Review of Allison Auth’s Book Baby and Beyond

Rooted in a deep understanding that the essence of the human person is both body and soul, Allison Auth’s book, Baby and Beyond, uses her postpartum journey to provide practical wisdom for growing closer to God in the process of healing and learning to give of one’s self through new motherhood. As a bioethicist and a new mother, when presented with this book review, I was eager to delve into this topic of health after pregnancy and found the book to be a gift in my own life.

Auth is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville with a degree in Catechetics and experience working in youth ministry and marriage preparation. She now homeschools her four children. As a mother of four, Auth shares the physical, emotional, and spiritual struggles and joys of each of the births and postpartum periods of each child’s life as the framework for her book. Through this lens, she recognizes the need and call to learn to glorify God, body and soul, and grow in virtue postpartum. She qualifies that the postpartum period is not the typical three months but really the entire year after giving birth. From these stories, Auth enters into more specific aspects of her postpartum journey and offers insight into the research she did while overcoming these health challenges. Auth enters into postpartum depression and depletion, physical recovery, marital struggles and natural family planning (NFP), mental and spiritual health, and finally community.

Synopsis

This book is not intended to be a scientific case study of each postpartum period but rather provides a personal story where experience leads to learning and theory is put into practice. Though not a scientist or physician, Auth cites many books she used as resources as she worked to discover how to best address the physical, mental, and emotional challenges she faced with each birth. Auth goes into detail about the need for vitamins, hormones, exercise, community, and prayer specifically during the postpartum season of life. Specifically, she expands upon the need to replenish vitamin deficiency of iron, zinc, magnesium, and D and B vitamins. Auth further explains the hormones (estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, cortisol, Dehydroepiandrosterone, and thyroid hormone) affected by these vitamins and how these hormones maintain the proper functioning of a woman’s body.

In addressing the body and soul, Auth describes her search for balance in taking care of herself and her relationships with others and with God. Auth speaks about the struggles of figuring out NFP with her husband. She acknowledges that NFP is often presented as simple and scientifically based but in practice is particularly difficult in the postpartum time period while breastfeeding causes uncertainty in a woman’s cycle. She comments on learning with each pregnancy that she was further depleted of vitamins and minerals. This depletion led to an inability to focus, detachment from others, or feeling depressed. Auth acknowledges time and time again that addressing physical and nutrient needs are only one aspect to health and counsels a need for adjustment in prayer, reliance on community, being intentional in developing friendships, and accepting help from others.

Critique

Auth beautifully uses her story to explain that the postpartum season and welcoming of new life is often a hidden time of growth through both joys and sufferings. Each topic is discussed in a comforting and motherly voice, offering wisdom and research while also recognizing that each woman is unique, and will need to go on her own walk with Christ after the birth of her child. Her perspective is rooted in the human need for an individual growth AND communal relationships. The autobiographical nature of her story illustrates the endless experiences of a postpartum mother through joy, beauty, exhaustion, guilt, confusion, fogginess, loss of self, changing relationships, humility, fear, confidence, and ultimately love.

Baby and Beyond, however, is mostly anecdotal with references to helpful research the author conducted on her own journey. Auth’s research was not systematic but rather organic as she sought answers to the challenges she faced physically, emotionally, and spiritually. One book leads to the next as she cites and synthesizes information learned from Dr. Oscar Serrallach’s (2018) The Postnatal Depletion Cure; Shannon’s (2009) Fertility, Cycles and Nutrition, fourth edition; and Raffelock and Rountree’s Natural Guide to Pregnancy (2003). This approach is reflected in the style of the book in its storytelling, casual voice. Auth recognizes this and frequently comments that she is not a physician and that her solutions may not be perfect for every woman but that they were helpful for her. However, she hopes that they might provide even some degree of support for other women, even just to acknowledge that one is not alone in her struggles. Each birth and subsequent postpartum period for Auth was different and she needed to address different difficulties. At the end of the day, the purpose of this book and the sharing of Auth’s story was a testament to the need to address one’s health in body and soul and in so doing come to a deeper relationship with God.

Recommendation

I would highly recommend this book to any postpartum mother as a comforting read in the knowledge that she is not alone in her struggles following the birth of her child. I found it immensely insightful and comforting in my own postpartum journey. (As I write this, my daughter is three months old.) Though, I would caution any first-time pregnant woman as some details of birth and labor are best left in mystery until she experiences it herself!

Physical postpartum issues such as sleep quality and fatigue are linked to postpartum depression in one in the nine new mothers. The high number of mothers experiencing postpartum depression and any correlating effects makes this books a perfect read as it integrate the physical and mental challenges of new mothers with their spiritual needs (Ko et al. 2017; Kim and Hur 2014).

Personally, this book was an encouraging read during my first months as a postpartum mother. It was comforting to read that another mother’s experience was also filled with mixed emotions, where struggles and challenges interwove with the joy and blessing of a new child. I knew that having a child was a blessing but when I felt exhausted, irritable, or simply not present, feelings of guilt for experiencing anything but gratitude and joy could easily pervade my thoughts, make me question my worth as a mother, and cause me to lose grounding in my relationship with God. Reading Auth’s story was relieving in the knowledge that I was not alone and that there were steps I could take to care for my physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Auth put her experience in a context where the health of the body and soul were intertwined and were oriented toward love.

Allison Auth’s practical insights as well as spiritual journey remind the reader that “love bears all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). Though this occurs at every season of life, in a very tangible way, the postpartum season empties a woman of herself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so that she might be able to rely more on Christ and be filled up by the love of God. And in allowing oneself to be filled by the love of God, a mother may more fully, though often imperfectly, love herself, her spouse, and her child.