It’s also about the powerful transformation we go through on the journey to becoming “mama.” We created The Motherly Guide to Becoming Mama to coach and inspire you each step of the way. This is the pregnancy book we wish we’d had when we first became mothers—a mama-centered guide that doesn’t just focus on your baby’s needs, but honors and coaches you through this profound life change.Here’s the most important thing to remember: you are a phenom, and you are going to rock this.And you don’t have to do this alone. At your highest highs and your lowest lows, there is a village of professionals and peers to traverse this path with you.This book won’t bog you down with demands, give you more to be worried about, or tell you what to do. It’s impossible to know exactly what to expect during your pregnancy—after all, you are your own amazing woman with unique dreams, experiences, and needs. Instead, we’ve filled this illustrated guide with the best knowledge, wisdom, and support we have to offer, including:• Getting pregnant—planning, conception, fertility challenges, and finding the right care provider and birth strategy for you • Pregnancy month by month—how to understand, nourish, and support your own body and your baby’s health throughout your pregnancy• Giving birth—everything you need to feel empowered and prepared through the four stages of labor • The “fourth trimester”—helping you heal, process your experience, and thrive in the super-important and often ignored postpartum period • Tests and complications—no scare tactics, no intimidation; just good, well-researched information about the ways you can best prevent and prepare for challenges• Partners, friends, and family—our best tips for your whole support team• The many faces of mama—adoption, surrogacy, fostering, and the beautiful variety of motherhood experiences• Answers to the most common questions mamas have about finances, maternity leave, baby gear, relationships with family, nutrition, fitness, and much more Whether this is your first baby or your fourth, whether you’re still deciding about pregnancy or have an unplanned baby on the way, becoming mama involves your body, mind, emotions, lifestyle, relationships, schedule, spirituality, worldview—and most of all, your heart.This is an unprecedented time to embark on the journey of motherhood. You are part of a new generation of women elevating empowerment in all its forms. The Motherly Guide to Becoming Mama was made for you—a loving and supportive embrace of your unique motherhood journey in all its power, complexity, and beauty.

    The best-selling Your Pregnancy Week by Week doles out focused information in this medically appropriate way, making it the most mom-recommended pregnancy guide on the market.Now carefully brought up-to-date, this expanded Fifth Edition will also be the most medically current and comprehensive pregnancy guide available. Always reliable and now re-designed to be even more accessible, weekly chapters include illustrations, descriptions of baby's growth and developmental milestones, information about a mother's average weight gain and what she might be feeling or becoming aware of, and the medical testing that corresponds to the week in question. New features include:* Information on cutting edge obstetric technologies-from 3D ultrasound to pre-natal genetic testing* The very latest diet, nutritional and fitness recommendations for expectant mothers* A new chapter devoted to overdue (post-term) pregnancies* An expanded 15-page glossary of pregnancy and childbirth terms* A handy Due Date Prediction Calendar

    In this intimate perspective on birth, renowned author and photographer Suzanne Arms conveys the inherent wisdom in this natural process, through her eloquent words and pictures.

    In the third revised edition author Karen Kerkhoff Gromada, IBCLC, offers invaluable information with an emphasis on breastfeeding and attachment-style parenting. Many concerns that parents of multiples may have are also addressed, including: What are the risks of a multiple pregnancy? What can a mother do to avoid complications? How can a mother continue meeting her babies' needs if one or more experiences an illness or needs to be hospitalized? What can a mother do to comfort two or more fussy babies? How can a mother, father, and older siblings adjust to the physical and emotional demands of caring for multiple babies? What ar the challenges of caring for toddler multiples? Gromada has worked with thousands of multilples as a La Leche League Leader for more than 30 years and is a registered nurse and lactation consultant.

    Lindsey Bliss, who has assisted as a doula at hundreds of births and is herself a mother of seven, reveals here all the wisdom and advice that doulas share with the new mothers who hire them.The Doula's Guide to Empowering Your Birth covers the period from pregnancy through labor and birth to fourth trimester healing. The focus, however, is on preparing for birth--including topics like how to pick the right childbirth class and the right birthing method. You’ll also see how to assemble the team of professionals, family members, and friends who will support you through labor and birth, and how to approach last-minute decisions about pain medications and cesarean sections. Bliss's tone throughout is at once authoritative and confident as well as warm and encouraging. Her concern in her practice as well as in these pages is to listen to and help secure each new mom's own personal vision of a birthing experience that is safe, fulfilling, and meaningful.

    Many new mothers are scared away from nursing because of difficulty getting started and lack of information about what to do when things don’t go as planned. In this fully revised and updated edition of The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers, two of today’s foremost lactation experts help new mothers overcome their fears, doubts, and practical concerns about one of the most special ways a mother can bond with her baby.In this comprehensive guide, Dr. Jack Newman, a leading authority on infant care, and Teresa Pitman, a La Leche League leader for more than twenty years, give you the facts about breastfeeding and provide solutions for the common problems that arise. Filled with the same practical advice that made the first edition a must-have for nursing moms, the new edition features updates on:• Achieving a good latch• What to do if your baby refuses the breast• Avoiding sore nipples• Ensuring your baby gets enough milk• Feeding a colicky baby• Breastfeeding premature and special-needs babies

    

    This indispensable guide provides reassuring, proven approaches to combining medical and natural techniques to ensure the most comfortable pain-free labor possible. In Easy Labor, you'll discover- what to expect during labor, and key factors that affect your comfort- the facts on epidurals, safety concerns, and how effectively they reduce pain- the pros and cons of pain-relief medications- complementary and alternative methods, including water immersion, acupuncture, hypnosis, massage, and birth balls- how your choice of hospital or birth center affects your pain-management options- techniques to calm and eliminate the specific fears and stresses associated with childbirthSo relax and enjoy your pregnancy, with this important book by your side!

    Motherhood has been targeted by advertisers, and bombarded by opinions masquerading as medical necessities. Massaro and Katz are helping mothers reclaim a simpler, more connected first year with their babies. Readers will find eight fun-to-read chapters filled with baby-friendly practices, along with stories from moms in-the-know. In a soothing yet sassy voice, the authors present compelling research on topics like birth, holding your baby, breastfeeding, infant sleep, pottying babies (yes, really!), sign language, baby-led solids, and self-care for moms. The book also features contributions from leading practitioners in baby care: Dr. James McKenna, Dr. Janet Zand, Naomi Aldort, Gill Rapley, Nancy Mohrbacher, and more.

    In addition to basic advice on finding and working with a doula, the authors show how a doula reduces the need for cesarean section, shortens the length of labor, decreases the pain medication required, and enhances bonding and breast feeding. The authors, world-renowned authorities on childbirth with combined experience of over 100 years working with laboring women, have made their book indispensable to every woman who wants the healthiest, safest, and most joyful possible birth experience.

    Around the time your first baby turns a year old your brain will turn on you. For reasons that are still not understood by science, the sleep deprivation and postpartum hormones you barely survived with your first baby fade from memory and will be replaced with idyllic images of your growing child. This is when your brain, having officially lost all regard for your well-being, begins to fantasize about a second baby. And for the first time since becoming a parent these thoughts don't make you break out in hives. Before you know it, you are dressing your first child in "I'm Going to be a Big Sister!" T-shirts and catalog-shopping for bunk beds. This will be fantastic! But then that familiar morning sickness kicks in. And your adorable 18-month-old transforms into a two-year-old terror. That's when those hives start to return. With Dawn Dais's trademark witty banter, The Sh!t No One Tells You About Baby #2 includes chapters such as "You Have Officially Lost Control of the Situation," "Siblings Aren't Nearly as Adorable as You Imagined," "You'll Have a Favorite," and "Having Kids Looks a Lot Easier on TV."

    Over the course of the next five seasons Patsy will see Heather through the loss of both babies and their father. She will also care for her longtime patient Nila, pregnant for the eighth time and trying to make a new life without her abusive husband. And Patsy will try to find some comfort to offer Holly, whose teenage daughter struggles with bulimia. She will help Rebba learn to find pleasure in her body and help Kaz transition into a new body. She will do noisy battle with the IRS in the very few moments she has to spare, and wage her own private battle with uterine cancer.Patricia Harman, a nurse-midwife, manages a women's health clinic with her husband, Tom, an ob-gyn, in West Virginia--a practice where patients open their hearts, where they find care and sometimes refuge. Patsy's memoir juxtaposes the tales of these women with her own story of keeping a small medical practice solvent and coping with personal challenges. Her patients range from Appalachian mothers who haven't had the opportunity to attend secondary school to Ph.D.'s on cell phones. They come to Patsy's small, windowless exam room and sit covered only by blue cotton gowns, and their infinitely varied stories are in equal parts heartbreaking and uplifting. The nurse-midwife tells of their lives over the course of a year and a quarter, a time when her outwardly successful practice is in deep financial trouble, when she is coping with malpractice threats, confronting her own serious medical problems, and fearing that her thirty-year marriage may be on the verge of collapse. In the words of Jacqueline Mitchard, this memoir, "utterly true and lyrical as any novel . . . should be a little classic."

    The zine that’s been called "fun and irreverent" by USA Today, "delightful" by Glamour, and "cutting-edge" by the Chicago Tribune has grown up alongside Gore’s daughter, covering subjects from weaning to home schooling with a political edge and a puckish sense of humor. The Essential Hip Mama captures the heart of a decade’s worth of earthy, honest, soulful parenting—and topics from circumcision to dating, abortion to the belief that "mothers don’t fart." Gore has gathered in one volume the whispers and conversations heard in homes, on playgrounds, and in coffeehouses around the country. Reassuring and hopeful, The Essential Hip Mama is a brilliant testament that one becomes an "expert" simply through the act of mothering, echoing Gore’s own words, "Whenever I’ve needed parenting advice, I’ve put out a call for submissions."

     It doesn’t have to be that way. Rebecca planned to give birth at the hospital affiliated with her university, where she was an award-winning nurse researcher finishing her doctoral degree. But hospital practices and policies that were more than twenty years out of date left her with complications that seemed preventable. Worst for Rebecca, her healthy baby was whisked off to a nursery right away. She spent the first few hours after birth begging to see her own baby! A few years later and pregnant again, Rebecca put her research skills to work and examined the hard evidence on what went wrong with her first childbirth experience. She discovered shocking truths that not only impact millions of families every year, but would change the entire course of her life. Embark on a journey with Rebecca as she exposes the stark realities of institutional care during childbirth and reveals inspirational solutions for parents and professionals alike.

    Heart & Hands: A Midwife's Guide to Pregnancy & Birth will shows compassionate sensitivity to women's needs in pregnancy and childbirth.