Ann Pleshette Murphy - The 7 Stages of Motherhood: Loving Your Life without Losing Your Mind

Stage 1
Altered States: Pregnancy, Birth, and the Fourth Trimester

Stage 2
Finding Your Footing, Finding Yourself:
Months Four Through Twelve

Stage 3
Letting Go: The Toddler Years, One and Two

Stage 4
Trying to Do It All: The Preschool Years, Three to Six

Stage 5
Reading the Compass to God-Knows-Where: Years Six to Ten

Stage 6
Living in the Gray Zone: The Preteen Years, Ten to Thirteen

Stage 7
It Gets Easier and Then They Leave:
The Teen Years, Thirteen to Eighteen

Motherhood: Its the defining event in a womans life, a seismic transformation, a path we travel forever. But most of the literature on motherhood neglects the mother. Were coached on the how-tos, not the why-mes. Were encouraged to stand in our childrens shoes, while our own shoes gather dust. As we learn to read our kids signals, anticipate their needs, and accommodate their demands, we rarely take the time to reflect on where we are or where we want to be. The result is that even the most confident mom often feels unsure of her footing. And those of us who arent so sanguine worry that were headed in the wrong direction entirely, dragging our children along this path toward God-knows-where.

When Maddie and Nick were babies, I devoured every child-development tome I could lay my hands on. The fact that I was editing the leading parenthood magazine in the country gave me access to the best and the brightest among baby experts. Drs. Spock and Brazelton were on my speed dial. But rarely did a day go by that I wasnt painfully aware of my rookie rating. Second-guessing became second nature. I was great at giving other people advice about bedtime rituals or picky eaters, but I routinely spent two hours trying to get Maddie to bedeven resorting to crawling out of her room on my hands and knees to avoid making the floor creak.

With Nick, my been there, done that status helped a little, but the first boy in a long line of Pleshette-Murphy girls made it clear from birth that he was composed of a completely different set of chromosomes than his sister. For every stretch of road I felt prepared to walk, there were four unexpected turns that brought me face-to-face with my own insecurities.

When I left Parents to write this book, Maddie and Nick were thirteen and nine, respectively, and I was the parenting contributor to Good Morning America. Viewers who e-mailed me questions routinely addressed me as Dr. Murphy, conferring a degree of expertise and a credential I hardly deserved, but I did have decades of cumulative knowledge. Not my own, but that of the hundreds of moms, child-development experts, and researchers I had met and interviewed over the years. If there was one thing I learned, it was the simple yet ironic fact that motherhood is the great equalizer; become a mother and join a sorority that bridges millennia and miles. But as much as we all have in common, each of us is unique, and as quickly as our children change, we do, too. The mother your baby knew is not the same person ten months, let alone ten years, later. Child number three experiences a different mom than the one his older siblings knew. And, of course, the entire family evolves and develops along with each child. As Erik Erikson observed in Childhood and Society, This weak and changing little being moves the whole family along. Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them; in fact, we may say that the family brings up a baby by being brought up by him.

We watch our children grow and change at a furious rate, panting to keep up or, if were lucky, to stay one step ahead, and in so doing we develop muscles, new ways of thinking, and a whole new self-concept. One eminent psychologist characterized our evolution as a kind of contained vertical progression, a building that grows taller but remains solidly rooted in place. Our children, on the other hand, are always pushing outward and away: While children move themselves as individuals separate from their mothers, women evolve from one maternal identity to another, writes Rozsika Parker in her book Torn in Two. Thus they move from being a mother supporting a head, to a mother pushing a buggy, to a mother holding a hand, to a mother waving a hand, to a mother waiting for a hand to hold.