Life After Birth: What Even Your Friends Won't Tell You about Motherhood Book

Shattering the Acres of Silence that Surround Motherhood Motherhood is the best thing that ever happened to Kate Figes. But that's not how she felt after the birth of her first child-there were weeks and months after childbirth that were riddled with confusion, exhaustion, and unhappiness. She felt completely unprepared for the astonishing upheaval that motherhood brings. The birth of a child can provoke profound change in a woman-in her health, professional career, emotions, sex life, and relationships with friends and family. Pregnancy and childbirth radically alter a woman's entire physiology and metabolism. It's virtually impossible to bounce back quickly after childbirth and many new mothers have lingering symptoms undermining their health as well as a lowered resistance to infection. Life After Birth explores the physical, psychological, emotional, social, and sexual consequences of childbirth using interviews, medical and anthropological research, as well as drawing on Kate Figes' own personal experience. It tackles some of the more difficult decisions that motherhood brings, such as the conflicting demands of work and family, offering reassurance to "guilty" mothers that only in the economic prosperity of the twentieth century have they had the choice between work and home. Mothers of the past had little choice but to see their roles of mother and worker as interdependent. In the personal realm, new mothers find that their adult relationships change. Couples enter a period of adjustment and it takes time for them to arrive at a new equilibrium. There is less time for one another as lovers and more to argue about as they attempt to share new responsibilities. Indeed, more than 50 percent of couples have not returned to pre-pregnancy levels of sexual activity one year after the birth of their child. New parents touch the baby far more than they touch each other, which can lead to jealousy or the loneliness that accompanies the loss of adult emotional enrichment. Friendships, too, undergo dramatic changes, and childless friends have trouble understanding the trials of new motherhood-both the inherent lack of personal time for spontaneous get-togethers as well as the sheer exhaustion that also undermines social activities. And family members suddenly have their own set of expectations and opinions when it comes to child-rearing decisions. Newer theories of child development can cause conflicting attitudes between women and their own mothers about common practices such as discipline and toilet teaching. And sometimes this causes women to feel demoralized and anxious about their ability to mother because their own mothers are questioning their capabilities. This situation becomes even more pronounced when women who wish to return to work but cannot afford expensive childcare become dependent on family members to look after their child. Life After Birth fills in the gaps left by existing literature, offering women a book solely about the transition to motherhood. It illuminates the changes that will accompany this passage, providing them with adequate information and support. Reading about every aspect of new motherhood can only help women to cope with the more stressful events as they encounter them. Life After Birth reassures mothers that even through all of the exhaustion and pain, the good parts of motherhood are better than they could have ever imagined. AUTHORBIO: Kate Figes is the author of Because of Her Sex and has edited collections of short stories. She is the books editor for You magazine at the Mail on Sunday Newspaper and writes regularly on parenting issues for the Times and Guardian newspapers. Her third book, on adolescence, will be published in the UK in 2002.She lives in London, England.Read More