Mother Shock

May 1, 2003
The creator of Phillymama.com, Buchanan has a convincing theory about the first year of motherhood: all new moms go through four phases of adjustment-mother love (initial euphoria), mother shock (crisis), mother tongue (recovery), and mother land (adjustment). In interrelated essays that vary in length as well as in style and format, she explores those phases and attempts to answer a plethora of questions that finally come down to the realization that it's impossible to know what it's like to become a mother until you actually do. But enough theory. Although this book may sound like a scholarly analysis, it is not. Buchanan writes fluently and with both feet on the ground, always aspiring to show readers her way of mothering not as a model but as an example. Her commonsense, nonjudgmental approach is especially praiseworthy. In the end, as she repeatedly points out, it is not choosing breast milk over formula that makes one a good mother, it is the ability to accept that every new mother can only do the best that she can. For all public libraries.-Mirela Roncevic

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