Showing titles in Motherhood

Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom. When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—a woman who was constantly available...

Boys will be boys - always. And no one has a more powerful impact on them than you, Mom. Surprise! Your boy wants to please you, and he cares deeply about what you think. Those driving needs will stay with him throughout his lifetime. That gives you, Mom, a lot of influence over your son. You can set him up for success in life. In What a Difference a Mom Makes, the New York Times best-selling author Dr. Kevin Leman reveals how you can make a positive imprint on your son - from the moment you first hold him in your arms until the moment he leaves for college. And the best news? It's never too late to start.

In our stressed-out culture, too many parents are just coping rather than thriving, juggling demands on their time and energy, and tuning out their inner voices and deeper visions for family life in order to keep their heads above water. There is a better way. Coaching parents through his holistic health practice, Dr. Steven Fonso has helped thousands of families reconnect with what matters most: slowing down to savor authentic moments of connection and letting go of the noise and stress that all too often get in the way.

It’s 2am but your baby thinks it’s party time; their ‘routine’ seems to change with the wind, and you would do anything to get a good night’s sleep. We know how you feel! You might be prepared and listening to this before baby arrives, or as they snooze beside you in those early new-born days, knowing that forewarned is forearmed. Or your eyebags may tell their own bedtime story. Either way, if your baby is not sleeping, you have not done anything wrong. Your baby is not broken (although you might feel broken from lack of sleep), and you are not a bad parent.

Do you ever feel a disconnect as a mother—like you’re doing all the "mom things” you’re supposed to do as you stoop to serve your kids with your hands, but your heart isn’t in it? Kristen Wetherell has been there, and instead of offering you a parenting plan, a pep talk, or a list of things to do, her words in Humble Moms offers you exactly what she needs in moments of exhaustion: life-giving and biblical meditations on Jesus, who humbly serves you not only in hand, but in heart.

This book is for anyone, whether they are sober-curious, already sober or considering becoming sober. Broken into four parts, you will discover how to: understand your relationship with alcohol, including grey-area drinking; use the full sober toolkit to help you build and sustain your sober life; stay sober, particularly on high days and holidays, and rediscover who you are without alcohol; and fine-tune your toolkit to make it perfect for you and your new life.

A Still Life is a story of illness and pain that rarely sees the light: illness and pain with no end or resolution; illness and pain that we must meet with courage, joy, ingenuity and hope. Against a world which values ‘feel good’ progress and productivity above all else, Josie sets out a quietly radical alternative: to value and treasure life for life itself, with all its defeats and victories, with all its great and small miracles.

From the nursery to the prison, from the clinic to the commune, Mother Media tells the story of how we arrived at our contemporary understanding of what a mother is and how understandings of "bad" mothering formed our contemporary panics about "bad" media.

Boys today are surrounded by accusations that their very existence is toxic, told that their biological makeup is a problem and that the future is female. As Christian moms, we have the responsibility and privilege of teaching our boys what is true about who they are and what isn't. But how do we grow these tiny (and somewhat smelly) wild things into godly men of character?

What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury.

Germany, 1945, and the bombs are falling. In Heidenfeld, Etta and her husband, Josef, roam an empty nest: their eldest son, Max, is fighting on the front lines, while 15-year-old Georg has swapped books for guns at a Nürnberg school for the Hitler Youth. At home, news of the war provokes daily doses of fear as the planes grow closer, taking one city after the next. When Max is unexpectedly discharged, Etta is relieved to have her eldest home and safe. But soon after he arrives, it’s clear that the boy who left is not the same returned.

What if our homes and the work that goes on inside them are not "in the way" of our calling but are instead the way to live well and disciple effectively? Reimagine the Christian home as the firm foundation of a life filled with faith, joy, contentment, and belonging, even in the midst of everyday tasks. In Every Home a Foundation, Phylicia Masonheimer invites listeners to reconsider their view of home. The Christian home is an image of both a coming spiritual reality and the existing spiritual reality of our family, the church.

Having a baby in the house can be scary, but it doesn’t need to be! Written by qualified nutritionist and a mother of three, this audiobook will educate you on the milestones you can look forward to month by month, as well as changes you can expect to make to your care routine as your baby grows. But it’s not all about that little bundle of joy of yours. Elizabeth Newbourne also cares about mommy and daddy and their well-being during this transition. Don’t wait until it's too late, gain the proper knowledge needed to set your family up for success.

Before Chelsea Conaboy gave birth to her first child, she anticipated the joy of holding her newborn son, the endless dirty nappies and the sleepless nights. What she didn't expect was how different she would feel. It wasn't simply the extraordinary demands of this new role, but a shift in self—as deep as it was disorienting. In truth, something was changing: her brain.

Today's girls need grace and grit. How do we raise them in light, yet prepare them for the dark? Bestselling author Kari Kampakis champions you in this paradoxical journey. Like a big sister who's seen the wilderness and come back to report what's ahead, Kari offers a realistic yet optimistic framework.

I have always loved the Cotswolds. I think I loved them even before I found them, in that half-formed ideal one has of where to put down roots. Somewhere peaceful, green, where the road meanders between drystone walls and from town to town, and a strip of blue bursts from brook to river and back again. For eight years, Clare Mackintosh wrote for Cotswold Life about the ups and downs of life with a young family in the countryside. In this memoir she brings together all of those stories - and more - for the first time.

'Congratulations on the resurrection of your life,' a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Emily pause. Her first child, Ronan, had died before he turned three years old from Tay-Sachs disease, an experience she wrote about in her first book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time her life had changed utterly: she had left the marriage that fractured under the terrible weight of her son's illness, remarried the love of her life, had a flourishing career and given birth to a healthy baby girl.

“The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose.” Welcome to Sarah Hoover’s unflinching take on motherhood and its expectations in which the beatific narrative women have been fed—one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery—turns out to be not quite true. In The Motherload, Hoover provides a candid, funny, and sobering look at the journey women undertake as expectant mothers and wives from the early days of pregnancy through labor and beyond.

Suzy and Demi were carefree twenty-somethings. They had fun! They didn’t have responsibilities! And then they decided to have a baby. Goodbye lazy weekends, hello sleepless nights, arguments and an addiction to industrial-strength hot chocolate. Follow Suzy on the ultimate make-over - from nervous-wreck new mother to happy families. In this hilarious and refreshingly honest account for parents who prefer the realistic to the utopian, Suzy debunks the myths and takes us all along for the (bumpy) ride.

In What I Told My Daughter, entertainment executive Nina Tassler has brought together a powerful, diverse group of women - from Madeleine Albright to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from Dr. Susan Love to Whoopi Goldberg - to reflect on the best advice and counsel they have given their daughters either by example, throughout their lives, or in character-building, teachable moments between parent and child.