Literally, nipple confusion is a condition that can arise when a breast-fed baby is given an artificial nipple and must adapt to nursing from both the mother's breast and the bottle.

Metaphorically, nipple confusion is a condition that can arise when a modern woman is learning to care for her first newborn while also adapting to changes in all other domains of her life. Confusion ensues. But just as babies can adapt to switching back and forth, modern women can adapt to the changes this life-transforming experience entails.

Each year more than a million American women become mothers for the first time. These well-educated, well-read modern women between the ages of 20 and 39 approach pregnancy and motherhood as if it’s a problem that can be solved with information. What they can’t foresee is the momentous impact that having a baby will have on every domain of their lives and how ill-equipped they will feel to handle it, in spite of all their diligent research. Are modern women simply not suited to motherhood?

The central claim of Nipple Confusion Journal: Milking the Most Out of First-time Motherhood is that, in fact, we aren’t. I show how everything in our upbringing as modern women—how we think, how we do things habitually, what choices we’re encouraged to make and what values we hold dear—makes it difficult for us to adapt to being mothers, particularly the first time around. Motherhood is a change process of major proportions. There is blindness to the immensity of this adaptation. However, because we don’t acknowledge it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Imagine if decades ago there had been no acknowledgment within corporate culture that change, even positive change, was hard to handle? There are now countless consultants and coaches dedicated to the practice of change management, showing everyone from upper management to the rank and file how to adapt to change, embrace change and get the most out of change. Nipple Confusion Journal: Milking the Most Out of First-time Motherhood is the first such book in the domain of motherhood.

A modern woman doesn’t expect to suffer so much adapting to first-time motherhood. While she undoubtedly chose motherhood, she didn’t willingly sign up for the eventual upheaval she encounters that couldn’t possibly have been anticipated beforehand. Rarely in life are one’s expectations as far off the mark as a first-time mother’s expectations of motherhood.

So when she finds herself suffering, a new mother can’t really comprehend why she is finding it so difficult. Is there something wrong with her? Is it all simply “normal” and she must grimly get through it? Is there anything she can do to alleviate her suffering?

While there is more being written about the difficulties of motherhood than ever before, much of that writing is of the “tell” variety, with authors telling of their own difficulties or recounting those of other women. Often that telling is accompanied by the author’s explanations of the difficulties. Both the telling and explanations are within the context of the writer’s framework—psychology, journalism and personal reportage being the most prevalent.

While that kind of writing can be cathartic for the reader, telling and explanations don’t enable different action. I claim this from my framework of coaching and decades of leading seminars. I am firmly in the school of enabling, rather than telling.

That is the perspective from which Nipple Confusion Journal is written—to expand a first-time mother’s present and future possibilities for new action. To facilitate the experiential learning that will let her milk the most out of the coming year and beyond.

You can learn more about Nipple Confusion Journal and listen to the 10 songs for new mothers that accompany the book here.

—Sherwood Fleming