In the Newborn Year: Our Changing Awareness After Childbirth

Rating:
Summary: Awakening the Spiritual Aspects of Motherhood
Review: Ms. Hallett has clearly and beautifully addressed the "other side" of postpartum days. Aside from the physical, the days and weeks after birth offer each mother the gift of awareness. Awareness of the child, her life and herself. These stories of women experiencing the first nudges of spiritual awakening through motherhood push us all to examine our own experiences with our children. The pages ask us to consider the existance of something more powerful around us. It is a one of a kind book, daring to look at the most powerful time in a woman's life. Thank you, Elisabeth Hallett, for recognizing the miracle of this time.

Rating:
Summary: Uniquely spellbinding!
Review: While I often pour through a book from cover to cover within a day or two, not so with Elisabeth Hallett's _In the Newborn Year_! I savoured it for weeks! With every revelation and each reported experience, I was cast further and further adrift on a sea of my own thoughts and memories, recalling with amazing detail my experience of that intense, joyful and sometimes tumultuous time of life referred to as the postpartum.

This book was definitely not what I expected! More than conventional stories of mother/infant bonding, Ms. Hallett gives us intimate and thought-provoking glimpses into her own and other women's postpartum experiences, which for many include voyages into exotic imaginal realms, and mysterious, sometimes disturbing altered states of awareness. From the blissful to the surreal, no two experiences described in her book are alike, yet they are connected by a common thread. The message is that even the most difficult of postpartum journeys are transformational opportunities for the psyche which may lead, not only to a deep and more intimate connection between mother and child, but also to greater levels of personal growth and self-awareness, and the birth of enhanced creativity and freedom. My only regret is that _In the Newborn Year_ was not yet published when I began my own journey into motherhood!