Choosing a parenting memoir is a lot like finding a best friend: The match really depends on both your personalities. One writer's "here's-how-it-really-is" tale can be hilarious or horrifying, depending on whether you'd cop to similar tactics or are ready to call Child Protective Services.

The feeling of "Yeah, I've been there" has as much to do with the author's parenting style as it does the quality of writing. When you hit one that fits you, it's with the eureka of discovering a friend with great wit and heart.

The best writers imbue family life with deeper understanding and humor. Without the first, writing comes across as flip and inconsequential; without the second, it isn't that much fun.

We selected four memoirs that follow the early parenting years in diary form. Here are reviews, along with authors' pertinent personality traits.

"From Here to Maternity: The Education of a Rookie Mom"
Beth Teitell
Broadway Books, $19.95

Region: East Coast (Boston).

Background: Lifestyle columnist for the Boston Herald.

Parenting approach: Too cool to be a mommy ("In addition to a celebrity endorsement, I wanted a stroller that came in a fabric to complement a gorgeous red suede jacket I'd bought ..." )

Neuroses: Weight gain, baby gear (she installs pinch guards on hotel closet doors), baby classes (at 18 months, she had her son enrolled in three courses).

Teitell starts by explaining how she spent her pregnancy "focusing not on my unborn child but on the real centerpiece of this scenario: me."

This doesn't seem to change much after the birth. The kids — who bizarrely remain nameless — come across as background nuisances, despite Teitell's assurances that she really does love them.

While Teitell's dry humor often seems at her kids' expense, her funniest bits are about weight. Unnerved by the amount of calories wasted on the sugary orange drink she has to drink for a pregnancy glucose test, she asks the nurse if she can substitute a Snickers bar. "No one's ever asked us that before," the nurse says.

Her confessions — she doesn't know any lullabies so she sings a slow version of the "Brady Bunch" theme song at bedtime — may garner sympathy in some circles, but others will find her grating and self-centered.

"Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family"
Catherine Newman
Penguin Books, $14

Region: Rural Massachusetts.

Background: BabyCenter.com columnist; contributing editor for FamilyFun magazine.

Parenting approach: Self-described hippie (co-sleeping, nursing until age 2).

Neuroses: Excessive worrying ("They give you a free copy of that book — 'What to Expect When Fifteen Million Deadly Pathogens are Sabotaging Your Pregnancy,' or whatever it's actually called — and then treat you like a head case."), germ phobia.

Chronicling her second pregnancy in a journal format, Newman's laugh-out-loud account is aided by her precocious son, Ben. When Newman explains there's a baby inside her to the then-2 ½-year-old, Ben "screwed up his face in what can only be described as existential bafflement, and asked, 'Is it me?' "

Newman captures the schizophrenic feelings kids inspire: overpowering love one second, "You're driving me crazy!" the next. Her tone isn't cynical, but it's not too sappy, either. She infuses the quotidian with humor and meaning, without going overboard on sentiment.

The postpartum equation, she writes, is "hormones 1 mewling subhuman 2 strange, sore body 3 moping older child — sleep = utter lunacy. An utter lunatic who takes oddly little comfort in the knowledge that this is just a bad cocktail of brain chemistry and timing."

"The Mommy Chronicles: Conversations Sharing the Comedy and Drama of Pregnancy and New Motherhood"
Sara Ellington and Stephanie Triplett
Hay House, $14.95

Region: South (North Carolina and Georgia).

Background: Advertising/marketing.

Parenting approach: In the book, Ellington is a stay-at-home mom; Triplett works outside the home full-time (both now work part-time from home).

Neuroses: Complaining about husbands, putting on makeup before giving birth.

The format of "The Mommy Chronicles" — e-mails exchanged by two friends who get pregnant about the same time — makes it like eavesdropping on another mom's conversation. About a third of the book covers their pregnancies; the rest, the first year with the babies.

They share tips ("Have you tried giving Sara a biter biscuit? They're great!"), struggles (a day care that won't let a 3-month-old have a pacifier) and confessions (Triplett's devotion to breastfeeding is "strictly about my own vanity" because she loves her "newfound gifts from the mammary goddesses").

The best part of the book is the back-and-forth support the friends give each other through job difficulties, postpartum depression (Ellington suffers from what she dubs the "dirty little secret") and husbands who don't pitch in at home. Moms with similar experiences will feel validated, but might find a more personalized version of this through their own support systems.

"Let the Baby Drive: Navigating the Road of New Motherhood"
Lu Hanessian
St. Martin's Press, $13.95 (paperback version out in July)

Region: East Coast (near New York City).

Background: Host of the Discovery Health Channel show "Make Room for Baby."

Parenting approach: "I let [the baby's] cues guide me ... I let him navigate while I steer."

Neuroses: Identity crisis, sleeplessness.

You know how you can feel something but it takes a good friend to clarify and voice exactly what it is? At times, that's how it feels reading "Let the Baby Drive." It's not that Hanessian's experiences — or the stories she relates about her friends — are particularly novel, but she manages to put them in bas relief, to bring out just what it is that is distressing or poignant.

Writing about the unspoken expectations and negotiations between moms and dads, she notes, "Expecting our first baby, did we ever imagine that this triangle of our new family could prick us with its sharp edges?"

The book follows her first four years of motherhood with her two sons, mostly skipping the pregnancies. She examines helpful grandmas, Bedtime Sinning (nursing and rocking her baby to sleep), the competing needs of a preschooler and infant and the strangely personal conversations moms have with strangers ("Now, we've been interacting for more than 10 minutes, basically discussing our breasts, and I haven't a clue who this woman is").

Hanessian sees larger messages in the lessons parents try to impose on kids, such as sharing. "We say sharing is about giving, yet we teach it by demand," she writes. "If we order it and our child follows our instruction, he is not giving but obeying."

Stephanie Dunnewind: 206-464-2091 or sdunnewind@seattletimes.com