The Birth Of A Mother: How The Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever

by Daniel N. Stern

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Author: Daniel N. Stern

Publisher: Basic Books

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 9780465015672
ISBN 13: 978-0465015672

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 0465016219
ISBN 13: 978-0465016211

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.

Review

"A brilliant account of the genesis of a woman's maternal identity . . . unique in making available to women the inner psychological process by which a mother becomes a mother long before her baby is born." -- Ethel Spector Person, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University, and author of By Force of Fantasy

"All new mothers should read this sensitive book, learn from it and identify with it." -- Elisabeth Bing, FACCE, author of Laughter and Tears: The Emotional Life of New Mothers

"I loved reading this book and hope all new parents will too." -- T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. , author of Touchpoints: Your Child's Emotional and Behavioral Development

From the Publisher

Praise for this title

"I loved reading this book and hope all new parents will too" --T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. , author of Touchpoints: Your Childs Emotional and Behavioral Development "A brilliant account of the genesis of a womans maternal identity . . . unique in making available to women the inner psychological process by which a mother becomes a mother long before her baby is born." -- Ethel Spector Person, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University, and author of By Force of Fantasy.

"All new mothers should read this sensitive book, learn from it and identify with it." --Elisabeth Bing, FACCE, author of Laughter and Tears: The Emotional Life of New Mothers.

About the Author

Daniel N. Stern, M.D., is a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and adjunct professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical Center–New York Hospital. An expert in the mother-infant relationship, he is the author of The Interpersonal World of the Infant and The Diary of a Baby.

Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern, M.D., is a pediatrician and child psychiatrist in Geneva, Switzerland.

Alison Freeland, a freelance writer and the author of The Journey to Motherhood, currently works as a reporter for Vermont Public Radio.

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The Birth Of A Mother: How The Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever