Product Description

Becoming a mother is never exactly as you had imagined it. For some women it is an ordeal, for others a delight. For many it is the most disturbing, challenging, and exciting experience of their lives. Whatever the birth was like, and however you feel about your baby, there will be unexpected problems, questions you want to ask, feelings you want to share.

In The Year After Childbirth, Sheila Kitzinger gives the support every woman needs in this turbulent first year. There is no shortage of baby-care books, but this will be the only authoritative mother-care book on the market. It focuses on the women, on her physical and emotional experiences and her relationships during the often difficult transition to motherhood. Time and again women say that they felt prepared for the birth, but not for what happened afterwards. After all the
anticipation and the attention that an expectant mother gets, she is often left to face this alone.

In this remarkable new book, Sheila Kitzinger discusses every aspect of this roller-coaster year - elation and the exhaustion, achievements and the anxieties - and makes practical suggestions for ways of coping when things go wrong.

* How your body changes - toning your muscles, moving freely, relaxation skills, massage, yoga, pelvic floor vitality

* Breast feeding - pleasures and problems, how to succeed when it does not start well, finding the best positions, increasing the milk supply

* Eating well - ideas for healthy fast food, vegetarian diets

* Feelings about yourself - discovering a new you, coping with unhappiness, postnatal depression, developing self-confidence

* Feelings about your baby - the baby's personality and stages of development, how to get to know your baby as a unique person, baby massage

* Fatherhood - how your partner may feel, how a man can be an active father and you can both share parenthood

* Changing relationships - understanding how relationships change, with your partner, your parents, your friends, and your older child - and how you can handle these changes

* Sex - what to do when you don't feel like it, pain after stiches, finding new tenderness

* Going to work - benefits and drawbacks, leaving the baby

* Child-care - what sort of care would suit you and the baby best, how to go about organizing it, getting a good support network

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #419691 in Books
• Published on: 1994-06-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 316 pages

Customer Reviews

The gift every new Mum should receive after delivery.
You're lying in a hospital bed, the last 12-24 hours have been the most gruelling , terrifying and wonderful of your life, and in your arms is the object of your hard work - your new baby. What happens now?...

If you are buying a gift for a new born, why not consider buying this for their new mum. While hundreds of books deal with the physiological and emotional changes of pregnancy, this is the only one that talks about what happens to the Mother after the birth. In a straight-forward and reassuring tone it discusses how a woman might be feeling about the birth and her new child, and about the changes that have happened and will continue to happen to her body. What emerges is a wonderfully positive book that has the potential to inspire women to a renewed confidence and pride in their body's capacity to create and nurture life not only inside but outside the womb. A breath of fresh air in a world obsessed with silicon notions of femininity.