Outskirts Press, INC.

Poetic Lessons For First Year Motherhood

If you’re a new mom, this book will help you. If you’re an experienced mom, this book will take you back! Different than any “baby advice” book, The Poetry of Motherhood gives both insight and inspiration to moms in that incredibly emotional and wonderful first year of their baby’s life. Through baby-inspired haiku poetry and reflections, many of the comical, practical and poignant lessons of first-year motherhood and babyhood are represented. Most importantly, new moms will be assured that the miracle they are living, exhausting and difficult at times, is felt by all moms universally. “Not only are we not alone, we are, together with the ferocious love that our babies elicit, a very powerful force. A force to be reckoned with if we harness and direct it.” “There are so many beautiful thoughts in this book. I would love to share it with my daughter-in-law who just gave birth, but also with my mother who at 91, still has an amazing mother love-energy for our family and for the world.” —Pam Montanaro, Int'l Peace Organizer, mother of 6, grandmother of 7

Enamored of my baby’s Doc Grateful Mom You will love you baby’s pediatrician. In fact, depending on the your marital and/or mental state, you may even think you have a crush on him, so happy are you that this person knows and cares for your baby; not like you do of course, but in some ways better. Your baby’s doctor, for example, can diagnose and cure an ear infection, when the best you could figure out from your baby’s crying was that it was a “growth spurt” and she needed to eat more. Watching that doctor hold your baby, turn her over, check her little body may warm you to tears. It almost always did me. Alma’s doctor must have thought I was a real nut. I’d get weepy-eyed every time he took out his stethoscope, loving how he was helping my baby! Don’t be self-conscious, though. Pediatricians by their own admission are a “special” kind of doctor. They understand that you have the “love hormone” oxytocin coursing through your body. They appreciate it because remember, the heart- wrenching fact is that they love your baby, too. That’s why they chose their profession. So, a shout out to pediatricians! ...Now, if we can only get a health care system in this coun- try that will give us enough of these lovely doctors so that they aren’t so busy and can spend a few more moments with each of their patients, and their nuts-o moms.