The First Forty Days

I invite you to lean on the knowledge and recipes contained in these pages and then pass this book on to the next mother-to-be, telling her which parts of it inspired, helped, or fed you best.

It’s time to start a new tradition—a movement—of postpartum care: one that honors the past and that will carry us, and our children, more kindly and happily into the future.

In a society that applies pressure from all sides to be faster and more productive, to “bounce back” and charge forward, women are beginning to invite one another to slow down, take a breath, and make choices that meet those needs in a more generous way.

Our generation is in the middle of a grand rethinking about how we birth and how we mother.

For many mothers, the joy of a baby’s arrival is mixed up with harder feelings: isolation and loneliness after the initial welcoming buzz subsides; bewildering fatigue from trying to hold it all together, or confusion and shame when they cannot.

After birthing her child, every woman must pass through this initial adjustment phase.