Now You Are a Mother Book Review

Title: Now You Are A Mother

Author: Du'aa Ra'oof Shaheen

Translator: Huda al-Khattab

Publisher: Darrusalam

Recommended for: First-time Mothers

This book has given an overview of the mother's role and touched on the basics of raising babies and small children. Whilst motherhood is one of the most rewarding of roles, it is also a very complex role that brings many trials and challenges that cannot be covered fully in a single volume.

When I saw this book at the bookstore my first thought was "Oh how pretty" because there was a cute picture on the front with soft pastel colour designs. I had to pick it up. So I started flicking through the pages and my second thought was "This would make a great gift for new first time mothers and I thought who did I know that was pregnant for the first time? One of my nieces is so I bought it.

Why did I think it was a good resource for first-time mothers? The book is pretty think and it covers all the basics that a new mother would need to know and would likely have questions for. It takes the mother-to-be from what to pack for the hospital to what and the things that you would need for your newborn from clothing to bath and bedding. It also has the sunnah practices of welcoming the newborn and what your newborn would look like. It then goes through baby's development by months up to 4 years of age covering parenting aspects relevant to each age group including breastfeeding and childhood illnesses.

In terms of child development, it covers three areas: physical, linguistic and socioemotional development for each age group in general terms so the new mother can know what to expect. This is the other reason why I bought this book. Understanding your child's development to really important to know what to do to raise your child. I've written about this in Child Development: The Book That Every Parent Needs .

There are two downsides to this book. One is that when it touched on the subject of sleep, it didn't recommend co-sleeping at all in one succinct sentence. As a co-sleeper I highly recommend it because it helps to build a strong bond with your child. Yes, I've written about it already in 5 Ways to Bond with Your Baby.

The other downside is that after mentioning the child's development in each age group, it does not give the mother ideas or activities on what to do to nurture that development. I understand that to include this would make the book thicker and on their back cover, it did encourage the mother to learn more beyond what the author has written. Still, it would have been very useful for the mother to have a little section on it.

This is one of the reason that I'm co-authoring a book on child development with other professionals in their field. If you've been following me then you'll know that I've been saying this since the beginning of this year. But yes, it's happening alhamdulillah. We've finally got all our chapters together so just waiting on the final edits. We go into details on the seven areas of child development which takes the child from newborn through to adolescence. We've also have a section on what parents can do to nurture each one and included Islam and the sunnah where appropriate. You can follow or subscribe to keep up to date.

In the meantime, if you're interested in this Now You Are a Mother book, you can get it below (my affiliate link):