Good afternoon everyone, can you believe we’re already into October, where has this year gone. So a month or so ago the lovely Ellie put out a tweet that she had a new book to promote for new mums and after replying to her tweet she sent me a copy of ‘The Little Book Of Self-care For New Mums’ by Beccy Hands & Alexis Stickland in exchange for a review of the book on my blog, so today that is exactly what we have.
The book arrived packaged in this gorgeous paper, with a news letter about the book, information on both Beccy and Alexis, the mother box which they have built and offer, also a leaflet with 10 instant mood lifts.
I’m not a new mum as of yet, my little girl is due at the end of November and I’m currently winging it with just advice from friends and family and online forums rather than buying books and sitting and reading through them.
BLURB
[Taken from the book cover]
Whether this is your first or fifth baby, The Little Book of Self-Care for New Mums is your handy survival guide to managing the emotional and physical rollercoaster of becoming a new mum.
Bringing together decades of experience from a midwife and a doula, you'll find invaluable tips and tricks to boost confidence and calm frazzled nerves - plus answers to all those questions you may be too embarrassed to ask. From creating cooling breast pads with chamomile tea and quick stretches to relieve aching muscles, through to easy recipes to nourish your postnatal body and 5-minute fixes to restore your sense of humour, this is the book you can turn to when the overwhelm sets in.
COVER
I was sent a hardback copy of this book, and I love the feel of the cover, it has a matte feel to it. It is a lovely purple colour with a very simple design, it’s really cute looking. Nothing too over the top.
WHAT I LIKED
The book is divided into three sections “Healing A Mother”, “Minding A Mother” and “Guiding A Mother” .
Healing a mother is about your postnatal body, learning about what your body has been through and how to help you understand what is going on after baby has arrived. There are lots of little tips on how to ease yourself back into things, including exercises that can help your body feel relaxed and comfortable to recipes for meal times and smoothies. Having this book to hand when you’re feeling like your at the end of your tether will surely come in useful when you need to just relax and take some time to help your body heal.
Minding a mother is more to do with helping your mind heal, you suddenly have this baby who depends on you and you no longer feel like an actual person, but just a portable feeding and cleaning machine, it covers tips for getting that couple feeling back in your relationship and postnatal depression, spending time outside doing things with others. I’ll definitely be referring back to this to give me some ideas on getting back to being myself and not just a mum.
Guiding a mother is the section I’m fairly sure will help me most once my little one is here, it talks a lot about a mothers intuition and how to trust your gut. You will get a lot of opinions off a lot of people but at the end of the day you are the person who knows your baby best. There are a lot of tips on how to read your baby’s cues for feeding as well, which is something I’m going to worry about when I can’t decipher what she wants.
I actually really enjoyed this book and over the next couple of weeks I will most certainly be getting out my sticky tabs and marking all the pages I found interesting or feel will help me when the times comes.
WHAT I DISLIKED
I know this is probably an odd thing to say that I dislike about a book, but I personally prefer when the paragraphs are fully justified and not left aligned, it’s not something that would deter me from buying or reading a book its just more pleasing to read for me.
The only real thing that I would say about the context is that most of the book is aimed towards first time parents and although this will be my first baby, my boyfriend already has 3 children so I found sometimes I couldn’t relate what was being said to our situation, although helpful for me, maybe not so much for me to feed back to him.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
[Taken from the news letter]
Beccy is a remedial massage therapist who specialises in pre- & postnatal health and supporting women through the changing effects, both mentally and physically, that birth has on them. Beccy also works as a doula and has developed specialisms in supporting women with mental health problems, women who have lost babies at term, women who want to birth naturally and also women experiencing pregnancy after a loss. She has specialist training in IVF pregnancy and birth support, and working with surrogates.
Alexis has been a midwife for over 12 years and for eight of those years she worked at a large London hospital as a core member of a small case loading team helping teenage mothers. During her time within this specialism, her team was recognised for supporting fathers alongside women and they won a parliamentary award for their work.
Alexis now teaches antenatal, postnatal and hypnobirthing classes for the bump and baby club, and runs workshops with Beccy for women in all stages of their parenting journey.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this review. I’d love to know your thoughts if you’ve read this book.
HAYLEY
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