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New parents usually delight in milestone books that note the first time their baby smiles, rolls over, or does one of the many adorable things babies do. Such books are extremely popular but they can actually do a disservice to expecting and new parents because they cast an idyllic light on an event that for most people can have as many difficult, challenging, and fear inducing moments as it does poignant and lovely ones.
When couples enter parenthood with incorrect or idealized expectations it can make their transition more challenging and have a negative impact on their individual emotional health as well as on their relationship satisfaction. Now, from the comic mind of Raquel D’Apice, writer of the viral parenting blog The Ugly Volvo, comes a milestone book that is as accurate and realistic as it is hilarious: Welcome to the Club: 100 Parenting Milestones You Never Saw Coming (Chronicle Books, Sept. 2016).
Chapter headings like Eating, Sleeping, and Other Total Disasters and This Is Disgusting. Please Send Reinforcements quickly convey that this book is about what actually happens when you bring home a newborn. The author’s hilarious illustrations (including the cover) only add to the book’s appeal. But Welcome to the Club will not just entertain new parents it will be therapeutic for them as well. Here’s why:
1. It focuses on scary situations and difficult emotions: The early days of parenting have moments of terror (Milestone: First Time Your Child Rolls Off the Bed/Sofa/Changing Table) as well as regret and even shame (Milestone: First Time You Have the Thought “What If Having a Baby Was a Mistake?”). It is important for new parents to realize such moments exist, are common and that they are not the only ones who experience them.
2. It sets correct expectations: The book offers a huge heads-up about moments you might not think will be difficult but often are. For example, you might not consider yourself overly insecure or competitive but the Milestone: First Time You Meet a Kid Your Child’s Age Who is Way More Advanced than Your Child, might alert you to tricky and unexpected feelings you can have regardless.
3. It is easy to read in short breaks: New parents have very little free time. Very, very, very, little free time. Welcome to the Club has 100 short chapters that are easy to read in brief moments of respite.
4. It is highly reassuring: Knowing you’re not the only one disgusting things happen to in the wee hours when you can't call anyone to vent about it can be the only comfort you get at 4 AM when (Milestone): The First Time You Hold Your Baby Over Your Head and He Vomits All Over You.
5. It will strengthen your couplehood: Stressed and sleep-deprived couples often get quite angry at their partner when their partner makes a mistake, in part, because they don’t realize how common such mistakes are. The many examples covered in this book will help lower those tensions and allow couples to laugh about them rather than argue (Milestone: First Time You Forget to Lock the Wheels on Your Stroller). It will also set expectations about how new babies impact couplehood (Milestone: First Date When You Try Desperately to Not Spend the Entire Date Talking about the Baby).
6. It’s absolutely hilarious: Welcome to the Club is laugh out loud funny from front to back, aided by hilarious illustrations and the writer’s sharp comic observations. For example, from Milestone 1: “Here,” a nurse will say, “You know that tiny miraculous human with a head like a Faberge Egg who means more to you than anything in the world? We’d like to place him in your arms despite the fact that every fifteen minutes you trip over your laptop cord.”
7. It is also very touching: Welcome to the Club also covers the wonderful, warm, and loving moments of deep joy and satisfaction that shine through and remain embedded in parents’ memories forever (despite all the challenging and difficult things that happen regularly in between those memory jewels), such as the Milestone: First Time Your Child Says, “I Love You.”
I should note that I was lucky enough to be asked to read Welcome to the Club in early draft form and so I have seen it develop from a collection of wonderful essays to a book I believe every new parent should read (parents of older children will enjoy it just as much). Its frank and realistic approach, its wisdom, its humor and especially its heart will provide new parents great entertainment as well as a valuable psychological service—which is why I consider Welcome to the Club a book every new parent should read.
- Watch my viral TED Talk about boosting Emotional Health
- Check out my book, Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure and Other Everyday Hurts (Plume, 2014).
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- Visit my website at guywinch.com and follow me on Twitter @GuyWinch
Copyright 2016 Guy Winch
* Images and excerpts with permission from Chronicle Books
