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Mother Nurture: A Mother's Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships
By Rick Hanson, PhD, Jan Hanson, LAc, and Ricki Pollycove, MD
Penguin Books
384 pp $15

Some days, I feel like the walking wounded, which I know is not a good way to view motherhood. But there I am, moving numbly through the day, sleep-deprived, hair askew, clothes daubed with peanut butter, clutching my never-ending to-do list.

Every once in a while, I admit to secret little thoughts of just closing the front door and walking away. If I had the energy, that is. The more realistic fantasy is to send everybody else away and just lie down. But I can't, of course, because there is that kitchen filled with spilled milk and the mess where the dog threw up, and the phone calls to be made to the pediatrician, the daycare center, and -- "Hello? Is this the mothers-in-crisis hotline?"

When I talk about this feeling of exhaustion with other mothers, they nod knowingly. If we could finish a sentence, which we often can't, we'd all agree that yes, we love our children more than we can say, but more sleep would be great. And yoga and some other stress reduction and perhaps a massage. But when? How?

When I heard about a book called Mother Nurture -- aimed not at mothers who want to learn more about taking care of their families, but rather at mothers who want to avoid falling apart -- I didn't think I'd have time to read it, of course. But then, as a remark by one of the authors sank in, I heard a kind of sweet music in the distance -- similar to stepping on the electronic singalong Barney book, but more comforting.

"It's high time the medical community and society in general recognize the problems that come with motherhood," writes Ricki Pollycove, MD. "I see the woman who just thinks she's not trying hard enough -- 'If I were a little more organized, this wouldn't be happening.' " This mother, writes Pollycove, could suffer from what the author calls Depleted Mother Syndrome.

I breathed a sigh of relief and sank onto the sofa. Someone had put words to what I was feeling, applied a diagnosis to my collection of symptoms. I was no longer alone, but part of a category. In my grateful mind, the Barney music rose to a crescendo.

Over the next week or so, I made time to read the book, subtitled A Mother's Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships. I started asking my friends what they thought about the concept of Depleted Mother Syndrome. "That's me," said my friend Jane, a mother of twins. "Me, too," said my friend Josie, in her 50s with two elementary school children. Safe to say, in Berkeley, California alone, I know several dozen women with self-diagnosed cases of Depleted Mother Syndrome. Now, at last, someone was paying attention to what many of us had seen as our own isolated failings. The refrain throughout the book: "You're not to blame and you're not alone."

There's something consoling about just having company. But Pollycove, a member of the clinical faculty of the University of California, San Francisco, and her co-authors, psychologist Rick Hanson, and nutritionist and acupuncturist Jan Hanson, whose practice focuses on women's health, go much further. This is a comforting book for frayed mothers, no question, but it's also practical, sophisticated, and ambitious in its advice about nutrition, stress reduction, and other components of self-care for the discouraged and the drained.

All the authors have children, and all found, as Jan Hanson notes in the introduction, that they had plenty of care through and after pregnancy, but by the time their babies had turned a year old, the mothers seemed to have "dropped off the radar of the health care system -- as if raising a family had no real effect on a woman's well-being."

All too many of us, bent on the care of our children, have lost sight of caring for ourselves. And even if we resolve to sleep more, eat better, and get some exercise, the finer points of maintaining intimacy with our partners, or of balancing work and the rest our of our lives, tend to get lost in the shuffle.

Coming to the rescue, the authors begin with a core question: "What does a mother need in order to keep giving her children the very best they deserve, year after year after year?" They offer a three-pronged attack to lower the demands on moms, increase their resources, and build up their resilience.

The quick answer is getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and eating well -- all major pitfalls for too-busy mothers. Mothers must also work to restore balance and sanity by consciously nurturing their minds, their bodies, and their intimate relationships.

The arrival of children can wreak havoc on a mother's sense of intimacy and support from her partner, the authors report. Children can put a strain on everything from parents' ability to hold a simple conversation to partners' time and energy to indulge their own desires for intimacy. Once the kids arrive, there are eight times as many arguments and less time to resolve them. Energy flags. Tempers flare. It all sounds numbingly familiar.

For starters, the authors suggest that couples make time to ask each other three personal questions each day. Not, "Did you remember to put the garbage out?" but ""How did you feel about what happened?" or "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?"

When a mother needs to take care of the household, an uneven distribution of work can drain her further, the authors maintain. In fact, the average mother works about 20 hours more per week than does her male partner, if she has one, regardless of whether she's drawing a paycheck -- and a mother's stress jumps and her mood drops when teamwork with her partner breaks down. It is moms, moreover, who typically handle more of the high-stress tasks, such as dealing with daycare or school problems.

Although the authors don't specifically concentrate on single moms, much of what they say -- digging into sources of loneliness and frustration among contemporary mothers -- applies to those who don't have a partner to share the load.

Isolation, for instance, is a major factor in maternal depression, and the book encourages women to seek support, whether through relatives, friends, or groups. A single parent's personal life also needs a great deal of attention if he or she is to maintain mental, emotional, and physical health. Within a partnership, the partners often need to retune the ways they relate to each other after children come along.

The authors say, for instance, "If the demands on a person grow, her resources should grow as well." A recently divorced mother, for instance, should acknowledge the loss of a task-sharing partner and seek other sources of support. Nurturing friendships with other women can help immensely, as can some practical help -- such as an occasional babysitter.

Much of this support is needed to relieve physical as well as psychological strain. "If there's one lesson that we've learned from working with several thousand mothers," say the authors, "it's the degree to which motherhood affects women physically." The solutions are laid out -- how to get the best from your physicians, suggested medical tests for common deficiencies, advice on better nutrition (including information on supplements), exercise, and other kinds of physical self care -- and alternative and Eastern approaches are explored along with Western medicine.

The book spoke to me, from the very first chapter, "How Your Cupboard Can Become Bare" -- about the ways mothers can become emotionally drained -- to the last section, on juggling motherhood and work.

I won't say every kind of help can come from a book, of course, but in the 363 pages of this one -- ending with the sentence "Please don't give up and decide to accept depletion as normal" -- the authors have packed in about as much as possible.

This is a book I'd like to give to all my friends, all those other mothers with circles under their eyes who've been toughing it out alone. "Here," I will say, "If you feel as tired as I've been feeling, here's some help."

-- Karin Evans is the author of The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past. She is the mother of two daughters.

First published January 15, 2003
Last updated January 29, 2008
Copyright © 2003 Consumer Health Interactive

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