ROCKABYE

I’m young, I’m cool, I’m having a kid and I’m gonna get blog-ish about it.

In 2005, 23-year-old semi-party-girl Woolf—best known at the time for her contributions to the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul series—found herself pregnant with the child of her boyfriend of four months, Hal. A truly good guy, he supported her decision to keep the baby; the couple moved in together and soon after tied the knot in Las Vegas. The remainder of her pregnancy had the same ups and downs as any other pregnancy, the only difference being that in Woolf’s mind she was a renegade hipster free spirit. Her healthy baby was a boy named Archer, she and Hal fell in love with him and suddenly Woolf’s priorities shifted from living in the moment to building a family. At least for the time being, all was good with the world. Mining the same territory as Neil Pollack’s much ballyhooed, equally uneven Alternadad (2007), Woolf isn’t above using raunch to illustrate a given situation: preparing for the birth, she notes, “My pussy is about to become a vagina. My tits are about to become breasts.” The shock value wears thin, as does her overly detailed account of the minutiae of childrearing. Like the output of many good bloggers turned not-as-good book authors, the narrative is fragmented and sloppily structured. Young mothers who weren’t prepared to have a baby may find comfort in this memoir, which demonstrates that other folks have not only survived but thrived in the face of an unexpected child. Those seeking a lasting piece of literature will be disappointed by this cobbled-together and smoothed-out version of Woolf’s popular blog, girlsgonechild.

Periodically charming but mostly pedestrian.