Showing titles in Motherhood

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.

Kids often suffer unknowingly from the consequences of sleep problems because their issue is frequently missed or dismissed, by both health professionals and parents. Sleep disorders are a major public health issue that can kick start a lifetime pattern of health, behavior, and learning problems. From ages four-ten, at least 25 percent of kids have sleep problems. Sleep Wrecked Kids guides parents towards good sleep as the norm, allowing themselves and their children to grow and thrive.

Melissa Hogenboom examines how the suite of changes we experience during pregnancy and motherhood influence our sense of self, both physically and from the wider world. From the way our brain changes during pregnancy and the psychological impact of our changing body, to the true cost of the motherhood workplace penalty and the intrusion of technology on family life, Hogenboom reveals how external events and society at large shape the way we see ourselves and impacts upon the choices we make.

It’s midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra Fuller is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel. And then – suddenly and incomprehensibly – her son Fi, at twenty-one years old, dies in his sleep. No stranger to loss – young siblings, a parent, a home country – Alexandra is nonetheless levelled.

Get your baby sleeping through the night, with the help of a leading baby and child sleep expert. Lucy Wolfe, a baby and child sleep expert, introduces the stay-and-support method for parents who want to help their babies sleep through the night. With sleep-shaping supports for newborns, top tips for toddlers, and advice for older children up to the age of six, Lucy's approach provides a gentle and emotionally considerate way to get your little one to sleep - without leaving them alone to cry, ensuring they feel loved, safe and secure at all times.

Helen Mort has always been drawn to the thrill and risk of climbing: the tension between human and rockface, and the climber's powerful connection to the elemental world. But when she becomes a mother for the first time, she finds herself re-examining her relationship with both the natural world and herself, as well as the way the world views women who aren't afraid to take risks.

“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.

The Mama Sutra spans an 18-year journey through motherhood as a spiritual practice, chronicling Cushman’s first pregnancy, her daughter's tragic stillbirth, the joyful birth of her son, the “home retreat” of early motherhood, the challenges of parenthood, the diagnosis and gifts of her son’s developmental differences, the meltdown of her nuclear family and its reconfiguration into a new and joyful form, and more. This is a powerful story of the rawness and beauty of life.

When Rain Hurts is the story of one mother’s quest to find a magical path of healing and forgiveness for her son, a boy so damaged by the double whammy of prenatal alcohol abuse and the stark rigors of Russian orphanage life that he was feral by the time of his adoption at age three. Bizarre behaviors, irrational thoughts, and dangerous preoccupations were the norm - no amount of love, it turns out, can untangle the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Others Like Me is the story of fourteen women around the world, from different walks of life, who don't have children. It's also the story of why Nicole Louie had to find them and what they taught her. Part memoir, part exploration of childlessness through candid conversations, this book showcases the many ways in which people find fulfilment outside of parenthood.

So this audiobook is for all the defaults out there – bored out of their eyeballs or so overwhelmed they could scream expletives into the wind for a solid hour – to know their invisible labour is seen, valued, and can even sometimes be rebalanced. With heartfelt and hilarious advice, Lou Beckett provides much-needed comfort and community for the one who is depended on the most (and often feels appreciated the least), and maybe – just maybe – how we can begin to muddle through a little better, together.

If technology is the new addiction, then multitasking is the new marching order. With our never-ending to-do lists and jam-packed schedules, it's no wonder we're distracted. But this isn't the way it has to be. Special education teacher, New York Times best-selling author, and mother Rachel Macy Stafford says enough is enough. Tired of losing track of what matters most in life, Rachel began practicing simple strategies that enabled her to momentarily let go of largely meaningless distractions and engage in meaningful soul-to-soul connections.

There is a special bond between mothers and their sons, and it never goes away. This book contains some of the best stories and poems from Chicken Soup's library honoring that lifelong relationship between mothers and their male offspring.

An unflinching and hilarious memoir about recovery as a mother of young kids, Bottled explains the perils moms face with drinking and chronicles the author's path to recovery, from hitting bottom to the months of early sobriety - a blur of pain and chaos - to her now (in)frequent moments of peace. Punctuated by potent, laugh-out-loud sarcasm, Bottled offers practical suggestions on how to be a sober, present-in-the-moment mom, one day at a time, and provides much needed levity on an issue too often treated with deadly seriousness.

For working mothers who face endless demands on their time and attention, What Happy Working Mothers Know provides scientifically proven and practical ways to replace stress with contentment and to find the right balance between work, motherhood, and life. Your own happiness is important—because happy moms make better moms and more successful professionals.

Moms' Ultimate Guide to the Tween Girl Years gives mothers practical advice and spiritual inspiration that will enable them to see their mini-women into adolescence strong, confident, authentic, and God-centered, even in a morally challenged society--without losing their childhoods before they're ready.

What sets this book apart from others is that it encourages the use of your intuition. Because, even if it doesn’t feel like it, you are perfectly equipped to raise your son to be a strong, well-respected, intelligent adult. This book will guide you in how to trust your mothering skills as your son starts to become a man, while honoring your son’s impending adulthood—all without losing the closeness you enjoy so much.

Pregnancy and childbirth are full of big questions In Why Did No One Tell Me This? doulas and reproductive health experts Natalia Hailes and Ash Spivak answer questions and more for today's wellness-focused, intersectional parents-to-be. Drawing on years of experience in their birth doula practice Brilliant Bodies, Natalia and Ash guide listeners through the entire process, from the earliest stages of pregnancy to the jungle of postpartum feelings and responsibilities.

Being a parent is the hardest job in the world – there’s no denying that! Not only do you have to keep a child healthy and happy, you are in charge of disciplining them, turning them into a good human being for the sake of society. And there’s where everything starts to go downhill. No matter how fiercely you love your child and no matter how devoted they are to you, children doesn’t want to listen! They don’t want to listen to you when you want them to do something, and definitely not when you don’t want them to do something. The result – utter chaos!

Four months postpartum with her second child, Catherine Simone Gray is back at her doctor’s office, surveying a childbirth wound that refuses to mend. Proud flesh: tissue that overheals to become its own wound. Pregnancy and motherhood had been physically vulnerable for Gray, but this renders her most intimate parts unrecognizable—like her body is no longer her own. Has it ever been her own? As she gets to know her body in its new form, she encounters, too, the girl she’d been at seventeen.