All set to launch her first novel — I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot!, author Lalita Iyer speaks to Renu Dhole about the lighter side of motherhood

If you’ve been going all awwww… on watching those soft-lit baby product ads, or if you seriously believe (or if Madhuri Dixit-Nene or Aishwarya Rai are making you believe) that motherhood will put a permanent glow and smile on your face, Lalita Iyer’s hilariously-titled book I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot! might just give you the reality check that you need. The writer (mother of one, journalist, blogger @ www.mommygolightly.com) tells what no one will tell you about pregnancy and motherhood — things that often are buried under the grossly oversimplified and exaggerated notions of what pregnancy/motherhood means, and what it does to you. Excerpts:

The title of the book is crazy. What inspired it?

Well, it is one of the lines in the book; it reflects the state of mind of the pregnant woman while she is constantly treated like a patient, as though something is wrong with her. I figured, why not make it the title, as it was the perfect way to set the tone of the book. Evidently it has worked, as the first thing people tell me is ‘Wow! What a title!’

The thing with popular bloggers coming up with books is that the expectations are set. And yet, you have to come up with something different. Was that a challenge?

I am not primarily a blogger. I just took to it while I was on a baby and book sabbatical. It helped me document my journey with my child, and I did make a lot of friends through the interactions on the blog and built an incredible following. I also could sense what people wanted to read by how they reacted to a particular post, so in that way, the blog really helped. But I always wanted to write the book, just that the babydom didn’t give me extended stretches of time to write it in one go.


I am a writer/journalist more than anything else, and this book was not a blog-turns-into-book strategy. I started writing the book a little before the blog, and I was clear what I wanted in the book. The rest went into my blog or column.

What have you gained from your blogging experience? Did you make friends? Did you attract hate mail for being so brutally honest?

Motherhood is often lonely, and you miss meeting real people and having real conversations that stimulate you. The blog gave me that. Yes, I did make a few enemies, but the number of friends I made more than made up for that. I once got a hate mail from someone for standing up for stay-at-home motherhood. I should have saved that email. She completely missed the point and thought I was pointing a finger at working moms. It was ridden with angst, that email, and she lashed out at me like I was some privileged woman sitting at home, painting my nails.

What exactly do you make of motherhood? What do you think of the narratives around it in popular culture?

I think it’s one way of reconstructing yourself and reexamining your priorities. Unfortunately, the narratives are either steeped in the emotion of nurturing or the other extreme — feminism. No one is looking at the lighter side of it, or perhaps doesn’t talk about it for fear of belittling what is supposed to be a very pure experience. I enjoyed being a child through being a mother, it is not normal for every woman. To each, her own. The book came up mostly out of the frustration that there was nothing funny or real for a pregnant woman to read in our space. Most of the reading material is just clinical crap or purple-prose diaries of new mothers. Real life is something else, and motherhood is not the most beatific state of your life. It is work. It is drudgery. It’s hard and not always rewarding. And it’s about time women spoke about what really goes on and stopped pretending that everything is bliss once they hold the baby in their hands, as they have been trained to believe.

As a mother still clearly struggling to be one, what would you tell young women who are scared of losing themselves in the ‘all-sacrificing’ job of motherhood?

Precisely that. Don’t lose yourself. And don’t be a mom because it is the right thing to do at a certain age. I think for a mother at any age, it is important to find a space that is your own, and not lose oneself in the motions of motherhood. Get the men on board. That’s a start.

Should men also read your book? Won’t it scare their pants off?

Of course they should. Of course it should scare their pants off. Being a father improves men’s equity tremendously, but they should also be willing to do the work.