The Birth Of A Mother: How The Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever by Daniel N. Stern & Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern

Author:Daniel N. Stern & Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern [Stern, Daniel N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 1998-12-02T23:00:00+00:00

These simple games and improvisations test you as a mother and add new pieces to the creation of your motherhood identity. Since you are responsible for regulating your baby’s excitement and pleasure, you will learn how to guide without overcontrolling. You will learn to be sensitive enough to the baby’s signals to determine whether the game is progressing too slowly or too quickly, or when it is time to begin a new one. You will learn when the baby’s level of pleasurable excitation is too high and might spill over the edge and turn into crying.

The reason for going into such detail about the tasks involved in these intimate responsibilities is that over time you will realize what a privileged period of your life it is to have a baby. During these early years, not only are you creating your motherhood identity, but you also have the opportunity to rethink and reinvent yourself as a person. There are few opportunities for adults to do this, but becoming a mother is one—as is falling in love.

Psychologists refer to these major events in life as normal crises. A normal crisis forces a partial dismantling of your habitual way of being and demands that you put yourself back together, often along somewhat different lines. In this sense, early motherhood is potentially a “constructive crisis” offering a space and time when personal change is not only easier than usual, but even necessary. Early motherhood is a crucible of change where new identities are forged from old ones. The more you can see and reflect on what you are doing, thinking, and feeling during this period, the more you can influence the direction of these possibly far-reaching changes. With this in mind, we return to our exploration of the ordinary, daily activities between mother and baby.

All of the moment-by-moment choices or decisions you make in the course of a feeding or a bout of play are deep expressions of who you are as a person. What experiences do you tolerate well or poorly? Which do you prefer and seek out, and which do you want for your baby? Do you love excitement? Do you look for it? Is that a part of yourself that you value? Or do you prefer to construct your life more around a center of tranquillity from which you move outward? Who you are, who you like being, and who you want the baby to be will all be reflected in how you regulate your baby’s experience in these simple repetitive activities.

In these apparently senseless games the baby adapts to the mother’s range of acceptable excitement. What is at stake here is momentous. Your style with the baby directly reflects how much joy and hilarity and how much calm and quiet you expect and tolerate in being with someone else. You are being given an opportunity to modify your old expectations in order to create an environment conducive to your baby’s healthy, happy development.

Your style of regulating the baby’s experience will

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