The main point of this book is to tell new parents to go easy on themselves in the upheaval that is new parenthood, to take some time to determine their priorities and to use those to create a "new normal." The idea is to keep women from inadvertently falling into the martyr role, where their entire lives become consumed with caring for others to the point of neglecting themselves -- not just in the intense months and years of early childhood, but throughout their parenting journey.

The book is full of exercises to that end that seem as if they could be really helpful. Unfortunately, I read an ARC on my Kindle, and the book was not properly formatted for that medium. So I had to guess at what many of the exercises, charts, and images were supposed to look like based on context because they came out all screwed up. It's a pet peeve of mine when publishers put out electronic ARCs that have shoddy formatting -- it really does affect the reading experience and it makes it harder to look favorably on a book.

Rachel Egan is a coach for new moms, and I imagine working one-on-one with her in that capacity would be enormously helpful. The book might be a good stand-in for those who are not comfortable with or cannot afford formal coaching, but the ebook version should be avoided to get the most benefit out of the exercises. Even if the formatting is fixed on the final version (which it better be if people are going to pay money for it), there are a lot of places where the book asks you to answer questions, make notes, circle things, etc. -- all of which seem a lot easier with a physical copy. Unfortunately, because of the yucky ebook formatting, I probably won't use this much once I'm actually dealing with these issues after my baby's arrival.