The Birth Of A Mother
How The Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
As you prepare to become a mother, you face an experience unlike any other in your life. Having a baby will redirect your preferences and pleasures and, most likely, will realign some of your values.As you undergo this unique psychological transformation, you will be guided by new hopes, fears, and priorities. In a most startling way, having a child will influence all of your closest relationships and redefine your role in your family's history. The charting of this remarkable, new realm is the subject of this compelling book.Renowned psychiatrist Daniel N. Stern has joined forces with pediatrician and child psychiatrist Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern and journalist Alison Freeland to paint a wonderfully evocative picture of the psychology of motherhood. At the heart of The Birth of a Mother is an arresting premise: Just as a baby develops physically in utero and after birth, so a mother is born psychologically in the many months that precede and follow the birth of her baby.The recognition of this inner transformation emerges from hundreds of interviews with new mothers and decades of clinical experience. Filled with revealing case studies and personal comments from women who have shared this experience, this book will serve as an invaluable sourcebook for new mothers, validating the often confusing emotions that accompany the development of this new identity. In addition to providing insight into the unique state of motherhood, the authors touch on related topics such as going back to work, fatherhood, adoption, and premature birth.During pregnancy, mothers-to-be talk about morning sickness and their changing bodies, and new mothers talk about their exhaustion, the benefits of nursing or bottle-feeding, and the dilemma of whether or when they should return to work. And yet, they can be strangely mute about the dramatic and often overwhelming changes going on in their inner lives. Finally, with The Birth of a Mother, these powerful feelings are eloquently put into words.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The author of Diary of a Baby turns his attentive eye on motherhood in this reassuring and uniquely substantive volume that focuses on new mothers. Based on close observation and hundreds of interviews with the mothers of young children, Stern, an infant psychiatrist who teaches at Cornell University Medical Center-New York Hospital, describes the complex emotional shifts that women experience as they travel from pregnancy through birth and into their baby's newborn period. For some, the transition into the new state of motherhood is instantaneous; for others, the initiation requires time. But all find the transformation profound, thoroughly changing their view of themselves, their relationships and the world. Stern offers his own perspective on the normal development changes that may be taking place, from concerns during pregnancy to changing relationships women may be experiencing with their own mothers, to building a matrix of helpful friends, to a baby's impact on a marriage. Of particular value are the descriptions, delivered in sensory, immediate prose, of the interactions between a wide array of mothers and their babies. Most stunning is a detailed evocation of a three-minute interaction between a mother and her baby that shows how, even when the mother doesn't respond perfectly, she is still doing well enough. It's hard to imagine a new mother who would not be inspired, reassured and encouraged by Stern's moving and thoughtful account. FYI: Basic will simultaneously reissue Stern's classic Diary of a Baby in paper.