Life After Baby : New motherhood isn’t all warm fuzzies. It’s also fatigue, confusion, ambivalence. A reassuring new book looks at the realities.

At a baby shower held in my very pregnant honor about six years ago, I remember two friends having a conversation that struck me as rather odd at the time. Both women, who had a brood of small children between them, were commenting about how much they had enjoyed their car rides to the party. They had been alone.

What could motherhood portend, I remember wondering, if these friends got their kicks from such drives?

Now, after having two children, I understand. By myself, I almost enjoy driving on Washington’s beltway.

Perhaps I would have had a better inkling of the complications to come if there had been “Laughter and Tears: The Emotional Life of New Mothers” (Henry Holt, 1997), Elisabeth Bing and Libby Colman’s insightful book about the unexpected aspects of early motherhood.

While it’s true that nobody can tell you what new motherhood is really like until you experience it yourself, too often it’s portrayed as a romp with cuddly blankets and soft behinds. “In fact, the fantasy most of us have about babies is so romantic and idealized,” write the authors, “that the reality of fatigue, confusion and ambivalence that sometimes overwhelm new parents comes as a great shock.”

So in their latest book, Bing, a longtime childbirth educator, and Colman, a social psychologist, delve into every aspect of that fatigue, confusion and ambivalence, starting from the first hours after childbirth to the end of the first year.

This is not a how-to book, filled with tips on burping, bathing and bellybuttons. And for the exceptional woman who experiences early motherhood entirely as that romp with cuddly blankets and soft behinds, this book may seem too negative. (In fact, the authors originally intended to write a book only about the difficulties of new parenthood, then realized that since satisfaction and joy generally prevail, the positive aspects of parenthood deserved a place in the book too.)

But for even the mildly introspective, this is a book filled with reassuring stuff. How it’s normal to have feelings of anxiety, anger and self-doubt as a new mother. How, for better or worse, a baby changes your relationship with your husband, your parents, your friends. How it’s OK to experience intense love and intense frustration simultaneously.

Still, Bing and Colman acknowledge that women react differently to the challenges, and so they make observations based on temperament and situation.

“If you are a person who is used to being well-organized and on top of everything, you may be bothered by this transformation into a person who is living from moment to moment and feeling overwhelmed by something as mundane as spit-up or the finer points of burping technique,” they write. Or, “if you are a fairly relaxed person who doesn’t bother about details, you may not even notice a difference” being in this new state of consciousness.

An uncommon intelligence is evident throughout “Laughter and Tears”; you don’t get the feeling, as with some other parenting books and magazines, that this is just another repetition of the conventional wisdom.

Take the subject of breast-feeding. “In spite of what you may have heard elsewhere, breast-feeding does not have to be a moral issue,” they write. “It does not carry powerful magic to compensate for pain and distress. It is wonderful when it goes well and is worth the discomfort and confusion that generally go along with getting started, but be careful about falling into a downward spiral of guilt and self-loathing (if you can’t). To do well as a mother, you need every ounce of strength and self-confidence you can get.”

Given the authors’ own self-confidence in mommy matters, it was surprising to read the postscript, in which the 80-year-old Bing writes of her experience as a new grandmother. Holding her premature granddaughter, Bing writes about how nervous and uncertain she was, and what an “enormous challenge” it was baby-sitting for the infant for the first time.

Colman too became a grandmother recently, and her right-on-target comments end the book. Motherhood, she concludes, “is a time of laughter and tears, and it will always be more difficult and more joyous than you could have imagined.”