How do you integrate motherhood into the rest of your identity?
"Feeling My Way" offers one woman's unflinchingly honest, heartfelt and funny answer to that question, beginning during her pregnancy and continuing through the first year of her daughter's life.
Amanda Hirsch was 34 years old when she and her husband decided they wanted to have a child. The decision was prompted when her doctor told her, "'Maybe' never turns into 'no,' and it only gets harder as you get older." Bam. Hirsch found out she was pregnant in the middle of Hurricane Irene, and she chronicles the stormy emotions of pregnancy, from elation, to shock, to sheer terror at the prospect of what having a child will do to her life.
Like all women, Hirsch wears many hats — in her case, the hats include artist, business owner and wife; how will she wear the motherhood hat without sacrificing other parts of her identity that are so important to her? Once her daughter is born, she is overcome with love, and documents the disorienting rush of new motherhood, while showing us how she slowly re-inhabits the other parts of her life. Motherhood does change her, but it doesn't limit her.
This is a book for pregnant women anticipating parenthood, for new mothers who want to know they aren't alone as they adjust to this profound change in their lives, and for any mother who wants to remember what it felt like when this enormous part of their identity was brand spanking new. It's also a book for anyone looking for a window into how new motherhood feels, and for anyone struggling to lead a life that balances many passions.