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WORK TITLE: The Motherhood Affidavits
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.laurajeanbaker.com/
CITY: Oshkosh
STATE: WI
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Phone: (920) 573-1125
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married Ryan Ulrich (a defense attorney), 2001; children: Irelyn, Leo, Fern, Gustav, and Francis.
EDUCATION:University of Michigan, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and teacher. University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, adjunct faculty, then beginning 2010 associate professor. Previously taught English and Spanish at EAGLE School of Fitchburg, Madison, WI; English to Kraft Foods employees, Madrid, Spain; and English in a bilingual immersion program, Green Bay, WI.
AWARDS:Pushcart Prize nominations (two); Colby Fellow for graduate study, University of Michigan.
WRITINGS
Contributor of essays to periodicals and websites, including the Washington Post, Salon, and Scary Mommy. Contributor of poetry and memoir to the Gettysburg Review, Confrontation, the Connecticut Review, Third Coast, the Cream City Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, So To Speak, Calyx, and the journal War, Literature, and the Arts.
SIDELIGHTS
Raised by therapists, Laura Jean Baker writes in the areas of mental health, crime, and family. She has a master’s degree in creative writing and taught Spanish and English before joining the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, where she teaches in the English Department and in Women’s and Gender Studies and the Honors College. Baker specializes in memoir, personal narratives, women’s literature, and children’s picture books. A mother of five, Baker has known her lawyer husband since they were both 11 years old.
In her debut book, The Motherhood Affidavits: A Memoir, Baker writes about motherhood and discontent covering the period of 2008 to 2016. She reveals both the family’s private life and the public life of her husband, a criminal defense lawyer. She also writes about some of his clients, although she changes their names.
In writing about her family life, including her lifelong battle with depression, Baker draws not only on her own memories and first-hand experiences but also from her own personal journals and other writings, as well as photographs and videos. Writing in the memoir’s prologue, Baker points out: “Stories of Ryan’s work in criminal defense have been corroborated through Open Records (Wisconsin Public Record Law, enacted 1982), an abundance of discoverable evidence, court proceedings I personally attended, and news coverage of high-profile cases.”
Just prior to becoming a university professor, Baker gave birth to her first child. At the same time, she began taking oxytocin, which she found to be the first drug that she thought effectively addressed her lifelong battle with depression. Readers follow Baker’s story as she has four more children over an eight-year period. At the same time, her cravings for oxytocin grow as well. Meanwhile, her husband is becoming increasingly distressed by both his wife’s oxytocin use and the growing number of children. The increasing size of the family is becoming a financial burden for the public defender who fears their middle-class life is in danger of disappearing.
Baker writes that she also began identifying with many of her husband’s legal clients in Oshkosh, Wisconsin who were also drug addicts amid the city’s opioid epidemic. For example, there is the junkie who she can’t help but find lovable and who keeps popping up in their lives. Baker even has tender feelings for her husband’s hardcore clients, whose crimes include kidnapping and murder, noting the inequity of the justice system in many cases. At the same time, Baker writes about what she views as her own family’s hypocrisy. Although their livelihood depends on her husband’s clientele, Baker writes that neither she nor her husband were willing to befriend any of them.
Delving into her own life, Baker begins to debate about her own innocence as a woman who is not only addicted to motherhood but also a drug. Financially, things begin to improve for the family when her husband starts up his own law firm after they have their third child. Nevertheless, Baker continues to crave her opioid and more children. Baker writes that oxytocin provides relief from her bipolar depression. She describes the drug as the feel-good hormone that is released during pregnancy and during breast-feeding, noting that it is also released during near-death experiences. Baker admits that one of the reasons she kept having babies was to experience this euphoric feeling.
“The unusual premise of linking addiction and crime with motherhood and birth will keep most readers” interested, wrote Library Journal Online contributor Rachel Dreyer. Calling The Motherhood Affidavits “an unflinching dispatch from the intersections of motherhood, poverty, drugs, and mental illness,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor also noted: Baker “writes with an imaginative, studied complexity that, when joined with the disquieting subject matter, results in a memoir … evocative and irritating.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Baker, Laura Jean, The Motherhood Affidavits: A Memoir, The Experiment (New York, NY), 2018.
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, review of The Motherhood Affidavits.
ONLINE
Laura Jean Baker website, https://www.laurajeanbaker.com (July 3, 2018).
Library Journal Online, https://reviews.libraryjournal.com/ (February 13, 2018), Rachel Dreyer, review of The Motherhood Affidavits.
Washington Post Online, https://www.washingtonpost.com (April 24, 2018), Laura Jean. Baker, “When a ‘Natural’ Mother Considers Plastic Surgery.”
Raised by therapists; married to a defense attorney, Laura Jean Baker writes where mental health, crime, and family intersect.
She earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where she was a Colby Fellow for graduate study.
Her essays have appeared at The Washington Post, Salon, and Scary Mommy.
Her poetry and memoir have appeared in The Gettysburg Review; Confrontation; The Connecticut Review; Third Coast; The Cream City Review; Alaska Quarterly Review; So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Literature and Art; War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities; and Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women.
Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her essay “Year of the Tiger” was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013.
Her memoir, The Motherhood Affidavits, was released by The Experiment in April 2018. It has been reviewed or mentioned in The New York Times, The Toronto Star, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Shondaland, Electric Literature, and Medium.
About The Motherhood Affidavits:
Author
If motherhood is an addiction, what does Laura Jean Baker share in common with the drug dealers, addicts, sex offenders, and thieves her husband, attorney Ryan Ulrich, defends as he grinds out the grittiest of legal casework? By the time Ryan starts up Ulrich Law Office upon the birth of their third (but not last) baby, Laura Jean craves Oxytocin – the love hormone; the natural high of motherhood – as much as Ryan’s clients hanker for heroin and meth. Over the next eight years, as Ryan’s roster of defendants proliferates, so too does the Ulrich family, nearly to the threshold of everybody’s overdose.
Reading Group Guide
Laura Jean Baker
Official Website
"It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that
there is no answer to the question 'who am I'
except the voice inside herself.”
– Betty Friedan
Official Blog
Teacher
After earning her M.F.A. in creative writing, L.J. was hired to teach English and Spanish at EAGLE School of Fitchburg on the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin. Teaching English to Kraft Foods employees in Madrid, Spain, while studying abroad, as well teaching English in a bilingual immersion program for the children of Mexican immigrants in Green Bay, WI, had provided L.J. just barely the experience and stamina required to spend long days with 7th and 8th graders. This first full-time teaching contract also coincided with L.J.’s first pregnancy such that teaching at EAGLE School and simultaneously embarking on the journey toward motherhood made 2003-2004 the singularly most formative year of her professional life.
Three days after giving birth to her first baby, Irie, L.J. was hired to teach in an adjunct capacity in the Department of English at UW Oshkosh. Four years later, she earned a tenure-track position in the same department (different office), ultimately being awarded tenure and becoming an Associate Professor in 2013.
She continues to teach in the English Department as well as in Women’s and Gender Studies and the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where she specializes in memoir, personal narratives, women’s literature, and picture books for children. She also teaches special topics courses on crime and motherhood. L.J. has been nominated for the Faculty/Instructional Academic Staff Advisor Award and the Honors College Outstanding Teaching Award.
Mother
Laura Jean’s psychiatrist father told her, early on in life, “Motherhood has the power to either make you or break you.” The Motherhood Affidavits is the sacred but harrowing account of how being a mother saved Laura Jean from the ghosts of depression but later broke her heart.
Laura Jean and her husband, attorney Ryan Ulrich, met on the first day of sixth grade; they were 11 years old. They learned not long into their friendship that their families were already intertwined. Ryan’s grandmother, Marilyn Ulrich, had worked alongside Laura Jean’s mom, Barbara Baker, waiting tables at Bell’s Restaurant in the 1960s, a full decade before either was born.
These sweethearts began their lifetime partnership as viola stand partners in the middle-school orchestra, officially dating in 1995; marrying in 2001; and collaborating still today, energized by their shared commitment to family, creative projects, and romance.
This mama gave birth to her babies in alternating springs between 2004 and 2013, each year brimming with louder caterwauls and the ever-evolving sounds of life. In May 2017, Irelyn (“Irie”) turned 13; Leo turned 11; Fern turned 9; and Gustav (“Gus”) turned 4. Francis (“Frank”), the odd-birthday-boy-out, turned 7 in June. All five children contribute unfathomably to their mama’s writing and teaching careers.
Laura Zabora is one of many affectionate nicknames bestowed upon Laura Jean Baker by her psychiatrist father. Eccentric and playful, he announced one evening that his daughter’s first name and a patient’s surname rhymed! The many permutations of Laura Zabora, among them “Zabie Baby,” remained Laura Jean’s favorite endearments into adulthood.
As her father’s “best but only daughter,” Laura Jean boasted one full brother, one step-brother, and two half brothers, even if they never lived together under a single roof.
While Laura Jean credits her father for her love of language, she is equally grateful for her mother’s influence. A psychotherapist with strong Feminist leanings and a spontaneously fearless disposition, Laura Jean’s mother hopped on a bicycle and trekked alone from Wisconsin to Maine the summer Laura Jean graduated from high school – one of many adventures from a lifetime of similarly brave exploits.
Related Resources
When a 'natural' mother considers plastic surgery
Laura Jean Baker
Washingtonpost.com. (Apr. 24, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
Full Text:
Byline: Laura Jean Baker
I am a mother to five children, all of whom I breast-fed, one after the other, for an uninterrupted grand total of 13 years and three months. But once upon a time, I was pregnant with my first baby. At a checkup I asked my midwife to examine my engorged breasts. Yellow liquid kept leaking out, hardening over my nipples like husks.
"It's just colostrum," she said. "Liquid gold."
My former B-cup -- now a generous D-cup -- was a pouch filled with magic. After asking all the right questions about breast-feeding, I blurted out, because I really wondered, "Can women with breast implants nurse their babies?"
"The kinds of women getting boob jobs aren't the kinds of women breast-feeding their babies," my husband said, and my midwife agreed.
We were at the Madison Birth Center, the first free-standing nationally accredited facility of its kind in Wisconsin. I was embarking on natural childbirth. Epidurals were not provided at the Madison Birth Center, and I was lucky to eventually birth five babies without so much as Tylenol, a point of pride, except that "natural mother" became a tough honor to maintain.
I used my own nipple, instead of a NUK, to pacify my co-sleeping babies. I wore them in a Moby wrap and subscribed to attachment parenting. My own daughter nicknamed me Mother Nature.
But I flunked other tests. I diapered with disposables, plied my children with "fruit" snacks and Cheetos, and appeased them with YouTube. I wasn't an all-natural mother, but then who on Earth was I?
My mixed allegiances were never as clear as when I studied my body. I was bewitched by the miracle of reproduction, but there's always an aftertaste. Like, five postpartum recoveries later, my stomach looked so pinched and doughy. Motherhood had stretched my taut skin into a wrinkled flap.
After my last baby celebrated his first birthday, I took up Pilates and running, quickly shedding 25 pounds. Although I was proud of my efforts, I now glimpsed a double-whammy in the mirror. My stomach sagged more than ever.
My stretched-out skin didn't show the results of my newfound labor. If anything, my abdomen looked worse! I vowed never to wear a bikini again. And what did it matter -- I was the kind of woman who acquiesced to nature, wasn't I? I was also committed to teaching my girls, now 10 and 6, to embrace their natural beauty. When my husband nonchalantly told me about a medical spa that housed a plastic surgery practice, I initially dismissed him.
Plastic surgery was for the rich and famous or people who needed it to repair birth defects or injuries, or to mitigate the symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder. It wasn't for "natural mothers" like me. Did moms who'd endured the more commonplace strains of pregnancy and childbirth even qualify?
"Apparently a lot of women get mommy makeovers," my husband offered. A revolving door of glamorous moms, the plastics from "Mean Girls" but married and with children, flashed into my brain and triggered my curiosity. Could I possibly be one of them?
Beneath a half-moon cutout of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" -- not Eve -- the practice leads its website with this obvious gem: "You wouldn't trade your children for the world, but wouldn't it be nice to capture parts of your pre-pregnancy figure?" Yes, it certainly would be nice, but was I willing to further complicate my already mixed status?
If so, perhaps I wasn't the only one. In 2016, surgeons certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery performed nearly 16 million cosmetic procedures, a 115 percent increase in plastic surgery from 2000, commonly among mothers.
Before leaving home for my $80 consultation, I studied myself in the mirror. I imagined surgery as a simple job, a quick whip stitch to a loose hem.
Upon arriving at the center, though, I realized I'd made a mistake. Was this a surgical center or a five-star restaurant? The "menu of services" boasted everything from a "neck lift" (appetizers) to "vaginal rejuvenation" (dessert with an aperitif). Two synthetically attractive receptionists looked like they'd been convulsed with electroshock therapy. Every line on their matching faces was rattled flat.
My feelings of regret darkened when I was called to an examining room. Mood lighting dulled the small furnished chamber where I was instructed to change from street clothes to gown. The doctor finally knocked to enter, with a female associate on his heels, ready to jot notes on a laptop.
"What brings you here today?" he asked.
"Well, I've been pregnant five times, and now I've lost weight." I pinched myself and gestured toward my imperfect body in the full-length mirror.
"Ah, yes," he told me. "You have a postpartum pouch." I dropped the robe, and he began drafting a new blueprint on my skin with a felt-tip pen. This reconstruction artist mapped a better version of me onto me, but all I heard was, "Here's the short loin; here's the flank." In my mind, he was more Cutts the Butcher than Michelangelo.
Although I hadn't mentioned my breasts, he noted their lack of elasticity. He lifted, pleated and etched circles around my areolae. Although a mastopexy would not guarantee symmetry, my nipples -- yanked on for 13 years and three months -- might be perky again.
Afterward in the assistant's office, silicone sacs lay scattered across the desk like packages of freeze-dried food, breasts a la carte. If I opted for the tummy tuck and breast lift, I'd get a discount of 15 percent.
The round-bosomed woman assured me, "It's totally worth it." As she reviewed the costs for elaborate nips and tucks I knew I couldn't afford, I realized I was fortunate never to have experienced surgery under duress -- no C-section, no episiotomy, no final jerk of the forceps. Who did I think I was now, potentially electing to go under the knife? According to my information packet, I'd have to use something called the Jackson-Pratt drain to pump blood and pus away from the wound post-op. My presence at the center seemed suddenly and blatantly absurd. Sometimes, at the very least, epiphanies are cheap.
"Besides," I told her. "I'm still breast-feeding, and I wouldn't want to damage my milk ducts."
"Oh, yes," she said. "You'd definitely want to wait until you were done breast-feeding." I didn't know yet I'd breast-feed another three years, officially weaning my youngest on the eve of 4-year-old kindergarten.
After my $80 consultation, my imperfect skin tone seemed smoother. Visiting the plastic surgeon had magically sealed me off from self-loathing, and without spending the proposed $10,000, my skin eventually started to tighten up on its own. I even bought a new bikini.
As it turned out, the label I gave myself didn't fit so well. Do any, really? I naturally birthed my babies, but I also entertained plastic repairs. Although I never returned to the center, I figured out that most of us are modern Renaissance women -- schooled in a diversity of viewpoints, juggling our mismatched desires.
Maybe after raising my children, I'll add to my repertoire, study the masters, and take up sculpture, molding women's bodies as I see mine: teardrop breasts still listing to the tune of my babies' lips. In lieu of silicone, I vow to use clay -- eco-friendly, biodynamic and 100 percent all-natural.
Laura Jean Baker is the author of "The Motherhood Affidavits: A Memoir." Baker teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, where she lives with her husband and five children.
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More reading:
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Before you diagnose your sister-in-law's issues, be a friend
How I'm raising my kids to have a healthy relationship with food, despite my eating disorder
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Baker, Laura Jean. "When a 'natural' mother considers plastic surgery." Washingtonpost.com, 24 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536073359/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=37459b36. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536073359
Baker, Laura Jean: THE MOTHERHOOD AFFIDAVITS
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Baker, Laura Jean THE MOTHERHOOD AFFIDAVITS The Experiment (Adult Nonfiction) $24.95 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-61519-439-1
Better Call Saul meets La Leche League in this creative memoir.
In a work that veers from confessional to cautionary tale to small-town crime blotter, Baker (English/Univ. of Wisconsin-Oshkosh) offers a harrowing account of her childbearing years at the center of the Midwestern methamphetamine crisis. The author and her high school sweetheart, Ryan, returned to their Wisconsin hometown to raise a family only to find that Oshkosh had traded its overalls for opioids. Ryan scraped together an unsteady income as a public defender for the many townsfolk cursed by addiction and its attendant woes: assault, theft, murder, child endangerment, and criminal neglect. Although she portrays Ryan's law practice as a noble ministry defending the weakest from too-severe punishments, Baker is hardly the meek pastor's wife in this paternalistic scenario. Her only source of relief from the anguish of bipolar depression was getting high on oxytocin, the feel-good hormone released during pregnancy, breast-feeding, and near-death experiences, but she had to continue to have babies in order to keep this precious "oxy" flowing. As the children kept coming and the family's debts piled up, they descended into the moral quagmire of the impoverished. Baker blames her failings as a mother and citizen (ignoring seat belt laws, letting her children's front teeth rot) on her self-diagnosed addiction. Even as she compares her escapades and temporary insanity to the meth addicts all around them, she details her family's hypocrisy in being willing to profit from, but not befriend or live among, her husband's clientele. In order to gather the drug-addled denizens to her breast in narrative solidarity, she subsumes their tragic stories in her own and makes the disturbing anecdotes from their case histories serve as evidence for her theories about motherhood under duress. The author writes with an imaginative, studied complexity that, when joined with the disquieting subject matter, results in a memoir both evocative and irritating but which readers may find themselves unable to put down or soon forget.
An unflinching dispatch from the intersections of motherhood, poverty, drugs, and mental illness.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Baker, Laura Jean: THE MOTHERHOOD AFFIDAVITS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527247897/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=88eec992. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527247897
Emotional Rescue Reads | Memoir
BY RACHAEL DREYER ON FEBRUARY 13, 2018 LEAVE A COMMENT
Love, escape, education, and family are the themes throughout this month’s memoirs. These subjects are intertwined in the following works in ways that make for emotionally engrossing reading, perfect companions for cold winter evenings.
Baker, Laura Jean. The Motherhood Affidavits. Experiment. Apr. 2018. 288p. ISBN 9781615194391. $24.95; ebk. ISBN 9781615194407. MEMOIR
Baker’s memoir uses the language of addiction to talk about pregnancy and child-rearing experiences. The subject of addiction is especially relevant for Baker, as her husband, who works as a criminal defense attorney, represents many clients charged with drug-related offenses or who struggle with substance abuse. Starting with her first child’s birth, Baker admits to being “hooked” on oxytocin, a naturally occurring mood-altering chemical released during pregnancy and breastfeeding. As a result, she persuaded her husband to have more kids, even as the financial support, time, and care that five children require stretched the couple to their limits. Her narrative demonstrates the power and privilege of choosing to become a parent but also the wisdom to know when enough is enough. In between vignettes of family life, the author writes with compassion about her husband’s clients, shedding light on the inequity of the American justice system. VERDICT A feminist’s perspective on prolific procreating; the unusual premise of linking addiction and crime with motherhood and birth will keep most readers on the line.