The First Forty Days: A Book Review
This book is as beautiful to read through as it is thoughtfully curated to encourage all of us to slow down and really care for ourselves well. Intended as a guide for the pregnant person to prepare for life postpartum, this book is a gift to all of us, whether a birthing person or not. Partners, family members, healthcare providers, and more would do well to read this book so that they can support the pregnant folks around them with tenderness and compassion not often extended to those in such a fragile, transformative state.
“Your postpartum experience actually begins in your third trimester of pregnancy. For the first forty days, the end of pregnancy is actually the beginning of the story.”
How often have you heard of the postpartum experience referred to in this way? What I’ve found is that people typically don’t think about postpartum until they are postpartum and what’s most common is that people think about it years after the fact with regret and sadness over how they wish their postpartum experience had been. I was one of those people! I knew all there was to know about pregnancy and childbirth, but what to do with the baby once they were born was an area I just didn’t consider! So much of why I do what I do is because I learned a lot of parenting lessons the really hard way and I hope to help others avoid going down that same path. This book is a light post along the way and one that will - I hope - be passed down for generations to come. YES you deserve this! YES the pregnant people around you deserve this! And YES our society hasn’t prepared us well for these simple human kindnesses, but we can change that - today!
“If you are bumping up against resistance about claiming this time and space for yourself, remember that a gentle, supported postpartum period is your birthright... All new mothers deserve to enjoy a quiet, safe retreat; healing warmth and nourising food; help and support; plenty of rest; and moments of ritual. Being denied these basic conditions might jeopardize your long-term energy and well-being, which also will impact your ability to parent the way you desire. Start using this language now with your partner, family, and potential members of your support team and keep using it until you all believe it to be true.”
Get this book. Give it to all of your friends. Take the time to really think through what you want your first days as a parent to be like and gather those around you who will help you make it happen.
