From hormones to stretch marks, labor pains to diaper changes, motherhood is an adventure like none other. The rapid changes in your body, your lifestyle, and your very identity call for a certain mental and emotional agility. Mindfulness can help you meet the challenge and approach every experience with your new baby with open eyes and an open heart. Based on research conducted at California Pacific Medical Center, and with a foreword by beloved meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein, Mindful Motherhood: Practical Tools for Staying Sane During Pregnancy and Your Child's First Year (New Harbinger/Noetic Books, May 2009, $16.95) by psychologist and mom Cassandra Vieten, has been acclaimed by women's health experts, mindfulness teachers, and psychologists alike.
Mindful Motherhood provides pregnant women and new moms with a brief, low-cost, easy to implement set of tools to deal with stress, difficult moments, depressed or anxious moods, and negative thought patterns during pregnancy and early motherhood. Based on the principles of mindfulness, this book also provides information, exercises, and ideas to enhance the positive emotions that are part of the experience of motherhood and improve the quality of mother-infant interactions, bringing more attention and awareness to the deep joy and satisfaction that motherhood can bring.
Mindful Motherhood provides pregnant women and early moms with:
1) accessible information based on science and sound clinical theory,
2) practical tools for practicing mindfulness in everyday life,
3) stories and examples to inspire interest and clarify points, and
4) experiential exercises that will help readers integrate the information
and experiences they have.
Mindful Motherhood also offers current insights into the positive psychology of motherhood and mother-infant attachment, translating science and theory into jargon-free language and immediately applicable tools. This book is aimed specifically toward pregnant women and mothers with infants, who would like to deal more effectively with stress and mood during pregnancy and postpartum, who are interested in being the best parent they can be, and who want to cultivate a deeper connection to themselves and their children.
The goal is to help women become the kind of present, authentic, connected, emotionally competent, psychologically-balanced, and loving mothers they want to be not to mention enjoying the extraordinary experience of motherhood to its fullest extent.
Why it is Important
A large body of evidence in both animal and human studies indicates that stress and mood disturbance experienced during pregnancy increases the risk for preterm birth, low birth weight, and other pregnancy-related complications, and may adversely affect the developing fetus. Postnatal mood disturbance can interfere with attachment, healthy parenting behaviors, and child development. While a wealth of evidence supports all these facts, surprisingly little information is available to women and clinicians for reducing stress and improving mood in pregnancy and postpartum.
Mindful Motherhood is the only book oriented toward teaching research-based mindfulness principles to reduce stress and improve mood in pregnant women and new moms. It is an easy but informative read that gives new moms the psychology, science and health facts behind how mindfulness can enhance mother-infant attachment, and be used in childbirth.
Author Biography:
Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, codirector of the Mind Body Medicine Research Group at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, CA, and copresident of the Institute for Spirituality and Psychology. Her research has focused on mindfulness-based approaches to cultivating emotional balance, the involvement of biology, psychology, and emotion in addiction and recovery, the role of compassionate intent and belief in healing, and the factors, experiences, and practices involved in psychospiritual transformation. She has published several academic articles and chapters, has conducted numerous presentations at international scientific conferences, and is coauthor of Living Deeply.
Sylvia Boorstein is a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and a psychotherapist, wife, mother, and grandmother who is particularly interested in seeing daily life as practice. She is the author of several books including/; It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness; Don't Just Do Something, Sit There: A Mindfulness Retreat; That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist: On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist; Pay Attention for Goodness' Sake: The Buddhist Path of Kindness; and Happiness Is an Inside Job.
