| Title | : | Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 248 |
| Publication | : | First published February 26, 2019 |
| Awards | : | Goodreads Choice Award Graphic Novels & Comics (2019) |
Except get pregnant.
Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery.
This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos Reviews
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LOL. How’d this happen? I’ve had an up-and-down relationship with Lucy Knisley for a few years now, with her most recent book, Something New,
representing its absolute nadir. Ugh, Something New. So when I saw a Goodreads giveaway for Knisley’s new book, Kid Gloves, my first instinct was to stay far away. A faint spark of curiosity caused me to enter the giveaway anyway, but I was of course fully expecting that I wouldn’t win. The odds were against it, after all. I guess we can all see what happened next!
I am therefore thrilled to report to you that Kid Gloves was great! As I’ve mentioned before on Goodreads, I’m
not particularly interested in the fertility/pregnancy/childbirth narratives of people I don’t know at all, but Knisley really does her homework here, and this book is an entertaining and highly informative feminist analysis of all of these issues, in addition to being Knisley’s own personal story.
And it’s that personal story that’s the most revelatory here. As a happily childless person, I would never, ever, ever, ever in a million years buy into the idea that childless people are inherently more self-centered than people with kids; anyone who truly believes that is just being a jerk. But as far as Lucy Knisley herself is concerned, her motherhood journey seems to be just the big life event she needed to jolt her into a place of more maturity, insight, and depth in her work. I was excited and appreciative and happy to see this development and to experience its end result in this book.
Honestly, I tried to keep an open mind going into Kid Gloves but in reality it’s hard to think of a more hostile audience for this book than myself. Yet, I really, really enjoyed and admired this. 2019 is starting out as the year of
authors subverting my expectations, and no one could be happier about this than me. I am still not sure if I’ll read Knisley’s next book, but I’m grateful I read this one. Thank you, Lucy. Thank you, First Second publishers, for winning back my trust. Thank you everyone! Read this book. -
Lucy Knisley tells us at one point that she does NOT want to suggest that having a baby is “a terrible experience,” after having just told us several terrible things that happened to her, but I can say reading her book was for me at times a stressful experience, since her detailed account of her way difficult pregnancy, in spite of being enhanced by information gleaned by constant research she has done, and broken up by some laughs, reveals that she had the Pregnancy and Childbirth (her first) From Hell. Since Knisley, like Quebec artist Michel Rabagliati, is writing memoirs about all stages of her life (and I am reading all of them!), she is committed to being here--as in her memoir about getting married, Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride --educational, entertaining, and painful honest about what she has experienced with her husband John (whom I love and want to take out for a beer). The marriage memoir was also angsty but very, very light-hearted compared to this one, though, trust me.
Now, consider the source if you decide to continue reading this review; while Knisley makes the occasional nod to “non-breast-feeders” (which of course includes millions of women who have never done so, as well as men), her primary audience here is women who want to have babies and who have had them. And I guess her fans, like me, who have been following her for many years, just to keep up with what is going on, with her most dramatic story yet. She is essentially journaling the process, with an emphasis on the challenges: Miscarriages, depression, pain, anxiety, vomit, more vomit, swelling, embiggening mom body, so much pain at almost every stage, so much stress, and so on. She tells this in part to be helpful about all the possible pitfalls that are there for those wanting to have babies, some of which is not in the usual baby guides, such as What to Expect When You are Expecting (which I have read a couple times myself).
Some of what Knisley shares is also humorously self-deprecating; she admits she eats 6 dates a day because she has learned that it will bring on labor, and so on. She follows advice from a million different sites and people. She’s anxious, she’s worried, and scared, and so this is in part useful to share, as if in solidarity with all other prospective-mom worriers. There is a lot of humor mixed into this anxiety cake, but let’s face it, this is not a typical pregnancy nor childbirth, if there ever was one. Hers was very, very hard and this—in spite of all the inviting fun colors and cute drawing that has made her justifiably famous--is not an advertisement for having a baby. It focuses on all the bad things that can and do happen, because they actually did happen to her. Maybe the colors are a kind of false advertising? Or maybe they just help to lighten things up a bit?
I love it that one section is written from John’s perspective, which happens to be the Actual Birth part, and trust me, when he cries in meeting “Pal” and they both cry in meeting him, you cry, because that’s what you do in relief and happiness when a healthy baby arrives. Maybe it’s more emotional for us knowing what she has been through to get to this point.
I say all this having very actively participated in multiple pregnancies and childbirths, and as a male, I know, it is of course different, but I could relate to a lot of the anxiety and fears and worries. And I think it has a lot of useful information and is interesting, never boring. The actual photographs in this book are cute, to break up all the foreboding and give you hope that pregnancy may indeed lead to joy. It seems to have done so for her, at last.
So she has a baby! Knisley also then writes a picture book, You Are New, to (maybe, I am assuming here) in part celebrate this new baby, though the picture book is the first book I have read from her that is not about her. Anyway, I think this is a very good book, given all it attempts to do. Did I “enjoy” it? Not so much, but I appreciated it and I am thinking about it a lot. Would I recommend it to my friends who are trying to make a baby? I don’t know. I don’t want to scare them away, and I think this just might do it in spite of Knisley’s stated hopes to the contrary.
Here is Kathleen's review in the Chicago Tribune (and you can follow her on Goodreads, too):
https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifest...
Another review, "an honest look at pregnancy, barf and all": The "weirdness of pregnancy," yes, but it almost killed her:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Mag... -
***SPOILERS HIDDEN***
With the hell Lucy Knisley went through during her first pregnancy and delivery, I'll be shocked if she has another kid. Kid Gloves is very much a memoir--one I wholeheartedly do not recommend to anyone who's thinking about getting pregnant or is currently pregnant. It should be pointed out that Knisley's harrowing ordeal is not typical. She I enjoyed reading her account because it makes for a compelling story, but I was shocked by how much she endured. My overall impression is that her body is highly sensitive; as she details at the beginning, she experienced unusual struggles with allergies and intolerances to several different contraceptives, long before she ever got pregnant.
Knisley is a talented cartoonist. Images are clean and vivid and text is easy to read and flows in a logical manner. Most importantly, she illustrated well the extent of her, to put it euphemistically, "pregnancy journey," from struggles to get pregnant to the end result: her adorable son. She also interspersed nonfiction facts about how pregnancy was regarded and handled through the centuries. Much of this overlaps with women's rights throughout time, as the meddling role of men in women's health is emphasized.
I do think Knisley should've made clear that the--as she put it--"chaos" she endured was unusual, that she had a dramatically bad pregnancy. Kid Gloves is otherwise excellent. It strikes emotional chords while educating at the same time. If people--or her son--ask her what her pregnancy and childbirth was like, she can hand them an actual book about it. Given all she went through, it's fitting. -
Kid Gloves looks like another cutesy book about pregnancy, but it's a lot more than that. It also features myths and facts about pregnancy, some interesting history regarding how far obstetric medicine has come, tidbits about medical struggles, and most notably, a long section on infertility and miscarriages.
There's a point Lucy makes at one point that really resonated with me, as a fellow miscarriage survivor: If 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, why aren't 25% of media portrayals of pregnancies acknowledging that? Instead, we live in a world where people are made to feel guilty, ashamed, and/or tragically alone after a miscarriage, and we have to do better. It isn't fair for anyone to suffer these traumas alone.
While it got a bit boring at times, overall, I thought Kid Gloves was an interesting pregnancy memoir. I'm not sure I would give it to an expectant mother, because I think it would have terrified me to read about Lucy's emergency c-section and pre-eclampsia in such vivid details, but it was still fascinating to read about and heart-warming to know that everything turned out okay for Lucy and her little family in the end.
Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review! -
This is now one of my favorite Lucy Knisley books.
As she discusses in this book, in each of her previous works, she chronicles a transitional point in her life. In the popular French Milk, she is a markedly less sympathetic character, being in that moody period of her late teenage years. But in her subsequent works, we see her develop into a passionate, empathetic adult who struggles to balance a career, family, and relationships.
In her animated form, we walk with Lucy back into a "never-quite-over" relationship and then escort her down the aisle to marry her perfect quirky counterpart, John. And now, in Kid Gloves, Lucy gets even more grown up, taking us on the roller coaster ride of getting pregnant and becoming a mother. It was not an easy ride at any point; Lucy struggled through devastating miscarriages only to discover she needed a surgical procedure to be physically capable of carrying a baby to full term. Once this was performed and she successfully conceived, her difficult pregnancy began and eventually concluded with the nearly fatal delivery of her son.
I follow Lucy on social media so I had an inkling of some of the things she was going through at this point in time, but obviously this book gives a much deeper look. The whole experience was very educational for Lucy as she tried to unpack not only what was happening to her body after becoming pregnant, but also all the cultural expectations and misunderstandings there are around the whole affair. So much of the experience of pregnancy is kept behind a veil and cultural conditioning has fed us a lot of baloney that simply isn't based in fact. Lucy draws us an education on issues and beliefs about pregnancy and childbirth while giving us, as always, a highly entertaining inside look into her own journey.
Though it was horrifying at points and reaffirmed my decision to never carry any children of my own, it was touching to see how Lucy's son Pal (a nickname she gave him for social media to protect his identity) came into the world. He is one cute kid. -
One of Lucy Knisley's undeniable strengths is that she is hardcore a Capricorn: by the age of thirty-one, as she tells you herself in this very book, she'd published five graphic memoirs, each one as cleanly constructed as if from a kit, gleaming with that I-write-outlines-for-my-to-do-lists singlemindedness goats are known for.
I've read almost all of them. They are each of them lovely, bright and tidy as a paperdollhouse. And I slam through them--as unselfconsciously personal memoirs by a woman, they are precisely up my alley, and compulsively readable.
And yet every single time I find myself having the same puzzling experience: Why don't I love them?
The Lucy of these memoirs is brimming with self-assurance, and her experiences are of the largely consequence-less, upper-class variety: cultivating a relationship with gourmet food, going to art school, taking European vacations, DIYing a roomily-budgeted wedding.
They are memoirs without stakes, and therefore without urgency: confession without viscera, self-reporting without introspection; more captain's log (the waves and the clouds) than anything scraped up from diving into the wreck (whether blue or breathing).
Even this latest remains perplexingly landlocked. Kid Gloves is about the most harrowing, primeval experience a human can go through, yet Knisley renders it in the same antiseptic pastels with which she drew her wedding plans.
There's this great quote from Aline Kominsky that I don't have memorized but where she talks about what kind of art she likes and she says she likes to see some of the struggle.
That's what I like, too, and it's the opposite of Knisley's work.
You won't see any struggle here: her line is smooth and her palette soothing, with everything from the sweaters to the sidewalks, the bushes to the vaginas, rendered textureless and benign, comprising an evenly contained but eerily shadowless world. Her panel layout is textbook-worthy craftsmanship, sturdy but flexible, creative but compliant.
All of which make for a highly engaging but never quite electric read; she's always a B for me. A gentleman's 6.
So what am I saying here. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy this book. I enjoy all of her books, and I enjoy them progressively more as she goes, so I enjoyed this one the most of all. I'm not even saying it's not a good book: it is a good book, and thorough.
I guess I'm just saying I've been reading Knisley for some years now and I keep waiting for her to mine a gnarlier vein. Which might never happen, because not everyone needs to skin the whole cat, Hannah. A lot of people don't even like skinned cats, OK? You can snuffle your filthy old nose around in your Dirty Laundries and Plottes all you like and then appreciate this on its own merits, for what it is and excels at being: charmingly executed, carefully researched, and another genuinely impressive contribution from a talented, committed creator. -
I cried, I laughed, I shook my head.
My boyfriend and I read it together as our second trimester bedtime read and we both loved it.
It was a mix of research on cultural history and science of pregnancy and women's health as well as a deeply moving memoir of 'nine months of careful chaos'. I keep reading these pregnancy books about these horror birth stories and maybe I should stop.
Being pregnant is such a game changer. I have seen it happen to my friends, watch them cross the Rubicon, and then wave to me from the other side. And now it is my turn and I do feel a little lost, so all I do is read book after book on the subject, but I remain as perplexed as I was. I am pregnant and there is an actual tiny human inside me, kicking and thrashing about. What the heck. -
Shortly after I gave birth, I had the sudden realization that "holy SHIT there are hundreds-thousands-millions of women walking around who have also gone through this wildly intense rollercoaster of an experience." And yet - there's not much in the mainstream that really tells the truth about this, which left me scrambling last year to figure out what was going on and what was normal. I loved this graphic memoir for its honesty, humor, and simple offering of firsthand experience.
I've seen plenty of reviews that encouraged women newly pregnant or with new babies to read this - and that's true, it's important to have a place to feel seen. BUT I also think people who are never going to be pregnant should also spend some time here. If you're not going to be pregnant yourself, you are going to know someone who is. Being pregnant myself made me want to be honest about what was happening then, and now. I think you'll find this fascinating, learn a bunch, and understand how to love the new parents in your life.
One thing I adored about this book is the history of pregnancy research she dives into, ranging from historical ("the walking uterus") to misconceptions about miscarriage and infertility. She reminds us that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, brings to light the way a woman's pregnant body is treated as a commodity, gets into the not always pleasant but wholly real process of growing another person inside your own body.
An easy five stars with a side of HELL YES. -
"I was taught how to condom a banana, and to memorize the dates of amnesties, and the life-cycle stages of a pill bug .... But I was never taught about the intertwined history and science of taking care of my own body."
This graphic memoir covers the next phase of the author's life. We've been through her new adulthood, her marriage, and it's now time for the baby carriage.
Unlike her previous works, this one does more than explore her life and foibles. In addition to covering her personal experiences as she transitions to being a mother, there is a fun (if a tad horrific) illustrated history and science of reproductive health, with some of the key figures in the field. The art continues to be cutesy, but her talent for story telling has clearly matured. This is her best work yet. -
This book blew me away. Kid Gloves is an (adult) graphic-format memoir of trying to conceive, pregnancy and childbirth, and Knisley doesn't hold back in writing and drawing about struggles, grief and ALL of the ups and downs (and physical detail) of this stage of her life. I highly recommend this to anyone who has any interest in this topic as well as to high school health teachers, since the book touches on things the author wishes had been taught in school about birth control.
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This book is incredible but also scared the crap out of me? Knisley had a pretty brutal time with both pregnancy and birth: 2 miscarriages, all day nausea that lasted the whole first trimester, pre-eclampsia symptoms (which her doctor ignored), a c-section, and then full on eclampsia. I marvel at how she presents all of this extremely vulnerable material in such a matter-of-fact way. She even has her husband do the parts where she was unconscious!
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I just really enjoy her books - I'm considering reading all her books this year along with Stacey Lee and Katherine Center's books.
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My favorite Knisley comic so far. As I was reading this, I realized -- like she does herself -- how few stories of pregnancy focus on the mother and her experiences and needs. This does it, and it made me feel a wave of things, including a lot of anger.
There's so little education and talk about what bodies do or don't do. Those who can give birth are under the impression it's easy. It's not. I know so few who have had easy, uncomplicated pregnancies (let alone births). I didn't know about the ways a body doesn't create the fetus "like it should" until I experienced that myself not too long ago. Seeing it on the page there, her second miscarriage, really knocked the breath out of me, since that was my experience of a few days of potential only to learn that nothing ever happened.
My only wish was more of what did or did not happen with the reproductive endocrinologist, but the fact is there might not have been anything noteworthy there to write about. The breakdown of how insurance and health care for that was a reminder of how lucky I felt when I learned my state requires insurance to cover RE expenses and requires a certain level of coverage for various IUI/IVF procedures.
Just fantastic. After I'd read Knisley's last graphic memoir, I wanted her to move away from her own stories. She does that here, while also making this wholly her story. And it was exactly what I'd hoped for. -
An important and moving book that's certain to be an Eisner contender for 2019.
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Did I heave a nice loud sob at the end? Oh man, I did. Lucy Knisley has developed so much as an artist and storyteller. I loved my time reading this: I learned new things; I smiled at quirky or silly faces (her puking drawings... lol); I laughed out loud (please tell me more about elephant gestation); I nodded slowly reading about miscarriage stats and the maternal mortality crisis affecting the U.S.; and I cried because of what Knisley went through and the book's ending.
If you like learning about pregnancy/women's reproductive health from a cultural, political, and health perspective this ponders history and the current day. If you like an intimate and very honest personal perspective in your graphic memoirs, this will also appeal to you. I'm so happy this book was finally published and I totally recommend following Lucy Knisley on Instagram. -
What a beautiful, heartfelt book! Librarians, your patrons *NEED* this book! Make sure to purchase it for your collections next year!
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I really enjoyed how she told this story, and I am still RAGING over her doctor's incompetence.
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Wow, this made me feel a much wider range of emotions that I had originally anticipated. I hadn't read what Knisley's story was or the summary of this graphic novel, I honestly just thought this was going to be a run-of-the-mill pregnancy story. Nope, not even close. Knisley unfortunately suffered through a few miscarriages and went to a pretty deep, dark place before she was able to get pregnant with her baby boy. I'm a pretty big watcher of the family vlogger youtube scene and by now I've seen quite a few that have gone through some kind of loss. Even though this kind of thing is EXTREMELY hard to read about/watch (especially while pregnant) I think everyone needs to. 1 in 4 people who get pregnant will have a miscarriage. THAT IS CRAZY. That number is so high and still, I can personally feel this stigma around not talking about it, even though I've never had one myself. Like who cares if it makes people feel uncomfortable? That momma needs to grieve and should never have to keep a journey like that all pent up inside just in the face of keeping other people around them comfortable. Phew...
Anyway, I was able to relate to this story in the sense that I developed pre-eclampsia with my first pregnancy, too. My story was thankfully nothing like hers (I didn't find out I had it until week 39 because I wasn't exhibiting any symptoms other than a slowly rising blood pressure and I was induced that night and was able to have the baby vaginally still) but still.....again, knowing that a lot of other people run into that made me feel less...weird? Like I feel weird telling people I had it for some reason because I don't want to make it seem like a big deal but fuck. I had to be on the same drip of magnesium the next day and could barely told Emma because it makes you feel like you've been hit by a dump truck. They've been monitoring me closer this pregnancy because of all that, just in case. Fun stuff!
Also, fuck her doctor. Seriously. Mine is kinda like hers in the sense that our appointments are short and we keep things simple but I KNOW that she would listen to me if I had concerns like Knisley did. I was like shaking the book when I got to that part. You know that happens to so many other women, too. Like by now don't you think that people should trust the mom gut?!?! It's a real thing. ANYWAYYY, I digress. This turned into a pretty long winded review but it felt good to get some of that out. Basically, this is a really great and important read about pregnancy and even just the history of pregnancy, too (which...could be horrifying to read about lol). Definitely will be going to request ALL of her other graphic novels ASAP.
For more of my reviews, please visit:
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I always feel the same way when I finish a new Lucy Knisley book. It’s so weird to have followed her since the very beginning of her career (through a stroke of luck, I’ve followed her blog from the beginning, before she published a book, because a friend also followed her), to essentially watch her life progress without having spoken a single word to her. (This is especially true since I started following her on Instagram after her son was born. She’s been posting lots of comics about her finicky senior cat, Linney, lately, just as a public service announcement.)
Because I followed her on Instagram, I was aware that she’d had a difficult pregnancy and birth, but until reading this, I wasn’t aware quite how difficult.
I’ve always been fascinated with sexuality and the reproductive system, much more so than my peers seemed to be. I remember reading medical texts for fun in the library and online as much as I could while my fellow fifth graders were playing kickball outside, or whatever. Honestly, if I wasn’t so terrified of actually killing someone, I would have probably tried to become an OBGYN or midwife.
Amusingly, Lucy Knisley seems to share my fascination, and like me, she regrets the lack of general education about pregnancy and women’s health. I knew I was going to like this book before I even read it, but when I got to this panel, I was just like, yep:
“I’ve always wanted to know–how did it go?” Me too!
That’s what this book is about, how it went for Lucy, and she talks openly about every aspect, including her difficulties in her pregnancy with Pal (this is a pseudonym she uses for him, short for Little Palindrome, because he was born on a palindromic day) and her miscarriages. There is actually a lot of talk about openness itself, and how even though miscarriage and other reproductive issues are so, so common, no one talks about them, and so nearly every pregnant person who experiences them feels isolated and alone. She tackles the experience of being in a medical system that dismisses patient concerns (Knisley had pre-eclampsia that escalated into eclampsia during labor, and though she noted all the symptoms to her doctor and was worried about them over the course of her pregnancy, he brushed her fears aside as irrelevant, and then she almost died). It was pretty visceral at times, but it was also funny and happy. Her fears and insecurities get just as much play as her excitement and joy over the impending birth of their son.
That would have been enough for me enjoy the book, but it’s also peppered with pregnancy facts throughout history, and some of them are fascinating, and some of them are terrifying. Modern medicine is not perfect, but it’s a lot better than what they used to have, even 100 years ago!
I know she will probably do a book about marriage or motherhood (or both) next, but I would like to nominate a book entirely about Linney the cat, instead, please (or in addition).
[4.5 stars] -
Knisley has become one of my favorite memoirists. She balances out the emotional story of her eventful pregnancy with humor and interesting historical facts about gynecology, pregnancy, and childbirth.
It sounds like she's already at work on a book about motherhood, and I'm looking forward to reading that in the near future. -
I have followed Knisley’s work since she was in art school and I was a 12 year old on Livejournal. As i watched her grow as an artist and a person, I appreciated the way her scope grew with her—though as she has recently settled into heterosexual marriage with a software engineer, I have felt a prickle of annoyance at the insights she develops about the world. She seems perfectly nice, but also has become someone less likely to ask important questions. For example, I think Relish and An Age Of License function far better as memoirs than Something New, as a minutae-by-minutae look at heterosexual monogamy is less than thrilling to me.
This book follows Knisley’s journey toward parenthood, and while the qualms about her art and work I have generally persist, I think there should be more writing about the difficulties of pregnancy, more normalization of discussions of birth control, and a broader conversation about the horrific negligence of many doctors toward pregnant women. So I read it —and I think it does something worthwhile to bring up good conversations.
It should be said that Knisley is still a white woman ill-equipped to tell the story of modern gynecology. She’s a memoirist and not a researcher or historian, and it shows. For example, she references the violence toward enslaved black women in the name of science at the hands of James Marion Sims, but decides on not drawing any of these women—even in dignity , even just faces—or conducting more research about them or what their lives might have been like. Instead the women are a black censor bar that says “nope not drawing this” and Knisley depicts their tormenter looking dowdy but human (albeit with many curses around his head). She doesn’t know or doesn’t write about the 20th century campaigns of genocide against black woman and Latina women in the United States or elsewhere, or the conditions of women giving birth in incarceration, though she explores widespread fears of infertility and general decline in U.S birth rates. While she writes about doulas and midwives, she allows her view of natural birth to be influenced by the excruciating pain she was in during her own experience and doesn’t make an effort to include perspectives or voices by other mothers. She also doesn’t mention trans people, which wouldn’t irk me except for the scene where she shows herself wondering “what if men could get pregnant? Would gender exist?” when men can and do get pregnant —and Knisley should know, since she dated a trans man in high school and outed him and his deadname in her first published book.
In short—it’s a memoir, beholden to the same limits as other memoirs by white well to do artists.
But I think within her scope, Knisley does pretty well. She goes over her own complicated history with birth control, talks about the ways that sex ed and planned parenthood both educated her about her own body and failed her, and talks in depth about her miscarriages and final successful pregnancy. Her clean style makes each page easy to read. She notes the ways that different doctors made her uncomfortable, her devastating first trimester morning sickness, and the ways that her husband was impacted emotionally by what she was going through (I think she is too nice to him—I like John less after reading this book for making Lucy think it was necessary to give so much space to his anxieties about the responsibilities of parenthood for him as a dad when Lucy is enduring enormous physical trauma as a part of becoming a parent). She talks about the ways that her doctor ignored clear signs that she was experiencing pre-eclampsia and how her own research gave her information that was sometimes better , but how she felt as if she was not entitled to ask for a second opinion. I think this book could empower many pregnant people to seek more autonomy in their medical care leading up to birth. It also is just a comfort to have a graphic memoir about pregnancy. Something about illustrations makes a piece of media much more accessible.
I appreciate the scenes centering on Knisley’s experience of birth, as it dives into territory too often made mysterious, spiritual or murky and tries to elucidate its details and precise physicality—not in relation to the exit of her baby, but with regards to her epidural, her surgery, her painkillers, and the structure of her multiple hospital visits. The health care system and its failures loom large, and it is worth taking Knisley’s experiences seriously. -
First, this 5-star glowing review is coming from a woman who never wants to have kids.
I think this would benefit all people, especially women, yes, but also wouldn't it be nice to mail a copy to all the anti-abortion males who think that a pregnant woman should have to have the baby, no matter what. With the historical horrors covered and the author's eye-popping experiences through conception, pregnancy, and birth, it seems like you would have to come face-to-face with your sadism to deny women their reproductive rights.
I loved her layouts and am a fan of her simple illustration style, honest revelations, and informative content. It was especially poignant since I follow her on Instagram and see frequent videos and photos of adorable Pal, but now have an even deeper appreciation of all she went through to be his mom. -
This gets a high rating because I'm a pregnant lover of comics and this book came along at the perfect time. Kid Gloves will actually be published right around the time when my baby enters the world, so I was thrilled to get an ARC via NetGalley.
I really appreciate Lucy Knisley's candor and humor and how deeply she shares her own experiences of loss and pain and the incredibly bizarre and heartbreaking and wonderful ride that is pregnancy. There aren't enough graphic memoirs about pregnancy out there, so I'm grateful to Knisley for sharing her story right when I needed it. I laughed, I cried, I related. Highly recommended for those who are expecting and need a break from the overwhelming crush of pregnancy fact books. -
Content warning: miscarriage
I adore Lucy Knisley's work, and this book is no exception. I truly appreciated Knisley's open willingness to discuss her struggles with pregnancy. The way she can depict her emotions through her art is just masterful. I also love how she explores history through her own story, and I even learned some new facts about my body that I should have probably known.
That said, if you want to get pregnant, are trying to get pregnant, or are currently pregnant, be sure you want to read and visualize some pretty horrific stuff. Lucy doesn't have an easy pregnancy or labor, so I'm just telling you that in advance. Otherwise, highly recommend! -
This was just amazing! I laughed, I cried, I reminisced about my own birth experiences. I got SO ANGRY - not only at some of Lucy's historic pregnancy tidbits - did you know the family that developed forceps kept their invention a secret for over 200 years while countless babies and mothers died for lack of this helpful tool - to the way the author was treated by some members of the medical establishment during her risky pregnancy and delivery.
Thankfully everything ends well, and Lucy has a wonderful baby to hug and love.
And now I've got to catch up on all of Knisley's other graphic novels.
I've got a new favorite author here, folks. -
Wow. What an amazing graphic memoir. I think I might read anything that Knisley publishes. This was an intimate look at her personal journey to motherhood, but it included so much more! She effortlessly weaved in historical inaccuracies about women's health care, the history of childbirth, and pregnancy myths (the dangerous and the hilarious) as well as empowering all those who choose the path to parenthood. Some of my favorite parts involved her husband's reaction to her pregnancy and subsequent health scares. It gave me some empathy for what my husband will inevitably feel if we ever decide to expand our family. I loved this memoir, and I would highly recommend to anyone really, but especially to those who plan to be parents or already are parents.
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4,5
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Nie mogłam się zabrać do tego komiksu, bo temat ciąży jest w moim życiu definitywnie zamknięty i nawet nie chcę o tym myśleć, żeby nie wywołać wilka z lasu 🤪
Ale teraz bardzo żałuję, że nie był on wydany w Polsce kiedy planowałam ciążę, czy na jej początku. Byłby mi bardzo potrzebny. Czasami ktoś pyta o książki dobre na prezent dla ciężarnych - od dziś nie polecam żadnych bliskościowych poradników, tylko ten komiks. Będę też miała swój schowany, żeby w odpowiednim momencie podsunąć dzieciom.
„9 miesięcy czułego chaosu” to opowieść o próbach zajścia w ciążę, stratach, które są nieodłączną częścią życia, niedogodnościach ciążowych, trudnym porodzie - osobistych doświadczeniach na drodze do macierzyństwa autorki. Są one przerywane mini wykładami składającymi się z informacji, ciekawostek, rysów historycznych związanych z kobiecymi narządami płciowymi i rozmnażaniem człowieka. Jest bardzo uczciwy, rzetelny, zabawny, życiowy, wspierający i mądry. Pokazuje wiele perspektyw, jest tu ojciec, któremu też może być ciężko, jest o tym, że nie każdy musi chcieć mieć dziecko, jest o poronieniach jako czymś zupełnie naturalnym, ale jednocześnie bardzo trudnym.
Wniósł też dużo nowych dla mnie informacji, często pokazanych przez patriarchalny pryzmat, a czasem zaskakujących - na przykład dopiero dziś dowiedziałam się, że ślinochrony dentystyczne służą za profilaktykę w trakcie seksu oralnego.
Najbardziej jednak polubiłam w tej książce samą Lucy Knisley - jej świetne poczucie humoru i feministyczne szpileczki wbijane wielkim mężczyznom, poglądy i podejście do świata. Mogłaby być moją kumpelą. Chętnie przeczytałabym jej pozostałe komiksy.
Serdecznie polecam. -
More autobiography from Lucy Knisley. She and her husband had a baby, and this book tells you all about it. In between the chapters are tangents dealing with the history of and general information about childbirth.
As with her previous work, this was a delight to read. Knisley has a wonderfully clean, crisp style and a knack for showing just the right amount of detail to make the panels informative, but not overburdened. The story flows nicely, and the historical chapters were fascinating.
I found myself wishing that this book existed back when my wife's and my child was born. Yes, we figured it all out in the end--all parents do--but it would have been nice to have known about a few things that Knisley talks about in advance.
In the end, there's really not much more to say about this. Know only that, in a field ridiculously stuffed with autobiographical comics, Lucy Knisley’s work stands out from the pack. Recommended! -
Lucy Knisley has a way of capturing the day to day moments of life that build an engaging, vivid story even when the subject (as often seen on her blog) is to-do lists and cat behaviors. In this book she has taken on bigger topics: sexual education, miscarriage, pregnancy, and a near fatal experience of bringing a new life into the world. I have know since I was quite young that I never wanted to have children and find most aspects of procreation, frankly, horrifying. Several friends had warned me that there might be parts of this book I'd want to skip. But I read every page, and was grateful for this raw, honest look into a human experience that I will never have. The art is simple but beautifully effective, the writing at times very funny, at times informative or matter of fact, in others deeply emotional.
