After Birth

In a stream of conscience, writing about her feelings and reactions to having just given birth by ceasearian section and trying to breastfeed her new born son, Ari is suffering from post partum depression and learning to adapt to life as a mother.

There is so much that the books about motherhood don't explain.   Ari is also a mother without a mother of her own to lean on and consult.  She imagines conversations with her mother as she tries to not mistakes with her new child.  Having lost her mother at a young age, she feels that she missed out on much of the knowledge she would need to be a woman.  She tried to learn from her friends and their mothers as she was growing up.  But she carries a lot of anger within her.

She feels isolated in a new home that she and her husband, Paul bought outside New York City.  As she looks back on her life she feels like she has always been a fish out of water.  The odd man out, never really fitting in with any group in school or summer camp.  Trying out friendships that never last.  Always finding fault with the girls and women she befriends, ending the relationships and feeling abandoned.

Then she meets Mina , a poet, who is renting a near by house in the neighborhood and has just given birth to a son, they become fast friends.  Ari works hard not to destroy this relationship like she has all the others.  The two women bond over the hard work of motherhood.  The idea that no one warns you about the trials and tribulations of nursing and the pressure to supliment with formula.

Throughout the novel are some wonderful quotes that as a mother you can relate to.  Author, Elisa Albert, really captures the feelings of being a new mother within those first few months. The feeling of not being able to accomplish anything except breast feeding your child.  Not showering, or eating yourself and not being able to clean up after yourself.  Yet there is a peacefulness that comes over you as nurse the baby.  "Soon he was finished on the left side, big boy.  I lifted him up, held him close, delicious soft hilarious drunk face, patted his back, and put him to work on the right.  We passed weeks this way, he and I, submerged, disoriented, in a twisted sort of contentment.  Now I yearn for that time, want to lie with him connected and safe. "

Elisa Albert has captured so many of the feelings and thoughts that every new mother experiences during that first year after giving birth to that first child.  Many of these have never really been shared, like a secret society, sworn to secrecy that has finally been revealed.