HOW TO BE NORMAL & NOT FEEL GUILTY! (How Not to Be a Perfect Mother - Libby Purves)

Member Name: Parsley

Product:	How Not to Be a Perfect Mother - Libby Purves
Date:	26/01/02 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Essential guide for mums & mums to be!

Disadvantages: Finding time to read it!

How not to be a perfect mother!

When I read the title of this book, I thought do I really need to read this? Already being the archetypal ?unperfect mother? I thought I hardly needed any tips on lack of perfection! However, being given the book, I thought that I might as well give it a read!

This book is brilliant, refreshing & funny and reassures all those of us less than perfect mums, with less than well behaved children (i.e. all of us if we?d admit it!) that you aren?t the only one out there cutting corners and not quite making ?the grade?!
With all the pressure and media hype and everyone telling you what you should and shouldn?t be doing to bring up your children, sometimes it seems that you are constantly ?failing? to be the ?perfect mother?. Also it sometimes seems that all the other mums you know have got it together while you are the one who is struggling to keep on top of everything. Everyone else has a clean baby and arrives on time, while your baby got its lunch all over it?s clothes, snot is running down its face, it needed a nappy change just before you left & you arrive red-faced and late! The other mums are bringing their babies up by the book, feeding them only organic food, playing them Mozart and giving them Lamarze patterns while your baby forgot to read the book, it wont eat anything except chocolate, it likes rock music and prefers climbing on the table & playing with empty cardboard boxes. Does this sound familiar to you? Then welcome to the world of real motherhood! ?Perfect motherhood? is a myth and one that this book is trying to dispel, much to the relief of us ?real mums?. Real mums are forgetful, covered in baby food spills, muddle along, do their best and still manage to bring up perfectly normal children!

This book gives a lighthearted look at parenting with loads of useful advice and witty anecdotes that all parents can relate to, but best of all it gives you the permission to be guilt free over your de
cisions, re-iterating that no-one is perfect and if anyone seems to be, then it?s usually just a good front that they are putting on!

There are some really great tips on labour saving, how to get through preganancy & birth, how to choose a nanny, going back to work (or staying at home) and dealing with siblings. This book will help you survive the first 3 years! I would recommend every it to every newly pregnant woman as it could save them a lot of stressing about nothing!

If you have read any of the Best friends guides to pregnancy, motherhood then you should really enjoy this book as its in the same witty down-to-eath vein. It comes highly recommended.

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