the last chapter. Then it stopped being just amusing and enjoyable and started being brave, revelatory and profound. It told me something about what it means to want to live.
December 29, 2023
It’s taking a lot for me not to want to give this book 5 stars but to do so doesn’t feel wholly right. The writing in this book is so honest, perceptive and powerful. Enright’s passages on pregnancy made me feel understood and I’m sure the same will be said for parenting once that comes for me. Her stories are so authentic and her thoughts penned feel as if she’s meticulously captured a feeling you once had. Beautiful writing.
The only thing that let it down slightly for me was the pace and sometimes the repetitive nature of the subject matter. I found I had to read little bits at a time. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever underlined so much in a book or wanted to read so much of it aloud to whoever happened to be nearby. “She is just so right!”, I found myself thinking time and time again.
The only thing that let it down slightly for me was the pace and sometimes the repetitive nature of the subject matter. I found I had to read little bits at a time. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever underlined so much in a book or wanted to read so much of it aloud to whoever happened to be nearby. “She is just so right!”, I found myself thinking time and time again.
September 6, 2025
While I love Enright’s works of fiction such as The Gathering and The Green Road, I cannot really say I enjoyed her non-fiction work. I felt like there were some intricate details and explanations, and as someone who is still far removed from the stage of motherhood; they did not really resonate with me at all, except for the last chapter/essay of the book.
I am not completely averse to the idea of re-reading this in the future, but at this moment of my life it was not something I truly enjoyed.
I am not completely averse to the idea of re-reading this in the future, but at this moment of my life it was not something I truly enjoyed.
August 30, 2022
Blandad kompott om moderskap. Förstår mig inte på ufo-texten i början men älskar Enrights blick på sin baby och hur hon lyckas förmedla det hon ser till läsaren. Mycket igenkänning, men också en del fascination för det som är annorlunda. Men framför allt: Välskrivet och väl iakttaget, ibland också humoristiskt.
March 30, 2024
I read this flying cross country with my two younger children today. 16 and 19. I was struck by how much has changed, and how little has changed. They need me and alternately make me miserable. I love them desperately and frequently can’t wait to be rid of them.
February 8, 2024
very very funny
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January 29, 2021i freaking love anne enright. so happy to have discovered her in a random scottish second hand bookshop. book is littered with phrases that catch you unawares - charming, witty, lyrical, poignant in turn.
June 13, 2024
Scrappy and chaotic in a glorious way which feels appropriate for the subject matter.
March 4, 2015
Review originally posted on the Johnson County (KS) Library Staff Picks Blog.
I didn’t expect to love the book Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, by Anne Enright. The silly, cutesy title and cover photo inclined me to shrug my shoulders and hide what I was reading in public. And the first essay was a strange, confusing thing that I still haven’t untangled. Luckily, I didn’t start with the first essay. I started with the introduction. And in the introduction, Anne Enright won me over. She says, about women who write about motherhood, “It is the way they are both smug and astonished. It is the way we think we have done something amazing, when we have done no more than most other people on the planet – except we, in our over-educated way, have to brag about it.” I could relate to that, and oh, I wanted to read more.
Truly, I can’t understand how children – and motherhood and having babies and those babies growing up into people – can be so sacred and so mundane. It’s a miracle, but it happens every day? It’s a unique experience, but anyone can do it? Enright’s prose rides the line between these divergent sentiments gracefully. In a few paragraphs, she will raise you in awe and then leave off with an abrupt statement about poop. Or she’ll replay an absurdest conversation with her two-year-old daughter, and then reminisce looking into Daughter’s baby eyes and seeing the shape of her soul.
Making Babies is fresh and joyful. It’s funny. As the Sunday Times praises on the back jacket, “Enright has pulled off that rarest of tricks: writing brilliantly about happiness.”
Read this if you have recently entered into motherhood or want to, or if you just want to remember those squishy baby times. If you enjoy literary non-fiction, memoirs and babies, or if you have enjoyed Enright’s fiction, you might like this book. If you like sarcastic Irishwomen, or people who wait for their eighteenth wedding anniversary before conceiving, you will like Anne Enright.
I didn’t expect to love the book Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, by Anne Enright. The silly, cutesy title and cover photo inclined me to shrug my shoulders and hide what I was reading in public. And the first essay was a strange, confusing thing that I still haven’t untangled. Luckily, I didn’t start with the first essay. I started with the introduction. And in the introduction, Anne Enright won me over. She says, about women who write about motherhood, “It is the way they are both smug and astonished. It is the way we think we have done something amazing, when we have done no more than most other people on the planet – except we, in our over-educated way, have to brag about it.” I could relate to that, and oh, I wanted to read more.
Truly, I can’t understand how children – and motherhood and having babies and those babies growing up into people – can be so sacred and so mundane. It’s a miracle, but it happens every day? It’s a unique experience, but anyone can do it? Enright’s prose rides the line between these divergent sentiments gracefully. In a few paragraphs, she will raise you in awe and then leave off with an abrupt statement about poop. Or she’ll replay an absurdest conversation with her two-year-old daughter, and then reminisce looking into Daughter’s baby eyes and seeing the shape of her soul.
Making Babies is fresh and joyful. It’s funny. As the Sunday Times praises on the back jacket, “Enright has pulled off that rarest of tricks: writing brilliantly about happiness.”
Read this if you have recently entered into motherhood or want to, or if you just want to remember those squishy baby times. If you enjoy literary non-fiction, memoirs and babies, or if you have enjoyed Enright’s fiction, you might like this book. If you like sarcastic Irishwomen, or people who wait for their eighteenth wedding anniversary before conceiving, you will like Anne Enright.
July 25, 2024
holy cow, did I love the essay on her daughter Being Two. Loveeeeed. Have to figure out how to document A's toddler years as well and delightfully.(Also, Nine Months and most of Babies: A Breeder's Guide.)
Favorites:
"Sometimes, I feel as though I am introducing her to my own nostalgia for the world."
"‘Oh,’ a friend said, when she started to crawl, ‘it’s the beginning of the end,’ and I knew what she meant. It is the beginning of the end of a romance between a woman who has forgotten who she is and a child who does not yet know."
"There is nothing better, when you can’t get up, than lying in bed with a baby. If the baby gets bored, you can flutter your hand, high above its face, then swoop down to beep-beep its nose. If you are very tired, support the waving arm with your other arm, and close your eyes."
"And I want to tell them nothing about her. She is a child, she must not be described. She must be kept fluid and open; not labelled or marked. I could say that she is playful, open, stubborn, bossy, winsome, serious, giddy, boisterous, clinging, gorgeous —but these are words that describe every single two-year-old on the planet, they are not the essence of herself, the thing that will always be there. Describing a child is a matter of prediction or nostalgia. There is no present moment. You are always trying to grasp something that changes even as you look at it. Besides, all children are the same, somehow. And still I know she is different from the general run of toddlers."
Favorites:
"Sometimes, I feel as though I am introducing her to my own nostalgia for the world."
"‘Oh,’ a friend said, when she started to crawl, ‘it’s the beginning of the end,’ and I knew what she meant. It is the beginning of the end of a romance between a woman who has forgotten who she is and a child who does not yet know."
"There is nothing better, when you can’t get up, than lying in bed with a baby. If the baby gets bored, you can flutter your hand, high above its face, then swoop down to beep-beep its nose. If you are very tired, support the waving arm with your other arm, and close your eyes."
"And I want to tell them nothing about her. She is a child, she must not be described. She must be kept fluid and open; not labelled or marked. I could say that she is playful, open, stubborn, bossy, winsome, serious, giddy, boisterous, clinging, gorgeous —but these are words that describe every single two-year-old on the planet, they are not the essence of herself, the thing that will always be there. Describing a child is a matter of prediction or nostalgia. There is no present moment. You are always trying to grasp something that changes even as you look at it. Besides, all children are the same, somehow. And still I know she is different from the general run of toddlers."
April 17, 2015
This is the smartest funny writing about motherhood that I've ever read. Bits of it are what you'd expect David Sedaris to write about had he ever experienced pregnancy and childbirth/rearing. Other bits capture the simple pure joy of motherhood perfectly.
She has a knack for describing those feelings of motherhood that you can't even explain to your husband because it's unlike anything you've ever felt before. Of course I didn't write any of them down, but I remember an early line in the book seemed particularly apt. She described being yanked from deep sleep by a crying baby in the middle of the night as shooting out of bed "like an electrocuted corpse." It's a vivid image that sticks with you, but most are less grotesque while being equally as apt.
I read lots of it out loud to Sam. I don't think he appreciated it in quite the same way, but I think it did reinforce that my feelings about motherhood aren't singularly strange, but just the way it is.
She has a knack for describing those feelings of motherhood that you can't even explain to your husband because it's unlike anything you've ever felt before. Of course I didn't write any of them down, but I remember an early line in the book seemed particularly apt. She described being yanked from deep sleep by a crying baby in the middle of the night as shooting out of bed "like an electrocuted corpse." It's a vivid image that sticks with you, but most are less grotesque while being equally as apt.
I read lots of it out loud to Sam. I don't think he appreciated it in quite the same way, but I think it did reinforce that my feelings about motherhood aren't singularly strange, but just the way it is.
August 14, 2015
After eighteen years of marriage and almost reaching middle age, Enright found herself becoming a mother. Before she knew it, she had two children running around. She was already a successful author in her native Ireland, but she soon realized that she was much less confident at being a mother than writing. During the first few years of her children's lives, she took time between feedings and diaper changes to write about all the messiness as well as the joys of motherhood, particularly motherhood at a later stage of life. I found this collection charming, funny, and thought-provoking. I like that Enright loves her children and wants what's best for them but she doesn't bow to the guilt and pressure associated with trying to be a perfect parent. I feel like this is a book that would comfort a lot of new parents who feel overwhelmed.
August 31, 2012
This was exactly the book I needed to read.
Enright is a real human being. She isn't obsessed with the best way or the right way to deal with babies. She doesn't romanticize the experience or wrap it in psuedo-spiritual womyn power.
She made some babies. And then wrote about it. All of it. From the pleasure of first words exchanged to the monotony of a colicky baby. She writes about cigarettes and drunkenness and worry and the way your sense of self melts away. The way you are faced with your own mortality and come away from it with a stronger lust for life. Not because you want to move mountains or find inner peace or discover yourself. But just because life is where your children are and you rather like being there -- even if you must also face those moments where you almost chuck it all and walk out the door.
This was exactly the book I needed to read.
Enright is a real human being. She isn't obsessed with the best way or the right way to deal with babies. She doesn't romanticize the experience or wrap it in psuedo-spiritual womyn power.
She made some babies. And then wrote about it. All of it. From the pleasure of first words exchanged to the monotony of a colicky baby. She writes about cigarettes and drunkenness and worry and the way your sense of self melts away. The way you are faced with your own mortality and come away from it with a stronger lust for life. Not because you want to move mountains or find inner peace or discover yourself. But just because life is where your children are and you rather like being there -- even if you must also face those moments where you almost chuck it all and walk out the door.
This was exactly the book I needed to read.
July 13, 2024
"Children are actually a form of brainwashing. They are a cult, a perfectly legal cult. Think about it. When you join a cult you are undernourished, you are denied sleep, you are forced to do repetitive and pointless tasks at random hours of the day and night, then you stare deep into your despotic leader's eyes, repeating meaningless phrases, or mantras, like Ooh da gorgeous. Yes, you are!" I read with shock; the truth only now sinking in. Yes, it's funny. But the Enright also makes no bones about the feats of labor. The long backward look at it can make a person feel lightheaded. At the right time and place, this passage is typical of how making babies can be hysterical.
August 3, 2012
this got amazingly glowing reviews, like, EVERYWHERE. people were like, "enright is a poet & she turns her remarkable abilities on the mundane details of the family unit, elevating them to the sublime, but without losing her trademark irish sense of humor."
i don't know, dudes. it's another volume of personal essays about having babies. maybe i have read too many books on this topic, but there was nothing in here that really bowled me over. clearly enright is slightly more capable of employing the written word than a lot of published authors, but after all the reviews i read, i was expecting a lot more. maybe i would have liked it better had i gone in with no preconceived notions.
i don't know, dudes. it's another volume of personal essays about having babies. maybe i have read too many books on this topic, but there was nothing in here that really bowled me over. clearly enright is slightly more capable of employing the written word than a lot of published authors, but after all the reviews i read, i was expecting a lot more. maybe i would have liked it better had i gone in with no preconceived notions.
May 8, 2015
This book sounded like it was going to be funny, and I enjoy the light hearted pregnancy and parenting books; being pregnant now I do not want a downer or a heavy book! I think how the author worded everything just brought this book down for me. When she tried to be witty it just felt sad, like she was resigning herself to the experience without enjoying it. I put this book down after 50 pages of solid reading, then I tried to skim it to see if anything caught my attention but I just couldn't do it. So sad since I saw so many people seemed to enjoy this one!
November 6, 2008
I read a short piece by Anne Enright in the TLS and fell in love. Literally have been carrying the piece around and re-reading it like a love letter. I have a suspicion she writes extremely well about having children. To be seen...
December 29, 2015
This is a lovely collection of non-fiction by Man Booker Prize winner Anne Enright as she ruminates on new motherhood, pregnancy, alien abductions, and death.
February 13, 2021
When I was reading this 209 page book, I underlined 43 parts, thinking “Yes...exactly, YES!” I don’t know if this book will appeal to people who haven’t had babies, but for those who have it is a relief to have had such a brilliant writer look at the experience and capture it, especially as the experience of mothers is often ignored. Anne Enright is fiercely intelligent, extremely funny, and beautifully observant.
She describes the indescribable pain of childbirth, unflinchingly, and with characteristic wit.
:”Ten days ago I wanted a natural birth, now I want a general anaesthetic”
“Are these the worst hundred seconds I have ever been through? How about the next hundred seconds – let’s give them a go”
And
“The anaesthetist breaks it to me that it might be another ten minutes before I feel the full effect. I do not have ten minutes to spare”, which is exactly how I felt when my midwife told me she’d have to monitor the baby for another ten minutes before I could get the epidural. Ten minutes seemed impossible.
She also describes the business of parenting in a way that I completely related to, from the imperious look of her baby as she’s carried around by her husband, the surprising fact that baby’s feet smell like feet, and the fact that you will end up with what she describes as a “nonsense” of clothes.
She also talks about the dynamics between mothers and fathers when it comes to parenting, and sensibly pushes back against the idea that for the child’s benefit they should spend all their time with their mothers. :
“The child’s need is real, but it is not in some way ‘true’. It is not well-founded. Yes, I am leaving – but I will be back in five minutes, or in five hours, and you will be all right. There must be limits to being a mother: not in the spiritual sense, not even in the emotional sense, but between 4.30 and 5.00 on a Tuesday.”
She also describes the anger in a way I found deeply satisfying:
“You become blind with a fury that is not quite your own – thousands of years of rage have been waiting until just this moment to say Hello. Why should your time, as a woman, be so little valued? Why should you be the one to give, and to bend?...You are furious because you know... you have to fight for every half-hour that a man will just assume.”
YES!
Apart from being smart, hilarious, incisive, she is also a beautiful writer, so I’ll end this review with this heartbreaking quote:
“We slip like phantoms from our parents’ heads, leaving them to clutch some Thing they call by our name, because a mother has no ability to let her child go. And then, much later, in need, or in tragedy, or in the wearing of age, we slip back into her possession, because sometimes you just want your mother to hold you, in her heart if not in her arms, as she is still held by her own mother, even now, from time to time.”
Enough said.
She describes the indescribable pain of childbirth, unflinchingly, and with characteristic wit.
:”Ten days ago I wanted a natural birth, now I want a general anaesthetic”
“Are these the worst hundred seconds I have ever been through? How about the next hundred seconds – let’s give them a go”
And
“The anaesthetist breaks it to me that it might be another ten minutes before I feel the full effect. I do not have ten minutes to spare”, which is exactly how I felt when my midwife told me she’d have to monitor the baby for another ten minutes before I could get the epidural. Ten minutes seemed impossible.
She also describes the business of parenting in a way that I completely related to, from the imperious look of her baby as she’s carried around by her husband, the surprising fact that baby’s feet smell like feet, and the fact that you will end up with what she describes as a “nonsense” of clothes.
She also talks about the dynamics between mothers and fathers when it comes to parenting, and sensibly pushes back against the idea that for the child’s benefit they should spend all their time with their mothers. :
“The child’s need is real, but it is not in some way ‘true’. It is not well-founded. Yes, I am leaving – but I will be back in five minutes, or in five hours, and you will be all right. There must be limits to being a mother: not in the spiritual sense, not even in the emotional sense, but between 4.30 and 5.00 on a Tuesday.”
She also describes the anger in a way I found deeply satisfying:
“You become blind with a fury that is not quite your own – thousands of years of rage have been waiting until just this moment to say Hello. Why should your time, as a woman, be so little valued? Why should you be the one to give, and to bend?...You are furious because you know... you have to fight for every half-hour that a man will just assume.”
YES!
Apart from being smart, hilarious, incisive, she is also a beautiful writer, so I’ll end this review with this heartbreaking quote:
“We slip like phantoms from our parents’ heads, leaving them to clutch some Thing they call by our name, because a mother has no ability to let her child go. And then, much later, in need, or in tragedy, or in the wearing of age, we slip back into her possession, because sometimes you just want your mother to hold you, in her heart if not in her arms, as she is still held by her own mother, even now, from time to time.”
Enough said.
March 21, 2025
Funny, true, vulnerable.
... and the world separated, very cleanly,
into those people who are nice to you when you are in pain, and those who are not. The ways in which they are not, and the reasons why they are not, is a vastly interesting subject, but I had no time to think about it, because I was in pain. I was fine sitting in a chair but in order to walk, or climb the stairs, I had to tune people out so that they became distant and slightly distorted. Pain is a muted, and empty, and mildly paranoid place. Which is to say that you would be paranoid if you had the space for it - in the meantime, you get by on a little irritation.
101
It comes on you in a rush with the first baby - the unfairness of it. You become blind with a fury that is not quite your own- thousands of years of rage have been waiting until just
this moment to say Hello. Why should your time, as a woman, be so little valued? Why should you be the one to give, and to bend? There will be one argument or a hundred around this time that are white hot. You may reach an accommodation about Tuesday, or even about the whole week until 4.00 on Saturday afternoon. The month of April may be one of relative equity, but that still leaves everything to be played for in May.
You are furious because you know that the weight of it is against you; you have to fight for every half-hour that a man will just assume. Who are you fighting? First of all yourself, and after that the wide world, that considers your time to be of no importance. The actual man may be on your side in all
this, or he may not - either way he will absorb a considerable amount of the blame. 164
Still, some women clean so much, with so many products, that it's not so much housework as solvent abuse. Housework makes women more miserable than anything else: because it never ends, because they do the bulk of it, and also because it never ends, because they do the bulk of it, and also because whatever provokes us to clean and tidy has its roots in rage and disgust. Some women are cheerful around the house, of course,
and many men are not just clean but tidy, but the statistics seem to bear out the idea that men do not feel themselves endlessly
obliged in the domestic sphere the way that women do, and that women do not enjoy doing the housework, despite the fact
that they just keep doing it. We are slaves to our own heads. 168
... and the world separated, very cleanly,
into those people who are nice to you when you are in pain, and those who are not. The ways in which they are not, and the reasons why they are not, is a vastly interesting subject, but I had no time to think about it, because I was in pain. I was fine sitting in a chair but in order to walk, or climb the stairs, I had to tune people out so that they became distant and slightly distorted. Pain is a muted, and empty, and mildly paranoid place. Which is to say that you would be paranoid if you had the space for it - in the meantime, you get by on a little irritation.
101
It comes on you in a rush with the first baby - the unfairness of it. You become blind with a fury that is not quite your own- thousands of years of rage have been waiting until just
this moment to say Hello. Why should your time, as a woman, be so little valued? Why should you be the one to give, and to bend? There will be one argument or a hundred around this time that are white hot. You may reach an accommodation about Tuesday, or even about the whole week until 4.00 on Saturday afternoon. The month of April may be one of relative equity, but that still leaves everything to be played for in May.
You are furious because you know that the weight of it is against you; you have to fight for every half-hour that a man will just assume. Who are you fighting? First of all yourself, and after that the wide world, that considers your time to be of no importance. The actual man may be on your side in all
this, or he may not - either way he will absorb a considerable amount of the blame. 164
Still, some women clean so much, with so many products, that it's not so much housework as solvent abuse. Housework makes women more miserable than anything else: because it never ends, because they do the bulk of it, and also because it never ends, because they do the bulk of it, and also because whatever provokes us to clean and tidy has its roots in rage and disgust. Some women are cheerful around the house, of course,
and many men are not just clean but tidy, but the statistics seem to bear out the idea that men do not feel themselves endlessly
obliged in the domestic sphere the way that women do, and that women do not enjoy doing the housework, despite the fact
that they just keep doing it. We are slaves to our own heads. 168
June 18, 2018
Perhaps I'm biased as a new mom, but Enright's insights were brilliant. She details the good, the bad, and the ugly of motherhood, and in such a thoughtful, articulate way. The book is now thoroughly dog-eared. Some of my favorites:
"The baby is crawling and I have forgotten the girl who could not crawl. She keeps replacing herself."
"Tea sets are good. Also blocks. It's up to you, really - what do you want to spend the rest of your life picking up?"
"And when she has done every single, possible thing to provoke, thwart, whine, refuse, baulk, delay, complicate and annoy, I wonder how the human race survived."
"Having a baby is like being run over by a small car - from the inside. There are those who would prefer to be run over by a small car while under general anaesthetic - they don't want to see the car, they say. Some people opt to be run down by a small car in their own home; they find it a more relaxing environment than a cold hospital car park. Of course, there is also, and always, the health of the car to consider - this, for me, is the bottom line. It is the main reason that I would never choose to be run over at home."
"On the day she is nine months old, I think that she has been outside of me, now, for just as long as she was inside. She is twice as old. I am the mirror and the hinge. There she is. She is just as old as herself."
"The baby is crawling and I have forgotten the girl who could not crawl. She keeps replacing herself."
"Tea sets are good. Also blocks. It's up to you, really - what do you want to spend the rest of your life picking up?"
"And when she has done every single, possible thing to provoke, thwart, whine, refuse, baulk, delay, complicate and annoy, I wonder how the human race survived."
"Having a baby is like being run over by a small car - from the inside. There are those who would prefer to be run over by a small car while under general anaesthetic - they don't want to see the car, they say. Some people opt to be run down by a small car in their own home; they find it a more relaxing environment than a cold hospital car park. Of course, there is also, and always, the health of the car to consider - this, for me, is the bottom line. It is the main reason that I would never choose to be run over at home."
"On the day she is nine months old, I think that she has been outside of me, now, for just as long as she was inside. She is twice as old. I am the mirror and the hinge. There she is. She is just as old as herself."
June 14, 2022
Enright’s “Making Babies” has plenty in common with one of my favourite books, Rachel Cusk’s “A Life’s Work”. But for friends who found Cusk a little hard on the topic, Enright is hilarious without being any less truthful. Written in the trenches while her babies napped, her missives from the frontline of mothering perfectly capture the simple joy, pain, loneliness and tedium of it all.
The last chapter took me quite by surprise. It’s not really about motherhood, except insofar as death is the counterpoint to life. It covers a cancer scare, Enright’s suicide attempt and the death of a friend. It’s some of the best writing in the book. Parts of it took my breath away. I read a review of the book today that was troubled by this chapter and wondered if the implication was that “babies are lifesavers” or if Enright was laying down some kind of literary marker in case she later decided to make good on her attempt. My reading couldn’t be further away from this dreary interpretation. Enright’s gratitude at getting to live and the light she casts on the tiny pebbles of her existence sings out between the lines. And she states it explicitly, “I want to burst into my life like a bank robber, shouting at my family and at each of my friends, ‘Nobody is going anywhere, all right? Nobody goes out that door.” Sparkling.
The last chapter took me quite by surprise. It’s not really about motherhood, except insofar as death is the counterpoint to life. It covers a cancer scare, Enright’s suicide attempt and the death of a friend. It’s some of the best writing in the book. Parts of it took my breath away. I read a review of the book today that was troubled by this chapter and wondered if the implication was that “babies are lifesavers” or if Enright was laying down some kind of literary marker in case she later decided to make good on her attempt. My reading couldn’t be further away from this dreary interpretation. Enright’s gratitude at getting to live and the light she casts on the tiny pebbles of her existence sings out between the lines. And she states it explicitly, “I want to burst into my life like a bank robber, shouting at my family and at each of my friends, ‘Nobody is going anywhere, all right? Nobody goes out that door.” Sparkling.
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