Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Nathanson, reviewed by Jessica

book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative            243 
chapter.  Or they may read the “abnormal” chapter with less anxiety because 
they have already recognized their symptoms in the “normal” chapter.  Livoti 
and Topp present the information in the “abnormal” chapters in a way that 
neither frightens nor condemns.  They urge women to think of the rules 
of pregnancy (i.e., avoiding alcohol and specific foods) as “goals rather than 
threats” and insist that “it’s more important to be calm than vigilant” (15). 
So even if mothers locate their concerns in “abnormal” chapters, they can 
maintain low stress levels. 
The authors also use a supportive tone.  Livoti and Topp consistently reit-
erate that most women have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies, which 
is reassuring for all mothers.  While they divide the stages of pregnancy into 
normal and abnormal, they do not focus on age.  Instead, within both the 
normal and abnormal ranges, Livoti and Topp include issues that women of 
differing ages may face.  Not singling out young mothers or women of ad-
vanced maternal age forwards the authors’ efforts of lowering anxiety.  
While Livoti and Topp do not criticize mothers based on age or adherence 
to pregnancy protocols, the text suffers from its medical bias and its retell-
ing of Livoti’s office visits.  Livoti and Topp denigrate a large population of 
women by negating approaches to pregnancy and childbirth that do not cen-
tre on medical interventions.  At one point the authors glibly state, “All I’m 
saying is have your baby at the hospital” (268).  Livoti and Topp do not give 
fair treatment to alternate childbirth options.  Additionally, the book features 
sidebars that include Livoti’s recollections from her years in private practice. 
Largely anecdotal, these sidebars are not relevant to the topics under discus-
sion and interrupt one’s reading of the text.   
For women who desire a strictly medical perspective on pregnancy and 
childbirth, Stress-Free Pregnancy Guide offers detailed explanations that do 
not belittle readers.  Disappointingly, however, it denigrates mothers who do 
not prescribe to the authors’ medical approach.  Overall, Carol Livoti and 
Elizabeth Topp offer accessible insight into pregnancy and childbirth that 
Fit to Bust is a collection of Allison Blenkinsop’s breastfeeding-themed songs, 
additional comic writings, and information about breastfeeding. While the 
book contains some useful information, it lacks critical awareness. This might 
be expected in a book of humour. However, Blenkinsop has attempted to 
Fit to Bust:  A Comic Treasure Chest  
Alison Blenkinsop.  
 Brighton: Great Britain:  Pen Press Publishers, 2008.
Reviewed by Jessica Nathanson
book reviews
244           volume 1,  number 1
incorporate both a political argument and humour, and the result is neither 
convincing nor funny.
Blenkinsop often introduces an issue or an argument without adequate dis-
cussion or exploration of its implications. For example, Blenkinsop, a pastoral 
assistant and former missionary, as well as lactation consultant, mentions a 
client whose “amazing commitment to breastfeeding, despite severe pain, is 
rooted in the Christian faith she shares with her husband” (69). Elsewhere in 
the book, Blenkinsop implies that the notion that breastfeeding is painful is 
a myth. Women’s breastfeeding pain thus becomes something that faith can 
carry them through, something they must rise above, and something that is 
simultaneously denied. In another instance, this reader was uncomfortable 
with the way in which the body of a mother with a disability was used solely 
to argue for the benefits—to all mothers—of a particular breastfeeding posi-
tion. Blenkinsop speculates that the “leaning-back posture must have been 
ideal for Alison Lapper, the artist born with no arms … [who] was shown 
breastfeeding … in … [a] bbc documentary” (34). And that is all Blenkinsop 
writes about Lapper or about disability. This problematic use of Lapper to 
bolster her argument without an exploration of disability and breastfeeding 
or mothering more generally is similar to the way in which Blenkinsop uses 
global anecdotes to promote breastfeeding. While she does mention the harm 
formula companies have caused, she does so, again, solely to promote breast-
feeding and to criticize formula companies, not to give voice to women in the 
global communities she mentions so briefly.
Most frustrating for this reader is that Blenkinsop tends to make claims 
about breastfeeding that she does not support with evidence. For example, 
she states, “Mothers of multiples may be told that breastfeeding won’t be 
possible, but here are fully breastfed triplets in Brazil” (a picture of the family 
follows this claim) (47). Nowhere, however, does Blenkinsop address how 
this Brazilian mother managed to breastfeed her triplets, nor does she explain 
for the benefit of other mothers how any mother might do the same. All we 
know is that, in this particular instance, it was possible, and this information 
may tend to make mothers of multiples who are struggling with breastfeeding 
feel less rather than more empowered. More useful to mothers of multiples 
would be a step-by-step guide with links to support groups. 
Blenkinsop’s book is useful primarily for its collection of songs and links 
to unusual bits of information, such as knitting patterns for breasts (and even 
for healthy newborn stool), which could be used to create educational tools to 
help new parents see what a correct latch or a healthy three-day old’s bowel 
movement should look like. The book is most appropriate for lactation con-
sultants or activists who are in search of humorous or political songs related 
to breastfeeding.


English

Fit to Bust: A Comic Treasure Chest

Smith, Katherine

280           volume 1,  number 2
katherine smith
Modesty
She’s almost ready to read philosophy,
cup of good coffee beside her,
turning the pages of Adorno
and Wittgenstein before the children
wake for school and remind her of the movie
they watched the night before. Buckets
of pig’s blood poured over a teenage girl.
The twins couldn’t be comforted by the encyclopedia
she read them after: black holes
like garbage disposals sucking planetary debris,
an infinite universe that will one day crumple
to the size of a period. Sarah yawned.
The twins screamed and couldn’t sleep.
Past midnight Sarah sang lullabies– 
Shenandoah,  Down in the Valley.
Alone in bed, undisturbed by excessive
feeling, she waits for the sun to light up
her son’s jar of glass marbles on the dresser.
She doesn’t know if the beauty of a few bright stones
is an arbitrary construct or not, only that
for a few minutes of lulled consciousness,
long enough for an hour of thought,
she’s indifferent
to the sun’s insentience,
to the grief of her children’s dreams.


Modesty

 journal of the motherhood initiative            283 
Leah watches clouds that arch, scatter,
like her family’s cats fleeing the sound
of the vacuum cleaner’s roar. The plane
carries her from Washington, away from
the early morning quarrel with her
thirteen year old daughter who wouldn’t
dress for school. A distance like self-help
books that teach Leah how to breathe
on the plane so her ribs won’t ache.
Her hands ruffle the pages on her lap
which describe her life quietly
as she might describe an ocean
moving beneath the wingspan of the plane.
But Leah can’t bear reading
just now, ink regular as waves
of nausea. Not that she doesn’t want
to be soothed. It’s just that the turquoise
green and gold-flecked waves 
of the Atlantic flutter beneath
the plane’s low flying shadow like
an immense petal, and the world
unfurls like a spring too real
for frost that would heal beauty.
katherine smith
Self-Help


Self-Help

Wheeler, Lesley

 journal of the motherhood initiative            183 
lesley wheeler
from hell, or into hell. We hike. We 
       stop. We stop again. The children
  sob, they drain juice boxes, they trudge 
           up to the Devil’s Marbleyard on the walk I begged 
   to take because my days are small. “Leisurely,” 
    the web site said. Summer dissolves 
            into gray wads of cloud, the green leaves singe  
           as we mount. The sandstone boulders look nothing 
  like marbles, they are sharp
 as the memory of hurting someone on purpose, two hundred
       million years ago when this was a beach and Scotland tore itself
 across the proto-Atlantic and the continent ricocheted over to Africa,
  rifting this piperock with its ancient worm-
   holes onto a high ridge. We can’t believe
         how uninspiring it is. Then the rain starts. 
    What is a birthday without   
            mistakes, burnt breakfast in bed,
    damaged gifts, a whiff of sulfur? Next
          year I will know better
         than to aspire to any heights. I will learn how to cheat
          disappointment. Disaster makes us all feel lighter and we skid
 rapidly down to the parking lot, where the car
           is now dead. I say “we,” the nuclear family
  crawling up and down rocks like a
        centipede, but really we are
   four kittens in a sack, four kinds of misery   
                with sharp claws and a bad presentiment, and 
 the devil himself grasps the burlap. Even if none
   of the rest of them do, I 
    smell winter like a mauled pine, like 
   burning brake-pads. Oh you bad man,   
    mister time-rolls-away, please 
      let the engine run.
Thirty-Ninth Birthday


Thirty-Ninth Birthday

Puotinen, Sara

Living and Grieving Beside Judith

Contributor Notes

184           volume 1,  number 1  journal of the motherhood initiative            185 
Spring breaks in an early tide 
of undergraduates, shivering 
in their halter tops while I,
resigned to pallor, loll in an indoor pool.
My swimsuit has a granny skirt.
Myrtle is sacred to Venus, whose thighs
are serious too. Soon I girdle 
my waist with a hotel towel, 
milk stinging in my breasts, and tow
my daughter back across the parking lot.
An suv full of aged golfers halts to explore me. 
One, his vision feeble, finds a page in his binder,
holds up the scarlet letters: show me.     
 
What can he mean? I wonder.
He shrugs and, impervious to shame,
revs into a nearby slot. Gradually,
my dense atmosphere traps the heat
and boils my rocky plains. 
Venus grows old, 
the skin on her belly pouches,
but she’s the same as she ever was,
strangled and hidden in poisonous gases. 
Myrtle Beach Convergence
lesley wheeler


Myrtle Beach Convergence

Lisella, Julia

 journal of the motherhood initiative            217 
julia lisella
 Whatever my father ever asked for 
 was slight and not even
that he be remembered, but that the sound of the wheels
moved evenly, the toasting of the bread, 
 the scrambling of the eggs, 
  the frying of the bacon, 
he taught me to do all slowly carefully
to avoid the pain that could come might come
of crashing, burning, curling
 My children are always sleeping when I cry
I kiss them slowly 
I spend a kiss on the cheek or forehead 
and my stray hair tickles an eyelid. 
 They snore. And as they sleep
I steal the minute out of their lives 
when they did not even consider loving me. 
 The first one
bangs an arm against the headboard, cheap wrought iron,
phony imitation clang clang. The second 
sweaty at the ears and hair in a flange across
the pillowcase might move but not wake. 
 The husband wakes with a kiss
so I must not kiss. 
Going Lightly Slowly
218           volume 1,  number 2
 How beautiful their bare hands in the air!
Yes, yes, father, I remember. 
Not can I? can I ? 
  but may I may I may I
julia lisella


Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Not a member yet

Fit to Bust: A Comic Treasure Chest

Modesty

Self-Help

Thirty-Ninth Birthday

Living and Grieving Beside Judith

Contributor Notes

Contributor Notes

Myrtle Beach Convergence

Going Lightly Slowly

The Raging Grannies: Activist Grandmothering for Peace

1,574

1,824