If you are the parent of a child, you have joined the club. It’s a rite of passage that only moms can understand. The ability to be interested in someone else’s bowel movements, the self-discipline to clean up someone’s vomit without throwing up yourself, the desire to stay up all night to hear a tiny person’s quiet breathing….all of these are moments of motherhood.  In Bumptabulous: 20 Moms Expose Pregnancy, twenty moms share their stories from the miraculous (and sometimes surprising) discoveries of conception to the indiscreet experience of hemorrhoids.   The stories these moms share are stinkin’ funny and can only be believed if you have experienced some of it yourself.   For example, when one mom realizes that she MIGHT have washed her hands as recently as early 2010.  When you’re in the delirious first weeks of your baby’s arrival, things like washing your hands or shaving under your arms take little precedence over closing your eyelids for a few moments.  And why do people think it’s okay to touch your belly when you’re pregnant?  It’s NEVER okay to touch my stomach, especially if I don’t know you.   I do think that Bumptabulous would be more interesting to moms who have already experienced childbirth.  After all, the inevitable “big day” is scary enough without reading someone else’s horror stories.

I wish the book had less profanity in it.  Most of the stories have absolutely no swear words, but a couple of them dropped the F bomb and that was a turn-off for me.   The writers are obviously intelligent women and I am sure they have more creative vocabularies that wouldn’t require them to curse like sailors.   Also, I would have liked to read a story or two about moms who adopted a baby.  After all, seeing someone else carry your child is a birth experience like no other.  When a friend of mine waited for word that she had been accepted to adopt her little girl from China, we sometimes joked that she had been pregnant for two and a half years.  Although she didn’t carry that baby in her own womb, her motherhood is just as real and cherished as any others.   The stories in Bumptabulous are completely candid and border on the TMI factor, as most birth stories do.  At the end of the book, there are a few blank pages where the new mom can record her own experiences.  That way, when she thinks she’s forgotten all the glorious moments of hormone-induced acne or what those 27 hours of labor without an epidural really felt like, she can look back on those memories with a smile.  Of course, she probably won’t do that until she’s already pregnant with baby #2.  But that’s just the beauty of being Bumptabulous.

Click here to see pics of the 20 moms who contributed stories to Bumptabulous.  Feel inspired?  You can even share your story!   “Like” Bumptabulous on Facebook for more updates on this fun book.