It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita

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It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita

3.48 of 5 stars 3.48 · rating details · 2,824 ratings · 646 reviews

An irreverent and captivating memoir about the unexpected joys and glaring indignities of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood - from the beloved creator of the most popular personal blog on the web, dooce.com

Heather Armstrong gave up a lot of things when she and her husband, Jon, decided to have a baby: beer, small boobs, free time -- and antidepressants. The eighteen m

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Heather Armstrong gave up a lot of things when she and her husband, Jon, decided to have a baby: beer, small boobs, free time -- and antidepressants. The eighteen months that followed were filled with anxiety, constipation, nacho cheese Doritos, and an unconditional love that threatened to make her heart explode. Still, as baby Leta grew and her husband, Jon, returned to work, Heather faced lonely days, sleepless nights, and endless screaming that sometimes made her wish she'd never become a mother. Just as she was poised to throw another gallon of milk at her husband's head, she committed herself for a short stay in a mental hospital -- the best decision she ever made for her family.

To the dedicated millions who can't get enough of Heather's unforgettably unique style and hilarious stories on her hugely popular blog, there's little she won't share about her daily life as a recovering Mormon, liberal daughter of Republicans, wife of a charming geek, lover of television that exceeds at being really awful, and stay-at-home mom to five-year-old Leta and two willful dogs.

In It Sucked and Then I Cried, Heather tells, with trademark wit, the heartfelt, unrelentingly honest story of her battle with postpartum depression and all the other minor details of pregnancy and motherhood that no one cares to mention. Like how boring it can be to care for someone whose primary means of communication is through her bowels. And how long it can possibly take to reconvene the procedure that got you into this whole parenthood mess in the first place. And how you sometimes think you can't possibly go five more minutes without breathing in that utterly irresistible and totally redeemable fresh baby smell.

It Sucked and Then I Cried is a brave cautionary tale about crossing over that invisible line to the other side (the parenting side), where everything changes and it only gets worse. But most of all, it's a celebration of a love so big it can break your heart into a million pieces.

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Paperback, 272 pages

Published March 23rd 2010 by Gallery Books (first published March 5th 2009)

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Feb 08, 2013 Purl Scout rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: new moms, very pregnant women

Despite the obvious flaws about this book, that it is poorly written by someone who thinks she is far funnier than she actually is, I would actually recommend it to very new moms. The author does a really good job of relaying the isolation and upheaval that accompany the arrival of a baby, especially one's first. Some of her anecdotes are insightful, and could possibly be a beacon of light much needed by a frazzled and overly emotional new mom. I personally had a problem with the prose. Every pa...more

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Apr 12, 2009 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is by the author of dooce.com, a website/blog that I love. In many ways, this is just a compilation of her (hilarious) entries over the years. She covers her pregnancy, her delivery, her struggle with postpartum depression, and how hard it is to get to Starbucks with a screaming baby.

I'm not so sure that what works in the small format of her blog translates that well into a book-length project. I also think that the author isn't clear on what, exactly, she wants this book to be: a desc...more

9 likes · like · see review

Jun 29, 2010 Kathleen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

although there were times when this book did make me laugh out loud, i'm conflicted as to whether or not i could honestly say i enjoyed it. i guess i did. but there were a few things that made it hard to enjoy:
-this lady needs to learn about italics. while it may be acceptable to put things in all caps for emphasis when you're writing on a blog, it's pretty ridiculous when you're writing a book. and this lady uses a lot of all caps for emphasis. i feel that if you're going to change format, you...more

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Mar 06, 2009 Ashley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: mothers, people who love Dooce

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, books-about-writers

God bless Advanced Reader Copies. (My only complaint is that I've read about 30% of the content on her blog already and I wish it had been less of a re-tread.) Fastest I've read a book in a while.

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Mar 31, 2009 Heidi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had already read a lot of this book's content on dooce.com back when I was pregnant. At the time, I was reading as many different perspectives on pregnancy, labor, delivery, & new motherhood that I could find. I enjoyed this author then, as she is so brutally honest & funny. I found reading this in book form less enjoyable though, because it starts sounding like an awful lot of hyperbolic complaining. (Like, comparing an extra long hike to Starbucks through a parking lot to Moses wande...more

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Mar 11, 2009 Abby marked it as to-read · review of another edition

I never heard of this lady, but she says she's a "recovering Mormon". Ha, ha. She left the church before having a baby? No wonder it sucked! Doesn't she know the Relief Society brings you free dinners after you give birth??

Looks like she is speaking in Salt Lake two days after my due date with this baby. So, I probably won't make it. Plus probably I don't want to hear about post partum depression right before/after getting a newborn. Maybe I'll read it AFTER I'm past that stage.

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Feb 07, 2013 Sarah B. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: didn-t-finish, given-away

This book is cute, but definitely reads like the collection of blog posts that it is, and not a complete work on its own. The author's tone is forced hilarity, and her over-the-top exaggerations sometimes land well but most often don't. Oddly, while she writes about how becoming pregnant forced her to focus on bigger problems ("Never before had I had such a sense of what is and isn't important, and people like the bassist of the band we saw just need to grow up." [p.42]), she in fact seems to sp...more This book is cute, but definitely reads like the collection of blog posts that it is, and not a complete work on its own. The author's tone is forced hilarity, and her over-the-top exaggerations sometimes land well but most often don't. Oddly, while she writes about how becoming pregnant forced her to focus on bigger problems ("Never before had I had such a sense of what is and isn't important, and people like the bassist of the band we saw just need to grow up." [p.42]), she in fact seems to spend most of the book focusing on the small inconveniences of pregnancy, such as how hard it is to get out of bed with a 3rd-trimester belly.

I didn't make it very far past Armstrong's delivery, and what I was really hoping for was a frank discussion of her postpartum depression. However, based on the first half of the book, I'm guessing she doesn't drop her schtick and honestly discuss her experiences. I didn't share any of her anxieties. Most annoying to me was that the baby looked so much like the father that she hardly believed it was her own. Even though this was supposed to be funny I thought it was a little insensitive: she had a perfectly healthy, lovely baby, which is not really grounds for complaint; and furthermore it is possible to love and be proud of a baby you are caring for even if, heaven forbid, it isn't even yours, so having one that doesn't particularly look like you shouldn't be cause for alarm, or fake alarm, or whatever.

There were so many interesting questions I was hoping to read about: what is it like to both have your experience, and have to mediate your experience for your blog readers? How did you feel about publishing so much information about your infant online, and did you worry about her future privacy concerns? How did postpartum depression affect your ability to parent and your ability to write about parenting? Did leaving your faith affect your relationship with your family, which must have changed anyway when your child was born? Did having a child affect your faith? None of these questions was answered for me. Instead, she spent page after page wondering things like, "Why couldn't we have her go from toddlerhood straight to self-sufficiency and bypass all the bad hair and braces and lessons in menstruation and endless nights of crying because her boobs aren't big enough?" [p.135]. Cute, but not what I was hoping for.

Despite all this, I think this book would have been fun to read in the last few months of pregnancy or the first few months of parenthood. It's kind of like the memoir equivalent of a comic strip. It's not very deep or thoughtful, but it might be good for a few laughs in what is otherwise a very strange and difficult time. I would not recommend it for people not currently giving birth, though.(less)

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Jul 13, 2012 Angie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Synopsis: "Heather Armstrong gave up a lot of things when she and her husband, Jon, decided to have a baby: beer, small boobs, free time -- and antidepressants. The eighteen months that followed were filled with anxiety, constipation, nacho cheese Doritos, and an unconditional love that threatened to make her heart explode. Still, as baby Leta grew and her husband, Jon, returned to work, Heather faced lonely days, sleepless nights, and endless screaming that sometimes made her wish she'd never b...more Synopsis: "Heather Armstrong gave up a lot of things when she and her husband, Jon, decided to have a baby: beer, small boobs, free time -- and antidepressants. The eighteen months that followed were filled with anxiety, constipation, nacho cheese Doritos, and an unconditional love that threatened to make her heart explode. Still, as baby Leta grew and her husband, Jon, returned to work, Heather faced lonely days, sleepless nights, and endless screaming that sometimes made her wish she'd never become a mother. Just as she was poised to throw another gallon of milk at her husband's head, she committed herself for a short stay in a mental hospital -- the best decision she ever made for her family.
To the dedicated millions who can't get enough of Heather's unforgettably unique style and hilarious stories on her hugely popular blog, there's little she won't share about her daily life as a recovering Mormon, liberal daughter of Republicans, wife of a charming geek, lover of television that exceeds at being really awful, and stay-at-home mom to five-year-old Leta and two willful dogs.
In It Sucked and Then I Cried, Heather tells, with trademark wit, the heartfelt, unrelentingly honest story of her battle with postpartum depression and all the other minor details of pregnancy and motherhood that no one cares to mention. Like how boring it can be to care for someone whose primary means of communication is through her bowels. And how long it can possibly take to reconvene the procedure that got you into this whole parenthood mess in the first place. And how you sometimes think you can't possibly go five more minutes without breathing in that utterly irresistible and totally redeemable fresh baby smell."

My Review: I needed to read this one! I needed to see a little humor about pregnancy, birth and life with a new baby. Though Heather seems to have a dry sense of humor, it still spoke to me. She takes us on a journey through her pregnancy and her life with a new baby. While much of the book is witty and fun, it does touch on a more serious issue of postpartum depression which can effect many women. Not only does Heather tell us about that, but is strong enough to open up about her already underlying depression issues which compounds the postpartum and how she dealt with that and got the help needed. While these subjects really could have brought me down as I near the end of my pregnancy, her style and light approach made it a real possibility but also gave it the upturn I needed to face it. Its a great book to read for someone like myself who is nearing the end or a recent new mom but only if you can catch the sense of humor.(less)

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Mar 04, 2012 Meggan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had been an avid Dooce reader since before she had Leta, but have greatly tapered off my reading in the last few years. I felt like her writing became more "gimmicky" (ALL CAPS! WOO!) and too quick to make a "let's shock my dad by saying BALLS!" joke. That said, when I saw this book on the library shelves I picked it up because I thought, hey, I've liked her stuff before, so why not?

Much of it is reprinted from the blog. I recognized not only specific anecdotes, but actual phrases from her blo...more

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Dec 23, 2011 N. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought she did an excellent job of describing pregnancy, giving birth, her postpartum depression, and being a mom. This is the reason why I read, for the ability to walk in someone else's shoes and to understand what it must be like to go through something I have yet to experience like postpartum depression. I've had it described to me but I only could begin to understand when I read it written out in book form. I also liked the part where she talked about liking her job 3 days out of the mon...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this authors warped and sarcastic sense of humor. If we lived in the same town, we'd probably be friends. I too, was raised in a Mormon family, and I too, upon leaving home gave up spending my Sundays in church for hours, preferring to worship the TV in my pj's on the couch. Although I do occasionaly miss the white bread served during the sacrament. My husband prefers wheat bread, as did my mother, and I do covet (yes, I know that's breaking a commandment) the white bread that I...more

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Mar 02, 2011 Karen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I bought this after being intrigued by its mention in an article in the NYTimes magazine last week. I'd never heard of the website dooced, which is the source of this author's fame. I wanted to read this because it is supposed to be about her postpartum depression. But, despite the supposed depression taking a starring role in both the introduction and the acknowledgments, there is surprisingly little of it in the book itself. There are more stories about her dog and her hemorrhoids than about h...more

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Jan 16, 2011 Anne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Humor is a strange thing...what some people absolutely love, I've found I just can't stand. The author of this book is apparently one of the most popular, if not the most popular blogger on the internet (I have no idea how such things are measured). This is her semi-serious book about giving birth, the miracles of motherhood, and how she dealt with it all given her history of depression. I found most of the things she joked about to be tiresome, and her effusive emotions about her love for every...more Humor is a strange thing...what some people absolutely love, I've found I just can't stand. The author of this book is apparently one of the most popular, if not the most popular blogger on the internet (I have no idea how such things are measured). This is her semi-serious book about giving birth, the miracles of motherhood, and how she dealt with it all given her history of depression. I found most of the things she joked about to be tiresome, and her effusive emotions about her love for everything having to do with her child were just annoying. The books came across as a love letter to her kid - which while very sweet in the abstract isn't something I'm particularly interested in reading. What I was interested in reading about was her experience with post-partum depression - but she doesn't get to this until nearly the end of the book. I think many people think of post-partum depression as "the blues" or general crying and mopiness. Armstrong was quite honest about how her depression utterly debilitated her - how it prevented her from sleeping, and caused her not to just lie around as many people assume, but actually to do the opposite - to cause her such anxiety and stress that she was physically incapable of slowing down. Armstrong credits her husband and some of her family for getting her through her most difficult time - and this seems much deserved - but I did feel like the solution was mostly time and medical intervention - and maybe that is the real solution. I think I was looking for more in terms of how to better recognize this problem in oneself and others, how one can be a support for a family member going through this, and how one can ask for help if they recognize the symptoms in themselves. While billed as a book about getting through mental illness, this was more just a memoir of one woman's experience with childbirth and the first year or raising a first child - not my cup of tea, but certainly something (given her popularity) that apparently a lot of people are in the market for.
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May 20, 2010 Alison Whittington rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Although I was an active reader of dooce.com (I've since drifted away) at the time that the events in this book were happening, I have a whole new appreciation of them now that I am at the end of my pregnancy and about to enter motherhood. I applaud Heather's honesty and forthrightness regarding her depression before and after childbirth, the trials of being a new parent, and most of all, the joy and love she feels for her daughter.

While I still don't think I can fully appreciate her story unti...more

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Dec 08, 2009 Celia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been reading Heather Armstrong's blog, dooce.com, for quite a while now, so it was a natural next step to read her first full-length book. It's easily as funny and snarky as her blog. I did not read it because it was about giving birth, but that has proven to be an interesting perk to the experience; she does not mince words or descriptions of what it's really like to be pregnant, and it's both entertaining and intimidating to read such an honest account. More importantly, she deals with po...more

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Dec 06, 2009 jess rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, blogger

For the eight hundredth time, I really don't like books that used to be blogs so I don't know why I keep reading them, but here I am. Once again. Here is the book version of dooce.com's pregnancy, birth, postpartum depression, mental breakdown, and healing process. I liked this book because Heather B. Armstrong is a very funny person. She overshares. She says the things you are not supposed to say. She's a little blue island in the middle of big red Utah, and her mom is the Avon World Sales Lead...more

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Oct 25, 2009 Ciara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autobio-memoir, read-in-2009

i oicked this up because i liked the cover. i am a big fan of sad/angry things written in the form of a cross-stitch. it purported to be a memoir of a woman who had a baby & then had a breakdown, spent some time in a mental hospital, got her head screwed on straight, & perservered with parenting to write a book about her experiences. & to top it off, the author bio made it clear that the book was spawned by a blog, which is an ever-increasing phenomenon that still bugs the shit out o...more i oicked this up because i liked the cover. i am a big fan of sad/angry things written in the form of a cross-stitch. it purported to be a memoir of a woman who had a baby & then had a breakdown, spent some time in a mental hospital, got her head screwed on straight, & perservered with parenting to write a book about her experiences. & to top it off, the author bio made it clear that the book was spawned by a blog, which is an ever-increasing phenomenon that still bugs the shit out of me. is it so hard to just write, without writing on a blog? is it so hard to develop your craft without constant sycophancy from the blog-reading peanut gallery? whatever. i expected it to be a two-star book, but a decent way to spend a weekend, maybe a few laughs, maybe a few life lessons about the tough job of being a parent.

there were a few grating things about this book, like the endless hyperbole & heather's penchant for writing things all in caps for emphasis. seriously, flip through the book & i bet there will be at least one word in ALL CAPS on every single page. i expected it to annoy me, but...it kind of worked. the hyperbole kind of worked too. heather was writing about a really difficult topic: choosing to go off anti-depressants in order to have a baby, being walloped with post-partum depression, having to stop breastfeeding her baby so she could go back on meds, & eventually decamping to a mental health facility to get herself sorted out. the ALL CAPS & hyperbolic statements helped leaven the drama & made me chuckle a few times. there were times when i thought i might be reading something by the new, updated, more straight-shooting erma bombeck. & i love me some erma bombeck.

in the final chapter of the book, heather writes about how awful the lead up to her stay in the institution was, & the hell she put her husband through because she couldn't manage her anxiety & her mood swings. the seriousness of what was going on was more clear in these few brief sentences than it was in the 150+ pages documenting pregnancy & the first few months of new motherhood, which seemed more like a litany of things not going according to plan, or being harder than she expected. i can understand downplaying the bad shit you went through, for the sake of protecting yourself from embarrassment, as well as protecting yourself from dwelling on the awful things you may have done when you were at your lowest point, but...i still kind of wish there had been more build-up, more of a narrative structure, maybe, than what we actually got.

that said, i liked this book a lot more than i expected to, even though the stories from after getting out of the mental institution are just kind of your typical mommy-&-baby stories. which are all well & good, but not necessarily earth-shattering. but i still found heather's voice surprisingly engaging & definitely really honest about the tedium & anxiety of being a new parent.(less)

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Oct 03, 2009 Catherine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, mainstream-us, medicine, mental-illness

A very fun read, It Sucked And Then I Cried is the story of Heather Armstrong's (dooce of dooce.com's) first pregnancy, experience of childbirth, and subsequent post-partum depression. I read it for the latter of all those reasons - I so enjoy glimpsing how other people have fallen apart and picked themselves back up, often with the aid of pharmacological awesomeness; it provides such a great sense of camaraderie - and Armstrong was brutally honest, entertaining, and thought-provoking on each of...more

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Aug 08, 2009 Clare rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If everyone contemplating having children read this book, there would probably be fewer births - that being said, Armstrong has written the most truthful book about the first few months of being a parent that I have ever read. She is a brave author, never flinching from the gross or from events that might put her in a bad light.

It's been a long time since I have read a book that was truly laugh-out-loud funny but "It Sucked and Then I Cried" did it for me. Armstrong is hilarious. She is also bra...more

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Jun 25, 2009 amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, bloggers, motherhood

I'm gonna go with the positive-negative-positive form for this because, really, I do like Heather as a blogger and momversation panelist. I get a lot of little laughs from the (often) dark humor in her blogging style. Most of her writing can be viewed as raw, rational and relatable.

But... in her memoir, the exaggerations are just too much for me. She gives the worst Negative Nancy a run for her money in this one. Even in her attempts to be warm and fuzzy and shed some light on the positive aspe...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Joanna rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-2011, non-fiction

This is a fairly funny baby memoir that does not take itself too seriously. Heather Armstrong is nothing if not an engaging and entertaining writer, and a talented blogger, but I sometimes felt that she had not made any adjustments for the very different endeavor of creating a full length book. Particularly in terms of style, using all capital letters for emphasis can be an amusing visual on the internet, but looks both lazy and amateurish in an actual book - as if the writer could come up with...more

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Aug 27, 2009 Monica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3 stars, because she's funny, but I did wind up skimming or skipping over some of the book.

Not sure why I read motherhood memoirs sometimes, because I have absolutely no interest in having children. Books like this help reinforce that, which is fine with me. Very detailed account of pregnancy and childbirth, sparing no details. I'm talking details like hemorrhoids and constipation. As I'm a person who appreciates what others deem "TMI" (too much information), I enjoyed this aspect of the book....more

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Jun 09, 2009 Ashley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I borrowed this book from Casey because I had recently gotten hooked onto Heather Armstrong's blog (Dooce.com) via friends who had been reading it for a while. Heather is witty, brutally honest, and so human in her writing. I love that she is able to take something like pregnancy, labor & deliver, and having an infant and be more honest and raw about it than anyone out there has ever been, but have it still be thoughtful and carry a message. Sometimes the things she says in the book and her...more

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Jul 09, 2011 Molly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: madness, parenthood, great-escapes

7/6: I read the first chapter last night before bed and fell in love. When I see pregnant women, I feel twinges of jealousy--and now I know it's not at the physical experience, though full of wonder and scientifically fascinating--instead, it's the anticipation of how life will change in a scant few months. She describes the pressure and disaster of pregnancy, those awful pains, the head-in-a-toilet-bowl consistency. And I love that, as a daily morning-sickness sufferer myself. I appreciate the...more 7/6: I read the first chapter last night before bed and fell in love. When I see pregnant women, I feel twinges of jealousy--and now I know it's not at the physical experience, though full of wonder and scientifically fascinating--instead, it's the anticipation of how life will change in a scant few months. She describes the pressure and disaster of pregnancy, those awful pains, the head-in-a-toilet-bowl consistency. And I love that, as a daily morning-sickness sufferer myself. I appreciate the commiseration. I think, with my sporadic readings of her blog (which I adore, for the record), I appreciate the small-dose design of a post. Its length allows for the meandering much more generously than a book format does, so I feel less hit by a spaceship. But I love it. And I want to read more, but Maya is awake and examining the world with her mouth, so I'll have to wait, and I'll also have to put down protective covering of the sofa for when I puddle with giggles.

7/9: I snorted a lot while reading this book. A lot. Because I think Heather Armstrong is one of the funniest writers out there and funny is damn hard. But I also cried while reading this book. Twice. Once, when she had to give up breastfeeding to go onto the right doses of medication (I realized I could not go off my meds to donate my excess milk and that really punched me in the gut, so much that I sobbed a lot, but I can still feed my bear and I am so so lucky for that). And the last few pages. I'll let you read it to find out why.

Armstrong wrote this book so that others like her would not feel so alone, and I'm glad I read this because I hung out in a dark tunnel for a while and pondered those deep and dark questions like, "Would she be better off with or without me?" and ultimately, I decided The Right Thing too, but it's not easy to get there. My heart thumps out big gobs of love for this fine woman--thank you for writing this and thank you for being funny. I'm going to have to remember to read this book again, maybe when I'm loony enough to want to get pregnant with number two. (The outcome has been lovely, but holy heck that journey was a doozy.) (less)

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Jan 28, 2011 Jennifer Jensen (Literally Jen) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, library-copy

I admit I was a little hesitant to read this based on a few things I'd read and heard, but it is a book club reading assignment and it needed to get done by Monday. Surprisingly, I liked it. I didn't love it, and the jury's still out as to whether I'll read Things I Learned About My Dad: Humorous and Heartfelt Essays, edited by the creator of www.dooce.com at some point in my life.

Heather B. Armstrong is a fellow Utahn and non-Mormon, as well as the founder of dooce.com. She has also battled wit...more

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Oct 20, 2009 Callie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Okay, I have read about 82 memoirs in a row and I think I'm finally burning out on memoirs. Thus, my review of this might be a bit jaded. I am giving it three stars simply because she made me laugh out loud a couple of times, anyone who can do that has some talent. The first half of the book she describes her pregnancy in great detail which frankly was tedious because it was just creative complaining and exaggeration. I think this is her schtick, but I will say she's good at it. She was pregnant...more Okay, I have read about 82 memoirs in a row and I think I'm finally burning out on memoirs. Thus, my review of this might be a bit jaded. I am giving it three stars simply because she made me laugh out loud a couple of times, anyone who can do that has some talent. The first half of the book she describes her pregnancy in great detail which frankly was tedious because it was just creative complaining and exaggeration. I think this is her schtick, but I will say she's good at it. She was pregnant with her first when I was pregnant with my first and maybe if I had read that stuff when I was going through it, I would have liked it better. As it was, I was like 'ho hum, your pregnancy is exactly like everyone else's on the planet do we really need to hear about your heartburn and nausea?' After the baby comes we hear more complaints, sleeplessness, baby's crying, again, stuff every woman on the planet deals with when she has a baby. The part that was a bit more interesting is when she gets into some detail about her postpartum depression and the take away from this: Her husband is a SAINT, I know he's no longer a Latter Day Saint, ha ha, but nonetheless that man is akin to Gandhi in suffering through that with her and not abandoning her...and I say that with compassion for her because I know that she couldn't help what was happening to her body--all those chemicals and hormones going crazy like they do after you have a baby. She dealt with extreme anxiety, depression, insomnia, loss of appetite, plus many many physical ailments.. My tiny taste of pp depression lasted for about 2-3 weeks after my first baby was born and I swear to you I could actually feel the hormone changes. It felt like there was a sponge inside my chest and someone was wringing it out and it was then going out through my blood stream, and the bottomless pit of despair and the sheer terror of being in charge of such a little helpless being, but I digress.

She is the most popular mommy blogger around and I guess I would say stick to the blogging, I think it suits her much better, this book seemed like bits of stories that she sort of put together, but things weren't fully integrated. (less)

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May 10, 2009 Aurora rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A couple chapters in, I had already decided that this was just another one of those "I'm going to write a kooky offbeat book about being a first-time mom" things. But once I got past the pregnancy chapters (she was sick all the time, it was horrible, okay, okay) and baby Leta entered the picture, I decided to stick with Armstrong and see how she did. In between the chapters about breastfeeding trials, the torture that is a screaming infant, and the (predictable) geez-being-a-mom-is-HARD stuff, w...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Put simply: this book is easy to read and entertaining.
To elaborate: While Armstrong's voice is casual and funny throughout, she does include many instances of genuine and heartfelt emotion (which is nice, and in my opinion - necessary in such a story). However, I couldn't help but feel grated by the relentless humor - funny for the first 100 pages or so, tiresome and redundant for next 150. I read it nonetheless - but wading through plentiful caps-lock sentences and dissecting vernacular jokes...more

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Jan 20, 2010 Christina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this memoir by the writer of dooce.com, but I can appreciate that it wouldn't appeal to everybody. I found her outspoken honesty refreshing and amusing, but can see how some things would just be gross and/or inappropriate for many readers. Like, for example, discussions of the author's struggles with constipation and hemorrhoids.
And her style is really more suited to shorter pieces, like blog posts. Even though I like her writing, Armstrong's constant hyperbole and USE OF CAPS FOR EMPH...more

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Apr 20, 2012 Nags rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, library-borrowed, non-fiction

I was practically writing this review as I was reading the book.

Sooo... here's the thing. I have subscribed to dooce.com and do skim through per posts on and off. More than her posts, her pics are nice to go through but they are very repetitive. But this is not about her blogging skills, it's about her writing skills.

This woman can write, and she is extremely funny. There were a couple of moments in the book when I laughed out loud. But. I couldn't read the book and feel at one with the author...more

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About Heather B. Armstrong

My name is Heather B. Armstrong. Some of you may remember me as Heather B. Hamilton. I am married to a charming geek named Jon. We live in Salt Lake City, Utah, with our four-year-old daughter, Leta Elise, and our six-year-old SuperMutt, Chuck, and a ten-month-old miniature Australian Shepherd, Coco. The chaos in our house is unreal.

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“For nine months I grew a human being inside my belly and then I pushed it out my vagina and now I'm feeding it with my boob. Biology is so fucking weird.” — 12 people liked it

“He asked us if we'd like to do it [deliver the baby] today. Today? You mean, this day? The day that is this one?” — 4 people liked it

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title link	preview: It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita
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