Swimming for Shore

"I was consumed with doubt.... I couldn't shake the feeling that had been trailing me since my son's birth: that everyone but me enjoyed being a mom. Again, I would hear complaints about the amount of work and lack of sleep, but, to a person, everyone seemed confident that they'd made the right choice in having children, that they couldn't imagine their lives otherwise. Was I the only one who doubted it? Was I the only one who wondered what I would do if someone had come to me with a time machine and said, 'You can go back and make a different choice'?" In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Laura Ann Mullane explores her decision to have children in spite of her many doubts, and the struggle to come to terms with her new role as Mom after her son and daughter are born. At turns both laugh-out-loud funny and gut wrenching, she explores everything from the high-pressure Perfect Mother's Club of the Washington, D. C., suburbs, to the guilt and shame that plagued her as she navigated her children's tantrums and the constant demands of motherhood. A book that should be on the shelf of every person who has struggled with the decision whether to have kids, and every parent who has simultaneously loved their children and fantasized about life without them, this memoir goes straight to the core.