"As Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) points out, "These stories will make milk shoot from one of your nostrils and a martini from the other. Johanna Stein brings to mind the unflinching honesty and compassion of Nora Ephron." Looking for the perfect book to help you survive childbirth and parenting with your sanity intact? Look elsewhere. For Johanna Stein, parenting is an extreme sport. Her stories from the trenches may not always be shared experiences-have you ever turned a used airplane barf-bag into a puppet to calm your wailing baby?-but they will always make you laugh. Columnist Lisa Belkin advises: "It is dangerous to read [Johanna] any place where it is inappropriate to laugh uncontrollably. It is also dangerous to read her if your bladder control is not what it once was. But once you soldier through and do read her you have made a friend-one who gets it' and makes it easier to do because she's on your team." So, no, this book won't teach you how to deal with nipple blisters or oedipal complexes. But if you want to learn why you should never attempt to play a practical joke in the delivery room, then you're in the right place. "--

"First off, this is not a parenting handbook.I mean it when I say that I would never be considered a Baby Whisperer. When it comes to being a parent I prefer to think of myself as an exceedingly mediocre mother, but a creative and prolific maker of mistakes. You know that expression "it was a learning experience"? That phrase used to crawl up into my nether-regions and cause my spine to fuse, because it was my belief that people only ever used it when attempting to justify a bad choice, like the time they got the cat high, that the phrase they really should be using is not "it was a learning experience" but "I really effed up big time." But now I get it. Because, it turns out, parenthood is one, long, mother-frack'ing learning experience. Parenthood is such a drastic departure from anything you've ever done before (unless you work in an insane asylum, in which case you're familiar with what it feels like to live with young children). What this book represents is five years' worth of hard-won lessons. They are all borne of the experiences I've had, and the many, many (many) mistakes that I've had the lack-of-common-sense to have made. So no, this book won't teach you 101 Uses for a Placenta, but if you want to know what I learned after attempting to use mine as a gag gift (and very nearly dying on a grassy hillside in the process), then you're in the right place. I cannot help you in your quest to become a Supermom but I am a world-class crier who can explain in detail the value of having (and winning) a crying contest with your infant child. May my astounding mistakes--and subsequent lessons--serve as something of a guide. And with any luck, you, too, may learn to screw up in your own horribly hilarious way"--