Subtitled "Making the most of your life as a mum", or more punchily in the original US version "Loving your life without losing your mind", this book focuses on the importance of focusing on the mother's development and needs, both for her own sake and to enable her to provide the best parenting she can. The experience of motherhood is described as being "as much about autonomy, independence, and self-actualization as it is about connectedness, dependence, and self-sacrifice. It's about taking risks and lashing ourselves to traditions, tolerating lightening-speed changes and mind-numbing boredom, juggling the practical along with the ineffable, and learning how to push through when life is so full of pain or bliss it hurts to breathe." There's also a healthy emphasis on the unrealistic expectations many women experience as they try to "do it all", believing - wrongly! - that if only they were a little more organised they could fulfil many roles perfectly without making any compromises.
I found the book interesting - there was plenty of good anecdotal material in it, and it did make me reflect on my own experiences so far - but (perhaps because I'm only just entering her third stage?) I didn't really absorb the differences between each of her 7 stages or understand what point she was trying to make by distinguishing between them. I agreed with the basic premise that motherhood involves massive identity changes, not just initially but on an ongoing basis, but as she says in her conclusion, "we revisit key issues ... at every stage of our development: how to balance work and family; when to coddle, when to let go; how to trust your gut; nurture your marriage; get a grip on your anxiety; set limits; tolerate intense feelings of love and anger."
The story that made most impact on me was a quote from a book called Nature's Thumbprint, which illustrates her basic point about the importance of examining your own attitudes and preconceptions as a mother. When a pair of identical twins were two and a half, their two adoptive mothers were asked about their eating habits - one complained that she was "at her wit's end" because the girl would only eat food with cinnamon on it, the other the other was delighted that her daughter would "eat anything" so long as she put cinnamon on it.
I was also particularly intrigued by the idea (taken from The Birth of a Mother) that towards the end of pregnancy, women's mental image of their baby tends to fade, to avoid disappointing comparisons between the real baby and the idealized imaginary one - and that the lack of an opportunity to do this adds to the difficulties faced by mothers whose babies are borm prematurely. I did experience this myself - at around 5 months I formed quite a strong image of a baby (which oddly, did turn out to match the one I eventually had!) but towards the end of the pregnancy, my husband and I both found it incredibly difficult to picture an actual baby at all.
Overall, I found this readable and reassuring but not in any way life-changing.
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