Looking for ticking biological clocks, a self-described tragicomic, single parents by choice, and memoirs? T this week's pick is Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of Infertility by Myriam Steinberg and illustrated by Christache. Apparently she's currently working on a sequel entitled Stick, Stay, Grow but Catalogue Baby was originally published in 2021 by Page Two Books.

I picked this book up for an online book club that only lasted one month. I've also read and reviewed almost every graphic novel about abortion I've ever heard of and so I guess I need to branch out a bit further.

Content notes for: abortion in the face of down syndrome, a lot of miscarriages, nudity, frank depiction of medical treatments and needles.

The publishers summary is "A deeply moving tragicomic graphic memoir about a single woman’s efforts to conceive in her forties.

A few months after Myriam Steinberg turned forty, she decided she couldn’t wait any longer to become a mother. She made the difficult decision to begin the process of conceiving a child without a partner. With her family and friends to support her, she picked a sperm donor and was on her way.

But Myriam’s journey was far from straightforward. She experienced the soaring highs and devastating lows of becoming pregnant and then losing her babies. She grappled with the best decision to make when choosing donors or opting for a medical procedure. She experienced first-hand the silences, loneliness, and taboos that come with experiences of fetal loss. Unafraid to publicize her experiences, though, she found that, in return, friends and strangers alike started sharing their own fertility stories with her. Although the lack of understanding and language around fetal loss and grief often made it very hard to navigate everyday life, she nonetheless found solace in the community around her who rallied to support her through her journey.

Through it all, Myriam remained hopeful and here she unflinchingly shares her story with wry humour, honesty, and courage. Beautifully illustrated by Christache, Catalogue Baby is one woman’s story of tragedy and beating the odds, and is a resource for all women and couples who are trying to conceive. Catalogue Baby is a compassionate portrait of fertility and infertility that hasn’t been seen before."

Copying that over into my script I'm a bit surprised that the summary jumps straight over the relationship that Steinberg starts the memoir in, and that she tries to make work before moving on to start down the single parent by choice journey. But that's not a huge deal I guess.

Starting off on the writing side of things, Catalogue Baby is a highly personal and vulnerable memoir. A space where there's a lot of diverse judgement from every different kind of person, it's also a very isolating and silencing space. So while I don't think I enjoyed this read (although some reviewers certainly have) I did find it pretty interesting.

A very tightly focused memoir, Steinberg does give credit to the wider community that supported her through this journey to become a single mother by choice.

Other notes to bridge the gap between reviewing a memoir and giving a creator biography. Steinberg lives in vancouver (so this is can-con) and she is Jewish. As a different kind of religious person (namely christian) I really appreciate seeing how religion and religious traditions are woven into people's lives.

Moving along to the artistic side of thing. Christache's cartooning is fairly distinctive and his use of a limited greyscale and pink colour scheme was effective. Working together Steinberg and Christache weave together a hard part of life with blunt matter of fact medical nudity, and fantastical whimsy that personifies biological functions in a way that balances out the grim with the humerious.

Probably not up to either of them, I was a bit surprise that libby forced me to read this ebook in landscape mode. Not the end of the world but not my favourite either.

Christache is another Vancouverite who has done everything from kidergarten art class to teen improv teacher… he's now mostly a freelance illustrator whose goal is "to thrill my clients with playful, beautiful illustrations that capture the mood and narrative of each individual project."

Moving on to the different identities and themes, as I am want to do… As I already mentioned this is a fairly tightly focused memoir so there isn't too much diversity of representation because we are mostly focused on Steinberg.

Bodies and function and failure to function is fairly central to Catalogue Baby and disability does complicate my feelings about this book. Because as I noted in the content notes Steinberg does make the choice part way through her journey to seek an abortion because, after several rounds of genetic testing, the chance of her child not being born with down syndrome is like 1%. I made it a content note because if that's going to be upsetting to anyone they really should not read this memoir. It's not worth it.

On a similar note I don't think it's terribly useful for me to point my critique at cogs in this ableist and capitalist machine that Steinberg and I live in. Please feel free to stop here if you think you might find what I am about to say upsetting. I'm going on a bit of a tangent.

While I was very much raised to be pro-life I am now 1000 and 10 percent pro choice. Doesn't matter if it's a hard choice or an easy choice I do ultimately think it's up to the pregnant person what they are going to do with their body throughout their entire pregnancy.

That said, zooming out, I want to live in a society where it doesn't matter to anyone if they find out their fetus will likely have a not terminal disability such as down syndrome because the stigma and fear are gone and people have everything they need to raise children with a diversity of needs. Not to mention a world in which disabled people are able to get married and not lose their supports and don't face societal barriers to having and raising their own children. Assuming marriage continues to be the thing.

But of course circling back to the grim world I am currently living in. A place of ever increasing eugenics and fascism… I would also encourage people who may sometime in the future be faced with a choice like this is that there is actually no way to guarantee that your child will not be disabled. Screening tests don't catch anything close to everything genetically speaking, births can become complicated, and after that there are even more ways for them to hurt themselves, cancers, viruses and accidents. Eventually we are all either less then fully able bodied or dead.

Even in Catalogue Baby Steinberg's rabbit becomes unexpectedly disabled and we do briefly follow Steinberg's relationship with her rabbit and the long road of recovery they faced around that time.

Class is touched on a bit more then usual. Not like in a proper class analysis sort of way but Steinberg is fairly up front about how financially supportive her parents were of this journey.

Gender felt perhaps somewhat surprisingly low key considering how gendered pregnancy spaces often are or maybe I'm just conveniently forgetting parts? Your milage will certainly vary if you highly gender certain kinds of reproductive organs. I forget if there was any overt mention of non women getting pregnant though.

And while being a single parent by choice is a bit off target for heterosexual reproduction ideals. I did keep having the slightly disappointing realization that Steinberg is actually not queer? Ok, before you rage comment (although honestly, that does feed the algorithm) disappointed is way too strong a word. I was just slightly surprised every time I remembered that. It was also because the style of the comic art also just reminded me of a few queer comics I've read over the years.

Place didn't feel super explored. Like I knew she lived in Vancouver and I think that part of her fertility treatment might have been covered by the provincial healthcare but certainly not a chunk of it. Which is sadly not unusual up here.

Looking at our social construct of race, as I already mentioned Stenberg is Jewish and that does play a part in some spiritual stuff that was woven into the memoir. But I think that's about it as far as I remember.

Wrapping things up… As I already said I wouldn't say this was an enjoyable read. Some people certainly felt a much deeper connection with the material, I just got a lot of second hand stress from all the hard choices and disappointing results throughout.