Becoming Mum is a truly unique self-help book. It is the first book written to support women, all women, through the psychological passage to motherhood, empowering them to become the kind of mother they wish to be. The psychological passage to motherhood is undoubtedly one of the biggest and most important transitions of a woman's life. It is not without its challenges. Even without complications, becoming a mum includes dramatic physical challenges, from morning sickness to the birth itself. It also has wide-reaching flow-on effects, as it changes a woman's relationship with her partner, her career, her family and her friends. Becoming a mother is a joyous adventure for many, but it is also an adventure that includes physical, mental and emotional challenges, as well as enormous personal adjustment. In Becoming Mum, Dr Koa Whittingham, a clinical and developmental psychologist, parenting researcher and mother, draws on the latest research, her clinical experience and her own experiences as a mother. In each chapter you will find suggestions on how to apply the concepts presented in Becoming Mum to your unique situation, including coping with challenges such as miscarriage, postnatal depression and preterm birth.Discover:- your unique parenting values, and how to harness these to become a confident and happy mother -how to use mindfulness and acceptance to create a loving bond with your baby and support your baby's emotional development- techniques for coping with criticism, unhelpful advice, distressing emotions and physical pain -how to keep your romantic relationship healthy and your support network strong- flexible, step by step strategies for facing major challenges that can be adapted to your personal circumstances Becoming Mum is grounded in the latest scientific literature on parenting and psychological health, drawing from mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Attachment Theory. The book encourages women to enjoy motherhood and builds each woman's self-confidence as a mother by helping her to discover-and live by-her unique mothering values. Further, Becoming Mum liberates mothers from the dual pressures of self-doubt and criticism from others, empowering every mother to parent her child in the way that she feels is best for her own unique baby. Becoming Mum is written in a flexible style that supports each woman's individual circumstances. The practical strategies provided in the book can also easily be adapted to suit further challenges such as miscarriage, postnatal depression and preterm birth. Mums deserve psychological support that is nonjudgmental, empowering and liberating-support that is grounded in each woman's values and easily adaptable to each woman's circumstances and now they can find that support in Becoming Mum. Become the mum that you want to be!

Having a baby is a life-changing event, and can be a very stressful time. One of the best supports women have before and after childbirth is regular, sometimes daily, contact with friends and relatives. Becoming Mum is a virtual mother and baby support group on paper, to keep new mothers going until they have the energy to find a real one. This book will support new mothers, in a society where we don't always talk about how difficult childbirth and those first few months can be. It features interviews with 50 new mothers in Ireland and Irish mothers overseas, as well as some older mothers who have insights to share. Contributions are also provided from well-known Irish public figures, including Olivia O'Leary, Roisín Ingle, Miriam O'Callaghan and Mairéad Farrell. It's not a book of stories. It's more like a survival handbook. It's not a 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' or 'What to Expect in the First Year'. It's not about birth plans, feeding routines, daily soiled nappy levels or how to deal with cracked nipples. It's about the mad stuff: the obsessive thoughts, the negative thoughts, the fear of childbirth and the effects of sleep deprivation. It's not a fun book, but it's not heavy. It's short and snappy, but the content is real and meaningful.

Becoming a Calm Mom balances scientifically sound techniques from an experienced cognitive behavioral therapist with friendly advice from fellow new moms to help moms successfully overcome the self-doubt that so often arrives along with their first bundle of joy.

Written with a great deal of honesty and a pinch of humour. The things they never tell you about becoming mum gives a real world account of the delights and dilemmas pregnant women and new parents face. It isn’t a scientific book or a guide to parenthood but shares experiences and insight into the reality of becoming a mum. The easy to read chapters cover pregnancy, labour, birth and the first eighteen months of parenting, offering countless little gems of things you really need to know. Chapters include: • Learning to zone out of unhelpful conversations • Planning the birth • How to really write a birth plan • Getting to grips with your pesky post-birth emotions • The new parent debates • Don’t forget about you

"Becoming Mother" tells the story of a woman becoming a mother. It is a reflective memoir that spans from pregnancy through the end of the first year postpartum. It follows the author as she resists, denies, copes with, and ultimately embraces her identity as a mother. This isn't a guide or a parenting book. Its goal isn't to convert you to one brand of motherhood or another. Instead, its goal is to show you what becoming a mother can be like. Without sarcasm. Without boasting or martyrdom. Just the plain, messy truth of what it's like for one to become two.

In The Joy of Parenting, two acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) experts provide parents with the tools they need to cope with disruptive and oppositional behavior, acknowledge that they don't have to be perfect, learn to recognize normal childhood transitions, and alleviate their own anxieties to become more responsive, flexible, effective, and compassionate parents.

A revolutionary new approach to caring for your baby The first months after a baby's arrival can be exhausting, and attempts at quick fixes are often part of the problem. The first 16 weeks of life are a neurologically sensitive period, during which some babies will cry a lot and broken nights are to be expected. Attempts at quick fixes are often part of the problem. The Discontented Little Baby Book gives you practical and evidence-based strategies for helping you and your baby get more in sync. Dr. Pamela Douglas offers a path that protects your baby's brain development so that he or she can reach his or her full potential, at the same time as you learn simple strategies to help you enjoy your baby and live with vitality when faced with the challenges of this extraordinary time. With parents' real-life stories, advice on dealing with feelings of anxiety and depression, and answers to your questions about reflux and allergies, this book offers a revolutionary new approach to caring for your baby from a respected Australian GP.!--?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /--

Multi-award-winning author Rachel Cusk’s honest memoir that captures the life-changing wonders of motherhood. Selected by The New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years “Funny and smart and refreshingly akin to a war diary—sort of Apocalypse Baby Now . . . A Life’s Work is wholly original and unabashedly true.” —The New York Times Book Review A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother is Rachel Cusk’s funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. When it was published it 2001, it divided critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk’s children be taken into care, saying she was unfit to look after them, and Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself. An education in babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which has provoked acclaim and outrage in equal measure.

The Mother of All Jobs is about the battle to make modern working parenting actually work. If not for our own sanity, then perhaps for our children's. Have you ever looked at the lengthy school holiday dates and silently screamed in desperation? Have you gone part time yet are still doing a full-time workload? Have you ever been too afraid to ask about maternity benefits or flexible working? Do you constantly feel guilty about missing school events and secretly envious of other mums at the school gates who seem to be doing it all better than you? If any (or all) of the above rings true for you, you are NOT alone. While the demands of work are increasing with longer working hours and more pressure to remain 'switched on' to our phones and computers, the needs of our children and the world of school and childcare have stayed the same. Something has got to change before we all reach breaking point. The Mother of All Jobs brings together the wisdom of women who opened up about their experiences into a manifesto to help working parents thrive.

Your guide to the emotions of pregnancy and early motherhood, from two of America’s top reproductive psychiatrists. When you are pregnant, you get plenty of advice about your growing body and developing baby. Yet so much about motherhood happens in your head. What everyone really wants to know: Is this normal? -Even after months of trying, is it normal to panic after finding out you’re pregnant? -Is it normal not to feel love at first sight for your baby? -Is it normal to fight with your parents and partner? -Is it normal to feel like a breastfeeding failure? -Is it normal to be zonked by “mommy brain?” In What No One Tells You, two of America’s top reproductive psychiatrists reassure you that the answer is yes. With thirty years of combined experience counseling new and expectant mothers, they provide a psychological and hormonal backstory to the complicated emotions that women experience, and show why it’s natural for “matrescence”—the birth of a mother—to be as stressful and transformative a period as adolescence. Here, finally, is the first-ever practical guide to help new mothers feel less guilt and more self-esteem, less isolation and more kinship, less resentment and more intimacy, less exhaustion and more pleasure, and learn other tips to navigate the ups and downs of this exciting, demanding time