There was one thing in particular Maria Boyle, aka TwistedDoodles, wanted to make sure of when writing her book.
After being approached about the idea to put her illustrations into a book, she knew it had to be a “good, solid subject the whole way through”.
And a year and a half after the birth of her twin daughters a parenting book seemed like the perfect fit.
The illustrator/scientist/writer has become a hit with social media users thanks to her relatable cartoons, which are often about parenting and her life with her husband and two young daughters.
Her book, The Newborn Identity: Revelations from the First Year of Parenting, combines the magic of her illustrations with a candid and refreshingly honest take on parenting.
She told us about why she decided to include her diary entires in the book, how “surreal” it was to see her work in stores and why she thinks a lot of enjoyment of parenting is done retrospectively.
She said:
“I had been approached before about putting my cartoons in a book. I kind of felt that there wasn’t a connecting theme – there’s not really a connecting theme in my work. I do things about science, about culture, about my life.
At the time, when I was approached by my agent, the girls were about one and a half. She asked, ‘what kind of book would you want to do?’ I said, ‘well, I want to do a book about parenting – that’s where my head is at right now.’
“It was originally meant to be a book just with cartoons. But then I said, ‘Actually, I’ve been keeping a diary the whole way through [her pregnancy and the first year]’.
“I didn’t intend for anyone else to read [the diary], which is why it contains swear words – I don’t usually use them.”
She ultimately decided to include the diary in the book, which turned it into a mix of cartoons she had created, her diary and other parenting observations.
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Maria added:
“For me, I wanted it to be a good, solid subject the whole way through. And to get it out of me, this thing that I needed to write.”
She admitted it was “kind of scary” to have her diary entires in the book, as it’s “so personal” – but it has also helped, too.
She continued:
“One of the things I don’t know if a lot of people appreciate about the first year: so many things happen in the first year, that you cannot accurately remember it.
“I read through the book [now], and I’m like, ‘oh yeah, that happened!’
“Part of that is because so many things happen. But part of it is your body makes you forget, because if you remembered how hard newborns are you would never want to have another kid.”
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The mum-of-two told us about one of the pieces of advice she got most often after the birth of her daughters, and how she found a lot of the enjoyment of parenting happened in retrospect.
She said:
“Everyone just wants you to get through the pregnancy – the advice, a lot of the time, comes once the babies are out.
“A lot of people said to me, when they’re small, enjoy this. It puts this pressure on that you have to actively enjoy small children. There are moments of that, but it’s a lot of work. What I found was, a lot of enjoyment of parenting is done retrospectively.
“You know on a night out, when you look at photos [afterwards] and you go ‘ah, that all went as a bit of a blur but look at what happened’.
“I used to sit in bed and look at photos of my kids and miss them – even though they were literally two feet away. I’d want to wake them up, because that was the time when I could enjoy everything that had gone on; I could actually sit down.
“My husband would always be like, ‘don’t wake them! Why would you want to wake our kids?’ Those are the kind of moments; that’s when you enjoy it.”
The Newborn Identity: Revelations from the First Year of Parenting by Maria Boyle is out now.
