Customer Reviews

How My Breasts Saved the World: Misadventures of a Nursing Mother

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have to admit, I bought this book based upon its title alone. After breastfeeding continuously for over seven years, I really wanted to read a good, funny book about a nursing mother. However, I kept feeling that Lisa Shapiro was trying, really hard to be funny, but just kept missing the mark. I was prepared for the fact that the book might not be factually correct ( it isn't ), I was just hoping for funny. If you're looking for funny AND factually correct, I'd really recommend, "So THAT's What They're For!: Breastfeeding Basics" by Janet Tamaro

I'm pretty sure Ms. Shapiro fancied herself the next Vicki Iovine (author of the Girlfriend's Guides books) as she wrote this book. However, I found her to be far off the mark.

While Vicki's perspective is down and dirty, her writing is fundamentally infused with a great sense of compassion, generosity, and warm humor. Ms. Shapiro, on the other hand, just comes across as whiny and miserable.

As a new Mother myself, I'm currently dealing with the many ways nursing can be challenging, maddening, and downright weird. I would have gladly laughed along with Ms. Shapiro as she documents her trials. The problem is: I couldn't hear her laughing. Frankly, I just ended up feeling sorry for her. I didn't find this book funny OR inspiring OR hopeful. I'll stick with the Girlfriends Guides in the future.

Let me start by saying that the only reason this book was published at all is because (as it says in the Acknowledgements section at the back) the author's husband is a literary agent.

This book is amazing in that it manages to turn a very dull, very commonplace mother's very dull, very commonplace experiences with motherhood into a (as one other reviewer put it) "whiny and resentful" AND self-obsessed, narcissistic, ego-laden diatribe that never really lets up or has one redeeming qualiy from start to finish.

The author was admittedly so arrogant that she never bothered to do any research about breastfeeding at all, and instead decided that everything that went "wrong" with it when she tried it was actually FASCINATING enough to write a whole BOOK about. As other reviewers have already pointed out, she is blatant in her product endorsements. Her insistence that readers do things EXACTLY the way she herself did them, (as though there is only ONE right way to breastfeed), is so far from lightheartedly charming that it made this reader gag her way through the book. The only reason I finished it was that I was so hoping for some kind of redemption that never came.

The author tries far too hard to be self-deprecatingly amusing but fails ferociously, coming off as a spolied little rich girl who has been terribly inconvenienced by motherhood and can't quite figure out why. She describes her own pushiness, cattiness, and insecurity not with an air of mocking herself from the comfortable distance of one who now knows better, but with a tone almost of BRAGGING about what an awful, self-righteous snot she was to everyone she met.

The real kicker comes at the end of the book where she weans her baby at ten months because she is in a hurry to fit into lacy push-up bras again (everything is still ALL ABOUT HER, and HER convenience, not the health and welfare of her child), and then throws a huge first birthday party (complete with OPEN BAR, for pity's sake) for the unfortunate offspring. Bad enough to actually DO it, but then to BRAG openly about it in a memoir is frankly disgusting.

I should have been forwarned by the overblown title. Unfortunately Lisa Wood Shapiro's breasts did NOT save the world from this self-aggrandizing and poorly written "mom-oir". Save your money. If you are truly curious, get it from the library - at least then you won't find yourself trying to resell it on Amazon in a week.

This book is supposed to be humorous, I believe. I'm not sure I cracked so much as a smile. At least she admits she's a "know-it-all". I'm not sure I could recommend this book to a pregnant mom, only a been-there-done-that mom, if anyone.

It's not a horrible story. Seems like an advertisement at times, though: Brest Friend (NOT Boppy), Medela, various NY restaurants...

It bothers me that she assumes everyone has problems or is going to have problems breast feeding, just because she did. While many people do (it is no longer a human instinct, it seems), many mother/baby couplets do just fine on their own. I've seen it happen personally. It also bothers me that she seems to think the way she did things is absolutely the way to do it: rent a hospital grade Medela Classic (while it is a lovely pump, I used it myself, did she even TRY any other pumps??). Hire a lactation consultant at 165 bucks a pop to come to your house multiple times. I was determined to breast feed, but no way could we swing that. I did see several lactation consultants while in the hospital.

Some minor grievences: a medical person should have done a little fact-checking for her. For example, 9.9 is not a possible score on an APGAR. She probably meant 9 out of 9. If you don't understand it, Lisa, don't mention it as it has nothing to do with your story. Secondly, I know she had a vaginal delivery, however, she seems to claim only moms that give birth this way will have bleeding (C-sections moms bleed too, you know!). Minor details, I know, yet they bothered me.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I couldn't, because it just wasn't that good.

Ms. Shapiro comes across as whiny and resentful. She seems to be well-educated, but she refused to educate herself on breastfeeding, or even childbirth, and thus brought most of her problems on herself.

Her writing style is rather boring, and I just could not force myself to care about her or her baby.

Additionally, this book does women the disservice of protraying nursing as always horrible, not as something that may be difficult at times, but in the end is a wonderful thing.

This book starts out promisingly, then degenerates into an ordinary (and rather dull) personal journal. I am a nursing mother of a 2 month old, and was intrigued by the subject, but disappointed by the book.

I'm with the other reviewers who said that the author comes across as braggy and self-absorbed. Slogging through repeated accounts of how fat she looked and what she wore was tedious at best.

Also, maybe I'm a dork, but I kept wondering how she would tie the title of the book in with her story. She doesn't.

On the good side:

Lisa Shapiro "tells it like it is" about nursing and the struggles that she went through achieving it--something many women out there really want to read. She is great at characterizing the people in her story so that it reads almost like a novel, albeit one with a slow, winding plot. Also, she pokes fun at herself--the scenes in which she stops new mothers on the street and tries to drag them to the breast-feeding group are great.

The book itself not great, though, for the following reasons:

One, why Ms. Shapiro decided to write about breastfeeding isn't that clear, especially as she claims not to love nursing--I thought it would be one of those turned-about stories in which the mom has doubts, struggles, but ends up enjoying breastfeeding?

Two, she is so intensly sensitive to percieved criticism--and criticizes herself constantly--that reading the book becomes a drag. She seems to hate anybody thinner or seemingly more 'put-together' than she is, and in fact obsesses over her weight.

Also, I couldn't help wondering why such a well-educated, intelligent woman refused to read a single book about breastfeeding before having her baby. Everybody at some point has those glowy, 'it's all natural and easy', 'blue lagoon'-type fantasies that she did, but in this hyper-informed age most people read up on stuff like that and get a dose of reality.

I selected this title expecting that it would highlight the benefits of nursing balanced against the challenges many women in this country face when learning to nurse. Instead, I found a memoir that doesn't point out true misinformation or distinguish between informed and bogus help. I think many women will appreciate the fact that Lisa was able to provide her daughter with breastmilk despite her ups and downs and efforts to make her baby fit into her picture of what her family should look and feel like. To clarify some things, lactation consultants should not offer out formula as a miracle calming agent at support meetings, gentian violet is a product many mothers find useful to cure trush, although it can be messy, nursing toddlers don't have to lift up their mom's shirts and yell boobie, and her nursing mom's "ass" as she calls it, might have been twice as big were she not nursing since she indulged in chocolate and other foods that would quickly send her past an extra 500 calories. Moreover, she talks of waiting for the "reward period" to come, perhaps forgeting that the real reward in breastfeeding is being able to provide her infant with a superior food and nurturing nursing experience, watching a baby grow sustained on nothing but milk from her body. I also wish she had shared more about her second experience, did it get better, easier? Did she finally enjoy it? Still, for those interested in breastfeeding, it is an interesting and typical account of breastfeeding management in American hospitals and illustrates how birthing choices affect the nursing experience. However, if you like the memoir style and humor, try So That's What They're For! A much more informed and empathetic approach to the subject.

Not too sure why some moms didn't find this book hilarious and maybe some of us have lost the sense of humor with motherhood or just take things too seriously? Maybe it just isn't funny to some but for the most part...this book is a hoot! Her writing style is fantastic and she allows you to follow her as if you were right there. I understood all of her issues and could easily relate to many of her concerns and comments. Enjoy this book. Its a great one for nursing moms ....

As a mother who's experiencing breastfeeding difficulties, I thought that this book would be a fun way to read how another woman met with those difficulties and laugh about the humorous side of nursing problems. I could only make it sixty pages in before literally throwing the book across the room. Shapiro does nothing but whine about how difficult breastfeeding is. There's no sense of bonding with her daughter, no sense of any of the emotional benefits of breastfeeding, NOTHING; it's just page after page of self-absorbed kvetching. Furthermore, the problems she whines about are incredibly easy to fix. As a mother who is struggling with a very low milk supply, reading Shapiro's endless wailing about how hard it is to have too much milk was nigh unbearable. Here's a thought: donate it to a milk bank so other moms can use it for our babies, you self-centered nitwit. She continually goes on about how she did absolutely no research or self-education about breastfeeding and yet expects sympathy for the fact that she had difficulty, when, once again, this book is generally going to be read by women who are actually interested in the topic of breastfeeding and thus DID do our homework; the fact that she's actually able to make it work just ends up seeming undeserved.

Oh, and the claims of product placement are 100% correct. It'd be one thing if it were just talking about the fact that the My Brest Friend pillow worked better for her than the Boppy pillow, but do we really need to know that she wears Liz Lange clothes? What's more, she did absolutely no homework in the "resources" section; come on, Shapiro, can't you name more than one brand of breast pump or two brands of baby carrier, and can't you recommend a baby carrier that HASN'T been linked to spinal problems in infants?