Jane Roper of Babble blog Baby Squared has written a memoir that you'll want to read. Why read yet another memoir? Because when a person writes honestly, their story is automatically filled with humor, the discomfort of change and the delight in living to tell the tale.
Roper's Double Time: How I Survived- - and Mostly Thrived -- Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins, about the birth of her twin daughters, Clio and Elsa, is all of the above and more. Roper wrote a smart handbook for people with twins or any other number in their oven. Roper's relationship with her husband and the support they offer each other in the aftermath of twins (because before and aftermath is the reality of babies) is heartwarming.
I adore babies and have to put up daily resistance to the idea of encouraging my children to become teen parents. I am the type of baby gawker Roper describes in Double Time. A baby gawker with no boundaries who asks questions about nursing and post-pregnancy libido. But it's just 'cause I love babies sooooo much. Until my kids grow up, and if they chose to become parents, a gawker I'll be. If my kids have babies? May they do so surrounded by the love and support Roper describes in Double Time.
In addition to learning how to nurse two babies and function without sleep, Roper, a woman who has battled depression before, was clobbered with the who-gives-a-sh*t-scourge and then, as if that weren't enough, was additionally diagnosed with Bipolar ll. She shares the highs and lows of a mood disorder and gets an A+ for chutzpah and candid (ouch) self-reflection. By the end of Double Time you will be in love with Jane's family of four. You might shed a tear along the way (I did) and you will definitely laugh. Thanks Jane, reading your latest work before its May 8th release was a HUGE honor.
Go buy the book, one for yourself, a dozen to hand out to unsuspecting pregnant women, five for your gynocologist's office and ten to wrap for Christmas in July.