The Motherhood Affidavits: a Memoir

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. From the publisher - A prodigious talent blazes onto the American literary scene with this bold, original memoir of her perilous—yet life-saving—addiction to childbearing

With the birth of her first child, Laura Jean Baker found herself electrified by oxytocin, the “love drug”—the first effective antidote to her lifelong depression. Again and again over the next eight years, Baker finds herself craving the intense highs of childbearing—cravings that, she realizes, align her much more closely with her public defender husband’s desperate, drug-addled clients than with their middle-class peers. As Ryan’s roster of defendants increases, so too does their family—nearly to the point of collapse. Brilliantly crafted, impeccably written, intensely personal, The Motherhood Affidavits portrays a woman, a marriage, a family, caught in an impossible bind. Its heartbreaking resolution raises profound questions about whether we, as a society, are governed by morals or by laws—and whether either is an adequate measure of any one person’s ability to parent and capacity for love.

This book is a very quick and very easy read, even for a speedreader like I am --- I was done in less than an hour.. I guess that you can get addicted to anything, even childbirth, but I found the writer to be a bit ... odd. I have heard about women who only orgasm in childbirth so this story of post-birth-high-addiction didn't shock me but the fact that her husband (whose life was spent defending addicted criminals) didn't just go out and get a vasectomy was ***beyond*** me. (especially a husband who was so addicted to checking out their money situation!) Would that have not been easier? Ditto getting her the drug, no matter how illegal it Maybe I am too much of a realist ??? And the ending? Who says it would not happen again?? Did I like the book? I guess --- but I cannot see myself talking about it or recommending it.