Becoming Mum

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 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!

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

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.

Where Does the Special Needs Mom Go For Support? As a special needs mom we forget to take care of ourselves, because we are so busy taking care of everyone and everything. We are running like hamsters on a wheel, trying to find our way through this new world we live in. This level of busy is exhausting. When a friend asks you how are you doing, how do you respond? Do you tell them you're tired, frustrated, angry, or burnt out? Or, do you tell them about your child's latest challenge that's got you up against the wall? Have you forgotten to check in with yourself? To stop and take a break or catch your breath? You may be so exhausted you can't figure out how to take a break, you think you are out of options. The truth is you do have options. You have many options, all within the Becoming A Seriously Happy Special Needs Mom. The guide to finding your happy place that you won't find anywhere else. Practical tips, life lessons, and strategies to open your mind to new ways of thinking. Change the way you look at life and life will look different. Discover how you can create your Happy Place in a world that you never imagined for yourself. Find out how laughter will change your perspective and your attitude. Become the empowered and confident mother, wife, and friend in difficult situations. Relationships will blossom and your self confidence will soar. If you're looking for support for special needs moms, you're in the right place. Scroll to the top of the page and get started when you buy this book.

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.

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

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER 'A lacerating account ... painful but necessary' EVENING STANDARD 'Beautiful & significant ... Tackles grief with honesty' DAWN FRENCH 'Very important and moving book' ALASTAIR CAMPBELL 'A searingly honest book. So much of Rio's emotional turmoil and deep loss resonated with me. At the same time I loved his message of hope' GLORIA HUNNIFORD 'Rio's courageous story of life, loss, grief and hope' PRIMA CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE, 'Best of the Celebrity Crop' 'Tender, heartbreaking ... An extraordinary and unforgettable book. *****' HEAT * * * * * * 'When Rebecca died, the idea that one day I might begin to feel better would have struck me as laughable ... I know how persuasive this kind of permanence thinking can be. I know too that anyone locked in its grip will laugh if I promise them that their pain will one day ease. It will. Of course it will. But I know better than to expect anyone to believe me.' In 2015, former England football star Rio Ferdinand suddenly and tragically lost his wife and soulmate Rebecca, aged 34, to cancer. It was a profound shock and Rio found himself struggling to cope not just with the pain of his grief, but also with his new role as both mum and dad to their three young children. Rio's BBC1 documentary, Being Mum and Dad, touched everyone who watched it and won huge praise for the honesty and bravery he showed in talking about his emotions and experiences. His book now shares the story of meeting, marrying and losing Rebecca, his own and the family's grief - as well as the advice and support that get him through each day as they strive to piece themselves back together. Thinking Out Loud is written in the hope that he can inspire others struggling with loss and grief to find the help they need through this most difficult of times.

"Incredible!"—Samantha Irby, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life and Meaty Raw, witty, and unapologetic, That’s Mental is a collection of laugh-out-loud funny, confessional essays about the inappropriate, devastating, and strangely amusing side to being mentally ill. In her book, British comedy writer Amanda Rosenberg breaks down myths and misconceptions about what it means to live, laugh, love with bipolar II in a darkly funny, but familiar way. That’s Mental dives head-first into the overlooked and offbeat issues of mental illness, it shines a harsh, fitting room light on thoughts and ideas that are often avoided, because they’re uncomfortable or just downright embarrassing. These pages move through the everyday realities of mental illness, covering everything from, how reaching out for help is a fucking nightmare, to dealing with people who suggest “cures” for your depression, to making up excuses to miss work just so you can take a mental health day. That’s Mental is an uproarious and brutally honest collection of confessions from someone who’s been there, done that, and still has no idea what she’s doing.