9 Months In, 9 Months Out
A Scientist's Tale of Pregnancy and Parenthood
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- 16,99 €
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- 16,99 €
Publisher Description
Expertise can explain the science of what's happening to a fetus or a baby throughout development, but all the science in the world can't tell you what it feels like to have a baby: the pang of morning sickness, the pain of labor, the excitement of birth, and the joy that comes from seeing your baby's first smile. 9 Months In, 9Months Out explores what we actually experience in the nine months of pregnancy and the nine months that follow.
As a professor of infant and child development, author Vanessa LoBue had certain expectations about how pregnancy and motherhood would go. Experiencing it was a different story. As she learned, the first few months of parenthood are much harder than anyone tells you. Written month-to-month in real time as LoBue proceeded through pregnancy and first-time parenthood, 9 Months In, 9 Months Out integrates science and infant development with the personal journey involved in becoming a parent. LoBue also takes a researcher's lens to issues that are top of mind for new parents: breastfeeding, the sleep training controversy, gender development, the science (or lack thereof) behind the link between vaccinations and autism, and the debate over screen time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
LoBue, an associate psychology professor and director of the Child Study Center at Rutgers University, draws on both current scientific thought and personal experience in this helpful resource. Chronicling her own journey into first-time motherhood, LoBue begins with pregnancy and labor. Based on her readings in current research, she reemphasizes the advantages of vaginal birth over C-sections for both women and babies. From her own son's birth, she draws the "moral... that labor is never what you expect" she didn't expect her son, Evan, "to come two weeks early on New Year's Day" but also didn't expect a first-time birth to go so smoothly. The book's second section relates the realities of parenting a newborn, from nursing having long heard it portrayed as the "most natural thing in the world," she was surprised by how difficult and painful it was to postpartum depression, as LoBue finds herself most affected by loneliness. She also shares more general observations, such as that every child has "a very distinct personality" from the start, and that parenting is hard for everyone, even child-development experts. While unlikely to be a game-changer among parenting books, LoBue's manual/memoir is honest, informed, and confidence-inspiring.
