Afterbirth - Stories You Won't Read In a Parenting Magazine

Have you ever seen a room full of women laughing.  I don't mean a dainty, toss your head back, polite half-laugh, half-smile you see in stock photos. 

I'm talking a room full of women guffawing, falling over on their sides, dropping their heads on to the table, streaming mascara tears, snorting out their chardonnay laughing.  

What a lovely sight. 

What caused this un-lady like scene?  Afterbirth - Stories You Won't Read In a Parenting Magazine - a comedy show I attended at the Triad Theater in New York. (And now also a book by the same name). 

(Just for the record, the guys were hooting it up as well.)

Afterbirth is a collection of stories from real parents - moms and dads, sharing their honest adventures in parenting.   As the book jacket says:

Afterbirth's meaty topic is the unvarnished truth about parenting and how it's full of surprising if not idiotic situations.  Afterbirth is about why it can be dangerous to tell people what you really think about being a mommy, about what happens when your kids aren't who you'd expected they'd be, about unforeseen parental rage and unexpected parental resignation.  

Afterbirth is also funny - the contributors are some of the best comic writers and performers working today, turning attention very close to home and sparing no one, least of all themselves.  

After having the seen the show- I can vouch for the fact you certainly won't be reading these stories in any magazines. 

But that's actually too bad.   Yes, some of these subjects would certainly be considered taboo by mainstream publications, yet they are so relatable.  They strike us as just so true.  That's what makes them funny.  

To sit in a theater and have the permission, and reinforcement of others, to laugh out loud at these situations, is somehow incredibly freeing. 

Subject matter ranged from a dad coming to grips with his son wanting a pink bicycle, to a Catholic woman freaking out over Jewish son's circumcision, to a new mom freezing her placenta for a revenge gift. 

Some of the material in the live performance was also featured in the book.   

Here's an excerpt from Marta Ravin's Baby Powder:

There are some women who pride themselves on not changing their social lives when they are pregnant.  They still go out to parties and bars, balancing a glass of seltzer and lime on their big bellies.  I was not one of them.  But I didn't mind.  What was the point of going to a bar if you couldn't make out with strangers?

Marta Ravin on not taking her prenatal vitamins:

In my last few weeks, I fessed up to my mother.  Usually when I talked about pregnancy with my mom she would say something like, 'I drank and smoked through both pregnancies and you and your deaf, cross-eyed brother turned out fine."

From Beth Harbison's Stop Licking the Wall:

"I am completely serious.  Take that trash can off your head now."  It wasn't the first time I'd been amazed at the things I'd said in the interest of educating and protecting my children.

"Don't run with scissors"? "Don't play with matches"? Those ordinary gems were for other moms.

Moms with normal children.

For me, it was "Stop wiping your nose on the dog!"

"When I said get out of the pool to pee, I didn't mean on the sidewalk!"

"Changing your name to Superman does not give you the ability to fly.  Don't ever try that again."

The stories are powerful not only for their humor, but for their raw honesty.

Joan Rater discusses her adopted Chinese daughter in The Long Hug:

After I had Maggie [her biological daughter], when my pregnant friends would worry about whether they were going to go back to work after the baby, I'd tell them, "The first year it doesn't really matter who takes care of them.  All they need is someone to give them a bottle, change their diaper, keep them warm."  Of course, now I see that Sally [her adopted daughter] is karmic payback for my smug attitude.  Sally was fed, changed, and kept warm - and that's it.  And the wounds run so deep that two years after we've gotten her, Sally still doesn't like to be kissed on the face.  She says it hurts.

What makes Afterbirth so powerful, why it's touching a chord with so many women (and men), is that no matter how crazy, outlandish, hurtful, this can't possibly be happening bad the situation is, in the end, every performer manages to convey the love he or she has for his or her child - no matter how imperfect the child or the parent.

I think the editor Dani Klein Modisett's book dedication says it best:

For my parents, Muriel and Victor, who gave me the freedom to make mistakes and the courage to laugh about them. 

Here's to all the Afterbirth writers and performers for having the courage to share their mistakes and laugh about them with the rest of us.  

   

 

 

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I think I'm going to love this book! From the excerpts that you have above, I am already tearing up from laughing! This is definitely a must read.

[Kate DeGonia]

I am pregnant with my first baby and while combing the library for serious parenting books, I happened to run across this one. THANK GOD. On top of all the baby basics from books such as "what to expect when you're expecting", etc, these stories conveyed REAL parenting and the expectations and letdowns and unexpectedness that comes with it. It was an awesome, hilarious, touching, brutally honest book written in great style. Can we say sequel? Please? If you haven't read it, GO GET IT NOW!