A thoughtful exploration of the often bewildering, yet ultimately transforming, experience of being a mother. Have you ever spent all day looking after your baby or young child and ended up feeling as if you"d "done nothing all day" or that you should "achieve more with your time"? In this original and insightful book, psychotherapist Naomi Stadlen draws on countless conversations with other mothers to reveal just how much mothers do, even when it may look, to everyone else, like nothing. Deftly exploring the many unsentimental reactions to motherhood that women have, yet often keep hidden from others - guilt; splintered identity; a sense of inefficiency; and of course, deadening fatigue - Stadlen beautifully illustrates how the seemingly insignificant skills that mothers practice and refine every day, such as responding to a baby"s colicky cry, being instantly interruptible, or soothing an overstimulated child to sleep, help nurture a child"s socialization, sense of...