Picture the following: A toy-strewn living room, a kitchen
where the dishes haven’t magically loaded themselves into the dishwasher, a
wild toddler sans underpants, but covered in stickers, and me - clad in a pair
of black yoga pants and t-shirt. My
life as I knew it and the white carpet in the house really haven’t been the
same since my daughter’s blessed arrival.
So, when The Yummy Mummy Manifesto flew into radar, I was
intrigued.
The subtitle is Baby, Beauty, Balance, and Bliss….all very important B words. It’s meant to be a book of advice and reflections on the wide mental and physical world of motherhood. And as you probably know, I love my mommy books.
The author, Anna Johnson, defines Yummy as “joyous, naughty,
delicious, creative, intrepid, and sensually alive”, and concedes that
mothering in this fashion is not taking the easy or popular road. She covers everything from style to nutrition to running a house and how to stay sane.
The heart of the book is valuable and holds an inspired message. Despite sometimes feeling like just a “cradle and service station”, or guilty about any combination of things, she reminds mothers to follow our instincts.
That said, parts of the book resemble a narcissistic monologue on bohemian mothering, which may be world’s apart from your own experience. I found myself taking little gems and skipping over other chapters completely (particularly some of the pregnancy-related ones).
For example, she completely lost me when she devoted pages
on pages about “utterly scrumptious names” (Nothing could make me name my son
Adonis or daughter Gogo), but then reeled me back in with this sentence:
“Until I finally joined the ranks, I hated every homily I heard about the lifestyle, commitment, and knotty conundrums of motherhood.”
Followed with:
“Erma Bombeck carried on about domestic angst and housewife hell with a dry, endless cackle, but now I realize she was a Buddha of suburbia. Only a Zen master could sail through all this smiling, and monks don’t mother. They meditate.”
Another favorite: “It’s a passion and it’s a job, and just because it needs to be done, it shouldn’t obliterate the identity and importance of the woman doing it.”
Reading The Yummy Mummy Manifesto is a bit like listening to
an older sister you both admire and question. Some of what she says will be dead on helpful and
affirming, and other parts are just going to cause you to roll your eyes. I believe that’s because Johnson writes in a candid tone, and her book isn't meant to be an instruction manual. It's written more like a blog - something to be savored bit by bit, but not used as a rigorous reference.