Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)Fertility

by Michelle Tea

From PEN/America Award winner, 2021 Guggenheim fellow, and beloved literary and tarot icon Michelle Tea, the hilarious, powerfully written, taboo-breaking story of her journey to pregnancy and motherhood as a 40 year-old, queer, uninsured woman

Written in intimate, gleefully TMI prose, Knocking Myself Up is the irreverent account of Tea's route to parenthood--with a group of ride-or-die friends, a generous drag queen, and a whole lot of can-do pluck. Along the way she falls in love with a wholesome genderqueer a decade her junior, attempts biohacking herself a baby with black market fertility meds (and magicking herself an offspring with witch-enchanted honey), learns her eggs are busted, and enters the Fertility Industrial Complex in order to carry her younger lover's baby.

With the signature sharp wit and wild heart that have made her a favorite to so many readers, Tea guides us through the maze of medical procedures, frustrations and astonishments on the path to getting pregnant, wryly critiquing some of the systems that facilitate that choice ("a great, punk, daredevil thing to do"). In Knocking Myself Up, Tea has crafted a deeply entertaining and profound memoir, a testament to the power of love and family-making, however complex our lives may be, to transform and enrich us.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Audiobook, Parenting, Biography

294 pages, Hardcover

First published August 2, 2022

About the author

Michelle Tea (born Michelle Tomasik) is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, prostitution, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and currently lives in San Francisco. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their views into the queercore community. In 2012 Tea partnered with City Lights Publishers to form the Sister Spit imprint.

Reviews

[Sunny Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impeccable, hilarious, refreshingly articulate

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book rubbed me the wrong way on p.6 with Michelle's dismissive criticism of mental illness. She casually mentions a friend who got pregnant "by their bipolar boyfriend" and then went on to build a good life "sans bipolar boyfriend." It put me off from the start. Then "Everyone knows Jewish people are special" on p.19 also felt icky and fetishizing, and there was the racism of assuming that medicine from India wouldn't be good. (Certainly ordering from a website that you're unfamiliar with is sketchy, but it's not because medicine in India is bad.) So I just generally felt irritated throughout the book. I did for the most part enjoy reading it, though.

It seemed odd to give Dashiell a pseudonym when she'd already revealed their actual name in a previous book, and their wedding was announced in the NY Times. I assume this is because they aren't together anymore. Also, there is a pretty big slip on p.278 when she mentions "Harris" who has never before been named in the book. It seems clear from context that this is Quentin, plus in the acknowledgements she thanks Harris Kornstein for being "the most generous person in the world." I'm surprised the editors didn't catch this breaching of the anonymity she'd tried to give him.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very queer and very funny delight, this memoir about Michelle Tea's years long project of getting pregnant and having a kid which she started at the ripe age of 40! From inseminating at home with her drag queen friend's sperm to doing IVF to implant her partner's fertilized egg in her uterus, the memoir is super candid, casual, and reassuring even while Tea goes through disappointment after disappointment. I love how open and honest she is about her mental illness, sobriety, body, witchiness, money anxiety, and other stuff conventionally considered TMI or woo-woo.

She reads the audiobook and adds a bunch of chutzpah to it that I really enjoyed. Also, lol at her determining when to have a c-section based on what her kid's astrological sign will be. These are the kinds of queer details I relish that are missing in cishet pregnancy stories.

[Alli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very torn about how to rate this one. I devoured it in 3 days (unheard of for me with nonfiction), and I deeply related to so much of the author’s struggle to have a baby as a queer woman.

There was enough that rubbed me the wrong way, though, that I don’t think I can justify giving this memoir more than three stars. At times I was offended by the author’s flippant opinions, thrown in as if they were obvious facts (yes, some of us truly can’t handle seeing children in the fertility clinic waiting room).

The overall tone of the book isn’t for me, either. The snarky, jokey tone borders on cringe and isn’t a voice I relate to in memoir. That’s likely why I haven’t read from Michelle Tea in the past and probably won’t read from her again unless it’s another topic I personally relate to.

[disco · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very raw and honest look into life before, during, and after conception.

I am envious of the love and longing that is shown throughout this book for Atticus, before he was even a bundle of cells! His origin story will now be forever immortalized. <3

[Julie Grace Immink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pregnancy obsession, a Pyrex dish of drag queen sperm, and friends named Sandwich and Banana.

[tori almond · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a fun audiobook!! this author was super fun to listen to and i feel like her personality really shined through. i learned a lot about the various ways people can get pregnant outside of sex and boy was it a lot lol. this made me think a lot about the options i may have to utilize if/when i want kids. i feel like she spoke very candidly about everything which was admirable, and i loved hearing a queer person explaining their experiences in the medical setting with both optimism and criticism.

would highly recommend if you want an interesting, slightly informational audiobook with a fun voice!

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ 34%. To put it simply, with pun intended, Michelle’s tone is not my cup of Tea. I wanted to like it so badly that I gave this three library renewals of effort before calling it quits.

[Mrs. Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knocking Myself Up is a hilariously funny (and kind of sad) book. Michelle Tea can write. I came across it by a fluke and was grabbed by the title and cover. Words cannot convey how alien her lifestyle is to mine in every conceivable respect; I recently finished reading and reviewing Fashion Victim and noting that the intersection between its world and mine was virtually null. But that’s nothing* compared to the place where Tea and I meet. Although parts of it made me uncomfortable, overall I enjoyed her book and laughed my way through it. Plus I actually learned from what she wrote, although the discord between how we see and how we say things means I won’t read any more of her work and am kind of at a loss as to whether and to whom I’d recommend it.

*I’m going to quit wasting these brilliant puns on Goodreaders unless I get some favorable response.

[Stacy Sereda · Rating 2 out of 5]

never heard of Michelle Tea before but turns out i find her extremely irritating. it gets more bearable towards the end but still, if you want to read something in the same vein but with fewer exclamation points and general chaos try An Excellent Choice by Emma Brockers

[Blyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was honest and deeply relatable, especially while trying to conceive as a queer.

[Emily Joelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Michelle Tea, and as a person who also writes about experiences with (in)fertility, I am always grateful and greedy for another memoir telling the story of this intense experience. Tea does it with the absolute charm I found in Valencia, the first book I read by her so long ago in my LGBT Lit class (I think that's where I read it--I know it was assigned to me as an undergrad).

Tea's voice is unique: it is strong and funny and self-deprecating and loving and honest.

I'm hoping one day my oldest will love Tea's books as much as I do, or will have a Michelle Tea in their life when they need it, just as I did before.

I wish this book came out when we were TTC because it would have brought me so much more comfort, but now that my 11-year-old, who was a Clomid-baby, is all big and becoming themself, it didn't have the same urgency it would have if I were in that time of my life. I nodded along to so much of it. Becoming a medical object is rotten, but all that stripped down love that comes with having a baby is such magic.


Advance copy review courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Jessica Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do I want a baby? No
Do I have a single iota of motherly instinct? No
Did I love every single word of this book? Yes

Michelle Tea is everything. I love her and the afterword was so incredibly moving. Forcing everybody I know to read this!

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michelle Tea has written of her passionate mistakes and intricate corruptions, involving and educating the reader at the same time, for 15 years. I've watched as she's been influenced by her mentor Eileen Myles to becoming a mentor to others herself, and look forward to each installment of her growing up without a net (see what I did there?).

In this latest work, she describes her attempts to get pregnant and birth a healthy child. As usual, she takes us along for the ride with her wit and wry humor, and passion and the pain of despair. Although the seed of her yearning to be a mom begins as a single woman, she shortly meets a partner named Orson who is eager to co-parent. The details of their relationship and decision to conceive this child, along with a colorful, joyful gay man named Quentin are offered conversationally. It's in the nuances and asides that the soul of the book resides.

Highly recommended for any people (queer or not) who are interested in the fertility journey of an over-40 person, as I was led to Google several times to become educated on the procedures and meds involved.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC.

Merged review:

Michelle Tea has written of her passionate mistakes and intricate corruptions, involving and educating the reader at the same time, for 15 years. I've watched as she's been influenced by her mentor Eileen Myles to becoming a mentor to others herself, and look forward to each installment of her growing up without a net (see what I did there?).

In this latest work, she describes her attempts to get pregnant and birth a healthy child. As usual, she takes us along for the ride with her wit and wry humor, and passion and the pain of despair. Although the seed of her yearning to be a mom begins as a single woman, she shortly meets a partner named Orson who is eager to co-parent. The details of their relationship and decision to conceive this child, along with a colorful, joyful gay man named Quentin are offered conversationally. It's in the nuances and asides that the soul of the book resides.

Highly recommended for any people (queer or not) who are interested in the fertility journey of an over-40 person, as I was led to Google several times to become educated on the procedures and meds involved.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC.

[Steven Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was ready to love this/hoped to laugh and learn about a topic I know nothing about, but the author’s tone bordered on pompous and was oddly righteous.

[Ell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have DNFed but I guess i wanted to find out how many nurses star signs were in this thing

[Jennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last book of the year, #30 (I made my reading goal!), and boy did I go out with a bang.

I have just closed the back cover of this book and I am weeping with resonance at Michelle Tea's description of motherhood and her big epilogue reveal.

I picked this one up because I'm doing a final edit on my own memoir about infertility, IVF, and pregnancy. My editor suggested it as a "comp" in my book proposal. I did not expect to be blown away like this, to laugh or cry this hard, to love this book and its author-protagonist so very much.

Here's the crazy thing... My story, in many ways, could not be more different from Michelle's. Hers is an amazing, beautiful, unconventional queer story, and I am a (mostly) straight (mostly) white (mostly) female human who made a baby, with the use of ART, with my cis male husband. But so many parts of this story made me cry: Oh my god, me too!!!

Things that our memoirs, in spite of their obvious differences, have in common (a partial list):
1. Complete bafflement and surprise about the process of a transvaginal ultrasound
2. Recognition that gender is made up while still valuing the information about sex chromosomes
3. An intention to be chill and noncommittal about TTC followed by a complete inability to let go of the prospect of motherhood once we got started
4. Incredulity about the process of considering what to do with unused embryos
And like a dozen more instances of me being like "wow, I wrote the same thing!"

Michelle's memoir really drive home for me that while these experiences can be so very varied and disparate, the crux of the issues at hand here are deeply relatable.

I loved every word of this book and recommend it to anyone who's staring down the barrel of infertility and ARTs or anyone with unresolved infertility and IVF "baggage" that needs processing. And also maybe just to anyone, period, because Michelle is so likeable that this story is great whether or not you can personally relate to it.

[Christine (Queen of Books)]

KNOCKING MYSELF UP is an intimate retelling of Michelle Tea's "route to parenthood." She brings the reader along for each step of the way -- and there can be so, so many steps. Tea is queer and was 40 years old at the time; both these offered a welcome perspective.

"Whether you've had kids or want to someday or thank your lucky stars on the regs that you are child-free and therefore FREE; whether you're tapped in ambivalence about this big question, if you ended a pregnancy, are seeking to adopt, to foster, or plan to stick with cats; whether your body can nurture this kind of life or not, I hope you find in my story what we all look for in a book: a gaze into someone else's life that removes us, temporarily, from our own, that leaves us with new perspectives."


Note: There was a comment or two regarding a no children policy at a fertility clinic that didn't sit right with me, just given how incredibly painful the loss of a child can be. I think she was trying to be funny ("Ladies need to toughen up. You can't zone the world to protect you from getting triggered") but the sudden heartlessness felt out of place in a book that otherwise seemed to respect everyone's different journeys to parenthood, and the pain that can be a part of that journey. Just heads up on that.

Thank you to Dey Street for a free copy of this book.

[Thomas Rasmussen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeg elsker Michelle Tea - og hendes queer autobiografiske / meta-autobiografiske projekt.

Knocking Myself Up er den tredje bog om fertilitetsbehandling og graviditet jeg har læst for nylig - og den er klart min favorit. Den har mindre litterær prætention men til gengæld en meget mere interessant stemme end Olga Ravn og Tine Høeg.

Hvor Ravn primært beskriver skrift og psykisk sygdom, og Høeg skriver autentisk inde fra smerten, så skriver Tea i et sjovt tilbageblik… sjovt fordi hun virkelig blander stort og småt… og medtager ting og hændelser, som enhver ‘forfatter’ ville have redigeret ud… samtidig med at hun skriver fra en position, hvor smerten forlængst er forløst. Barnet er født og faktisk allerede 7-8 år gammel. Så smerten kan helt troværdigt glide rundt i en queer optimisme… som væskerne i en lavalampe…

Det er virkelig en smuk dans.

Og en smuk stemme. Fuck, hvor er vi heldige, at leve i den verden Tea skriver i!

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky and funny account of the sometimes arduous road to motherhood for an over 40 queer woman. Cool to learn about the process of trying to conceive from a lens other than that of the str8 upper middle class we’re used to hearing about. Definitely not for the squeamish or sheepish! Loved reading about how her community beyond her partner assisted and held her up. It was a huge bummer to learn in the end that she and Orson got divorced :(( but I appreciate that she didn’t mention that or color her stories with it all until the very end. Her love for this person is clearly very deep. Also, I was fully on board with all of the astrology woven in until she talked about refusing to give birth to her son until his stellium was out of Scorpio?? Come onnnn

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy enjoy Tea's style and voice, but am aware it would not be for everyone. I've rarely read a sex work or sex work adjacent memoir I didn't like. Blunt and not afraid to tread into gross out, she also uses frank terms that reflect her involvement with the sex industry and drug use. This includes casual use of reclaimed slurs, so avoid if mad pride, the f-slur and whorephobic words are uncomfortable for you.

[Rada · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was such a fun, fast and unexpected read! i randomly saw this book in paris 2-3 years ago and found the cover intriguing, so when picking non-fiction reads for the summer, i went with this one.
i didn't expect it to focus so much on queerness and the whole topic of fertility and motherhood from a queer perspective. through the narration i felt really close to the community michelle tea was surrounded. and learned a bit more about fertility industry, though i don't think the technicalities of it were the point of the book. at some points i lost the thread of thought, hence why 4 stars instead of 5.

[Harneen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any lesbian parent who has birthed a child (or tried to get pregnant) will relate to this book on many levels. It sure brought it all back for me! The challenge of figuring out the donor and the mechanics of getting pregnant. A great read for all - to understand how non-hetero/traditional families are created.
Michelle Tea puts herself out there with grace and humor. I very much appreciate the read.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Michele tea and so glad this book is out there - a joyful queer love story about having a baby. Like some people have said here, sometimes the language felt a bit flippant and a little uncomfortable, but ykno, in general I had a really good time.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember reading Michelle Tea's installments of this during the xojane years and being riveted. It's fun to reread years later and especially delightful to have a queer reading of infertility. A great one for the doula shelf.

[Teddy Goetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I am glad this book exists, offering representation of this queer life experience, though I found aspects of the writing annoying.

[Avery Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. I appreciate the author's honesty in sharing a journey that many people aren't comfortable sharing with others.

[Leslee Simcoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarcastic, witty, and heartfelt. A wonderful way to describe an infertility journey from the opinion of someone who's been there as well.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful, show stopping, never the same tale of lesbian motherhood and one’s road to pregnancy