32 Australian women write letters to their past selves about what they wish they’d known as new mums.

Books rarely make me cry but I bawled my way through the entirety of this collection of essays/letters. I dearly wish I’d read it in the weeks or months after Maddy was born, when I felt so utterly alone, so inadequate, so lost. Having never been particularly baby-oriented, I was woefully unprepared for how brutal and yet also mind-numbingly dull new motherhood turned out to be, and reading this collection was almost cathartic. Everyone’s experience is unique, but there is also a commonality to it that comes through thanks to the raw honesty of these women - the shock that you’re just allowed to take this tiny helpless human home, the isolation in those first weeks (whether or not you have good support around you), the feeling totally unprepared, the confusion at how such a tiny baby with such tiny clothes produces so much washing, the feeling of your brain being total mush, the loss of your sense of self, the struggle of not feeling good enough, that everyone else is managing and you are just flailing around, the not being able to think straight because you’re sleep-deprived. The tag-line on the cover has overtones of a how-to guide, which this is not - it’s very much about the brutal experience of new motherhood (in an anglophone Western societal context), and I think most struggling new mothers could find some solace in at least one of these women’s experiences. It’s worth noting that they are all biological mums, bar one, whose wife carried their child - this collection may not resonate as strongly for those embarking on other forms of motherhood. I realise that this review paints a bleak picture of the first weeks of motherhood - it’s not (mostly), it’s just that the moments of joy aren’t the ones that leave you feeling despair and desperation. A cathartic collection of raw mini-essays around the challenges facing first-time mothers, which left me feeling reassured that I wasn’t alone in my bewildering experience of isolation and inadequacy.