Den ömma modern review

Many new parents, particularly mothers, will relate to Nordin Stensö’s thoughts and feelings. She feels at times like a failure or a bad mother, she has been let down and left alone by healthcare professionals, she worries about her relationship with her new baby son, and she lives through the blur of postpartum depression. These subjects have been discussed in depth in other recent literature, both fiction and memoirs, but what takes this particular book to a different level is in part the references to other artwork. The pieces Nordin Stensö includes both reflect her feelings in some ways and also deepen some of the comments she makes in both her words and her images. To take just one example, a marble statue from the 2^nd century BCE seems to imply that a real mother/goddess is all breasts and open arms, but even if Nordin Stensö wanted that to be her main or only role, which is not the case, the image of the statue is juxtaposed against drawings of her sobbing as she thinks about her baby losing weight despite breastfeeding regularly. The cold marble represents an impossible standard of perfection.

The word 'tender' describes this book well, as Klara Nordin Stensö depicts the confusing, overwhelming, at times upsetting process of becoming a new mother with gentleness and care. The tears and the slender, stretched-out breasts focus the reader’s attention on lactation and longing, and represent the pressure the author put herself under and why breastfeeding mattered so much to her. As a lactation consultant, I wish her story had ended differently, but as a reader, I was glad to see the smile on her face as she gave her baby a bottle of formula.

This is a book that many readers will see themselves in, and it adds to the ongoing societal conversation about what motherhood is and could be.