PROXY MOM

A prolific French writer and a graphic artist collaborate to demystify what it means for a new mother to live through postpartum depression.

At the end of the book, Mathou remarks that pregnant women are often told motherhood is “absolutely wonderful,” and many people refuse to acknowledge “all the things that can go wrong.” However, she and Adriansen reveal the little-discussed darker side of what really awaits some women after childbirth. Drawing from Adriansen’s experiences with postpartum depression, the pair create a charmingly colorful graphic memoir centered on a fictional character named Marietta, who is unable to bond with her newborn daughter. Extreme pain dominated the last few weeks of Marietta's otherwise idyllic pregnancy, and while the child was born healthy, she felt nothing except resentment for the discomfort the infant caused her during breast feedings, as well as the way birth itself had transformed her body into a “war zone.” A disinterested and unhappy Marietta often imagined hiring a “proxy…wonder mom” version of herself to care for her baby, and she eventually sought assistance from a psychiatrist and nanny. During this particularly difficult period, she laments, “anything and everything [could] trigger tears in me.” Yet with each challenge she faced—her newly empty, stretched-out body, her persistent feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and sometimes suicidal sadness—Marietta found validation for being the best mother she could be from friends, family, and even strangers and formed an unbreakable bond with her child five months later. With its fearless, frank depictions of the profound changes a woman’s body and mind undergo in the aftermath of birth, this book invites much-needed conversations about the socially unacknowledged difficulties so many women face on the road to assuming new identities as mothers.

A unique, refreshingly candid memoir of the myriad challenges of early motherhood.