From Hormones to Diaper Changes
01/01/11 05:49 Filed in: Cassie Vieten | Motherhood
"It wasn’t until I had my daughter that I realized how my spiritual life, particularly mindfulness practices, would help me during the transformation of pregnancy, labor, and early motherhood. I called upon those understandings and skills every day—through mood swings, back pain, stretch marks, a fifty-seven-hour labor, and relationship tensions. They not only helped me with difficult moments, but they also opened me in a profound way to the rewards of pregnancy and early motherhood. I was able to more fully experience those exquisite moments of nursing in a rocking chair in a sun-filled room, reflections dancing on the walls, dust motes drifting in the rays of light, my daughter’s toothless smile, the way she made a soft creaking sound whenever she was falling asleep (eehhhhh, ehhhhhh, ehhhhh). In a card a friend gave me at my baby shower she wrote, "Now your heart will stretch wide open, and you’ll love beyond anything you’ve ever known." This was true and remains true to this day. So, I write this book as a psychologist, a researcher—and a mom."
Mindful Motherhood is a program that teaches you how mindfulness practices can be integrated into your everyday life during pregnancy and early motherhood for staying balanced, healthy, and connected with your baby, even in difficult moments.
(Mindful Motherhood, page 9, INTRODUCTION)
