Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother

"Child of Mine" is a book of original essays that reveal the many faces of motherhood, and which explore the amazing variety of feelings and changes that women go through in the first year of maternity. The essays - by writers including Susan Cheever, Mona Simpson, Sarah Bird, Naomi Wolf, Meg Wolitzer, and many more - address a wide range of concerns, from changes in your marriage to delivery experiences to body image, to the mother/child bond, to ambivalence about breastfeeding. We see an African-American mother who's conflicted about hiring a Jamaican babysitter; we see an urban working mom who's delighted to be back to her job after maternity leave; we see a mother's nightmare journey through a year of her son's colic. In one of the most moving pieces in the book, a mother living in dire poverty in the Vermont backwoods tells of raising her daughter, making do with clothing and toys from the Salvation Army. And we see the adoption experience with all its ups and downs.