Knocking Myself Up audiobook

A very queer and very funny delight, this memoir about Michelle Tea's years long project of getting pregnant and having a kid which she started at the ripe age of 40! From inseminating at home with her drag queen friend's sperm to doing IVF to implant her partner's fertilized egg in her uterus, the memoir is super candid, casual, and reassuring even while Tea goes through disappointment after disappointment. I love how open and honest she is about her mental illness, sobriety, body, witchiness, money anxiety, and other stuff conventionally considered TMI or woo-woo.She reads the audiobook and adds a bunch of chutzpah to it that I really enjoyed. Also, lol at her determining when to have a c-section based on what her kid's astrological sign will be. These are the kinds of queer details I relish that are missing in cishet pregnancy stories.

A very raw and honest look into life before, during, and after conception. I am envious of the love and longing that is shown throughout this book for Atticus, before he was even a bundle of cells! His origin story will now be forever immortalized.

Knocking Myself Up is a hilariously funny (and kind of sad) book. Michelle Tea can write. I came across it by a fluke and was grabbed by the title and cover. Words cannot convey how alien her lifestyle is to mine in every conceivable respect; I recently finished reading and reviewing Fashion Victim and noting that the intersection between its world and mine was virtually null. But that’s nothing* compared to the place where Tea and I meet. Although parts of it made me uncomfortable, overall I enjoyed her book and laughed my way through it. Plus I actually learned from what she wrote, although the discord between how we see and how we say things means I won’t read any more of her work and am kind of at a loss as to whether and to whom I’d recommend it.*I’m going to quit wasting these brilliant puns on Goodreaders unless I get some favorable response.

I love Michelle Tea, and as a person who also writes about experiences with (in)fertility, I am always grateful and greedy for another memoir telling the story of this intense experience. Tea does it with the absolute charm I found in Valencia, the first book I read by her so long ago in my LGBT Lit class (I think that's where I read it--I know it was assigned to me as an undergrad). Tea's voice is unique: it is strong and funny and self-deprecating and loving and honest. I'm hoping one day my oldest will love Tea's books as much as I do, or will have a Michelle Tea in their life when they need it, just as I did before.I wish this book came out when we were TTC because it would have brought me so much more comfort, but now that my 11-year-old, who was a Clomid-baby, is all big and becoming themself, it didn't have the same urgency it would have if I were in that time of my life. I nodded along to so much of it. Becoming a medical object is rotten, but all that stripped down love that comes with having a baby is such magic.Advance copy review courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Michelle Tea has written of her passionate mistakes and intricate corruptions, involving and educating the reader at the same time, for 15 years. I've watched as she's been influenced by her mentor Eileen Myles to becoming a mentor to others herself, and look forward to each installment of her growing up without a net (see what I did there?).In this latest work, she describes her attempts to get pregnant and birth a healthy child. As usual, she takes us along for the ride with her wit and wry humor, and passion and the pain of despair. Although the seed of her yearning to be a mom begins as a single woman, she shortly meets a partner named Orson who is eager to co-parent. The details of their relationship and decision to conceive this child, along with a colorful, joyful gay man named Quentin are offered conversationally. It's in the nuances and asides that the soul of the book resides.Highly recommended for any people (queer or not) who are interested in the fertility journey of an over-40 person, as I was led to Google several times to become educated on the procedures and meds involved. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC.Merged review:Michelle Tea has written of her passionate mistakes and intricate corruptions, involving and educating the reader at the same time, for 15 years. I've watched as she's been influenced by her mentor Eileen Myles to becoming a mentor to others herself, and look forward to each installment of her growing up without a net (see what I did there?).In this latest work, she describes her attempts to get pregnant and birth a healthy child. As usual, she takes us along for the ride with her wit and wry humor, and passion and the pain of despair. Although the seed of her yearning to be a mom begins as a single woman, she shortly meets a partner named Orson who is eager to co-parent. The details of their relationship and decision to conceive this child, along with a colorful, joyful gay man named Quentin are offered conversationally. It's in the nuances and asides that the soul of the book resides.Highly recommended for any people (queer or not) who are interested in the fertility journey of an over-40 person, as I was led to Google several times to become educated on the procedures and meds involved.Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC.

Jeg elsker Michelle Tea - og hendes queer autobiografiske / meta-autobiografiske projekt. Knocking Myself Up er den tredje bog om fertilitetsbehandling og graviditet jeg har læst for nylig - og den er klart min favorit. Den har mindre litterær prætention men til gengæld en meget mere interessant stemme end Olga Ravn og Tine Høeg. Hvor Ravn primært beskriver skrift og psykisk sygdom, og Høeg skriver autentisk inde fra smerten, så skriver Tea i et sjovt tilbageblik… sjovt fordi hun virkelig blander stort og småt… og medtager ting og hændelser, som enhver ‘forfatter’ ville have redigeret ud… samtidig med at hun skriver fra en position, hvor smerten forlængst er forløst. Barnet er født og faktisk allerede 7-8 år gammel. Så smerten kan helt troværdigt glide rundt i en queer optimisme… som væskerne i en lavalampe… Det er virkelig en smuk dans. Og en smuk stemme. Fuck, hvor er vi heldige, at leve i den verden Tea skriver i!

Any lesbian parent who has birthed a child (or tried to get pregnant) will relate to this book on many levels. It sure brought it all back for me! The challenge of figuring out the donor and the mechanics of getting pregnant. A great read for all - to understand how non-hetero/traditional families are created. Michelle Tea puts herself out there with grace and humor. I very much appreciate the read.

3.5 stars. I am glad this book exists, offering representation of this queer life experience, though I found aspects of the writing annoying.

4.5 but rounding up because I cried so hard at the end. What a funny, delightful, wonderful memoir. I laughed and laughed! Then i WEPT!!! So good.

This was the first I had heard of Michelle Tea, and I'm now finding out how much of an icon she is. Even before knowing that, though, I fell totally in love with her voice and this journey of her quest for a child. After turning forty, Tea decided this was her last chance to get on the birth train. What follows is a long road, from home insemination to uterine fibroids to natural remedies and more. I don't want to spoil too much, but Tea finds out a lot about herself along the way. She also falls in love with a new partner, telling their sweet romance alongside her infertility story. Tea surrounds herself with fun friends and a freewheeling lifestyle, people who cheer her on and support her unconditionally. I even dreamed about going to a party at her house. Now I want to seek out more of her work!

I loved Tea's wonderfully queer memoir about living in San Francisco, deciding she wanted to get pregnant on her own, falling in love with Orson and deciding to proceed together, and the long journey Tea took to have her child. Tea's tone is relaxed and conversationalist; it's an impressive feat to write in such an easy to read/enjoy style. Highly recommended.

ARC RELEASE DATE AUGUST 2022many times while i’m reading or after i’ve finished a book, i start envisioning who this book is for, who i’m going to immediately text with the recommendation or purchase as a gift. this book has a different feel as it tackles infertility and miscarriage- and that always feels heavy to recommend. how do you know if/when someone is ready to relive or learn about these experiences? but it’s an experience that SO MANY have. this is the second michelle tea book i’ve read, and i definitely found this the most enjoyable. she has an honest and humorous way of story telling that is raw and real. her life and goals are so different than mine, and i love that. my life feels smaller compared with hers, but her story grew my life by showing me a different way. inspiring new potential hobbies like astrology. so this book? i think could be for anyone that loves experiencing new things with open minds and hearts.

Having ridden the fertility treatment roller coaster myself, I wasn't totally excited to dive into a narrative of needles and (sometimes) disappointment, but I love pretty much everything Michelle Tea writes, and this book was no exception. Her voice is consistently candid and upbeat, balancing the anxiety of trying to get and stay pregnant with the hope and optimism required to do so. She writes about so many topics in ways that are cathartic and real: dating while trying to get knocked up, the scary cost of IVF, the pros and cons of telling people she's newly pregnant, and googling stillbirth stories to feed some kind of morbidly anxious monster inside her. I especially loved the final chapter, a sort of epilogue, in which she describes how her family has changed and the person her son has become.

This is another one of a handful of queer parenting books -- I'm thinking of Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcom Belc for instance -- that I devoured simply because I was so excited to feel seen in writing about parenthood. Writing about parenthood is so often so straight. And here Michelle Tea really shows us what we've been missing out on due to the confines of straight, narrow thinking about motherhood. Motherhood as psychedelic. Motherhood as hapless, crooked personal growth journey. Pregnancy as a hormonal rollercoaster that might take you on a porn bender. This work rocks, its saving motherhood and parenthood the way queer people are saving marriage. By making these things real and not stale for the first time in a long time.

This book was so fascinating. Through it I was about to see the inner-workings of what goes on in the IFV process. Michelle is so open and vulnerable, talking about her experiences trying to get pregnant with a friends sperm, then going through 3 rounds of IVF. She speaks on how all of this works for those who are are poor, minorities, or part of the LGBTQ community. There are so many barriers to entry that speaks on, as well as her experiences, her former past with drugs and alcohol, and her relationships. I laughed with her, teared up with her losses, and really was able to connect with her and experience her story. I loved it💖

**ARC recieved for free through my job, the book hits shelves August 2022!**As always, I can't really rate another person's life experiences: they're not mine to judge.That said, Michelle Tea's memoir about her struggles with infertility and her road to pregnancy, and birth, and now motherhood was so enjoyable to read. Her writing voice is funny and unique, and she provides a wonderfully Queer view of pregnancy and motherhood that I didn't realize I needed.I still have mixed feelings about pregnancy and childbirth, but Tea's memoir made me feel a little more comfortable with it as a whole, and definitely a whole lot more valid as a Queer woman.