Love Works Like This: Moving from One Kind of Life to Another

Lauren Slater approaches the question of what it is to come to love a child, and how one struggles with all the questions and fears that come up as you embark on that unknown journey with a raw and deep honesty that I have found difficult to find in any other books dealing with becoming a mother. This book is a love letter of sorts to her daughter yet to be. It is a confessional at times, of all the dark fears and shortcomings each mother must face. Lastly, it is a testimony to the process of love as a form of growth and evolution, something that is complex, alive, and ever changing. I have read this book twice. Each time I come away from it in tears and deeply moved. As a psychotherapist and woman myself, I recommend it to any woman who has questions about whether she can become a mother and if she has the capacity in her to love another in such a deep and vulnerable way. It is beautiful book.

As a new mom, I loved this book. It beautifully described the changes and upheavals that becoming a mother has brought to my life. While I wasn't on depressants, I too had a difficult pregnancy which I'm still coping with emotionally and physically. I too was on a variety of medications throughout the pregnancy. But the depression and medication worries are only a small part of the story in this book. If you're looking for Prozac Diaries part II as one reviewer seems to have, you're looking in the wrong place. I too have never known that I could love this deeply, that a single smile from my baby girl would be worth more than anything I've done in my 38 years. No other writer has come close to describing the way I feel as if every molecule in my body has been rearranged. In particular her comment "Fatherhood is something you do, Motherhood is something you are" struck me. I've been fundamentally changed in so many ways that I never expected and ironically, I don't even care. I read the book thinking, "Wow! Someone has decribed how exactly how I feel and now I don't have to do it myself." She's written the book I wished I could but in prose that's so much more beautiful than anything I could have mustered.I don't understand the reviewers who criticized her so much. Perhaps it was a father who was offended by how much the father was left out of her story. This was a story of the emotional changes involved in becoming a mother who struggled with some of the difficulties that no one tells you about. Lastly, several of her observations have stayed with me. Like the thought that pregnancy should carry a warning label. As she points out, with all it's side effects, if it were a drug the FDA would classify it as highly dangerous. And the information that fetal cells remain in a woman's body for her entire life... parts of each child remain part of her physically in addition to emotionally ... explains so much to me now as a new mom. I've been buying it for all my pregnant friends and new moms and we've all loved it and found it remarkable.

I've enjoyed other works of Lauren Slater, and this was no exception. It takes courage to write about the experiences she's had emotionally. Especially when it involves being heartfelt and honest about the giant step of having a baby.Anyone who is pregnant or plans to become pregnant should read this book regardless of whether or not you have a history with depression or other mental illnesses. Many of the feelings and emotions Ms. Slater expresses about having a baby are ones that many women have, but are not honest enough to express. Reading about her experiences and emotions authenticates just how serious a choice having a baby is, not just for someone with mental illness, but for every responsible couple.This is a good, informative and honest piece of writing. I would recommend it highly to anyone who wants an emotional look at what it's like to be pregnant. Ms. Slater is an excellent writer in both her use of imagery and emotion.

Lauren Slater is a highly gifted writer--her writing is eloquent, descriptive, and fluid. So this book is a pleasure to read just to experience her giftedness with language. She has a sense of humor and frankly and acknowledges a complicated constellation of emotions around her pregnancy and subsequent childbirth, (including ambivalence, anxiety, guilt) and the process of the unfolding attachment and love she comes to feel for her baby. The lengthy, difficult labor may be hard for some moms-to-be to read about, but again I appreciated its frankness--so many moms say they forget the difficulties of labor. I liked it that the author gives herself and the reader permission to feel ambivalent about pregnancy and motherhood.

Slater's book offers:a) an account of one woman's experience "crossing over" into Motherland.b) her frank soul-searching about how to (and if one should) merge motherhood with mental illness (something which more than 1 in 5 Americans suffer with.)c) an artful, beautifully worded style -- gratefully devoured by those seeking alternatives to cutesy-tootsie, sterile, soul-less, "What to Expect..." manuals.Regarding the reviewer who complained that there was no answer to the book's title, let me just ask this: Were you REALLY expecting an answer? I don't think anyone can diagram how love works...If you're expecting "answers" for the universal questions of life, try Wittgenstein. If you're looking for specific questions about labor/birth/delivery/ -- buy the Unofficial Guide to Pregnancy. But if you're interested in reading a moving account of one person's spiritual and personal journey into parenthood, this book is a winner.