BABY BOMB

Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents

By Kara Hoppe, MFT and Stan Tatkin, PsyD

Before you succeed at parenting, you need to succeed as a couple! Baby Bomb is the resource you need when a new baby turns your life—and your romantic relationship—upside down.

A baby is a blessing—and also a completely life-altering event. If you’re like many new parents, nothing could have fully prepared you for the exhaustion of late-night feedings, the explosive diapers, the evaporation of your free time, the pure joy, and the moments of pure terror. In the midst of these hazy early months, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed. And when you’re overwhelmed, it’s easy to put your romantic relationship on the back burner. But, more and more, research shows that in order to be the best parents you can be, you and your partner need to make sure that your needs—as a couple—are also met.

Baby Bomb offers powerful tools based in psychology and neurobiology to help you and your partner co-parent and co-partner as a solid and supportive team—while also cultivating mad love for each other! You’ll find more than just tips for better parenting and partnering; you’ll discover how a secure-functioning relationship is essential for raising happy, healthy kids.

This isn’t a book with advice about how to have a romantic candlelit dinner while your baby is screaming in the other room. It’s a road map for getting on the same page about your expectations as parents, about your needs as humans, and about how to maintain a strong and lasting relationship in the face of, well, a baby bomb.

 

This book is a journey to finding your way as a couple, as co-creators, as lovers, as friends, and as parents.

Kara Hoppe, MA, MFT, Baby Bomb

 

Order from your favorite bookseller!

 

Kara Hoppe, MA, MFT, is a psychotherapist, teacher, feminist, and mother.

She has spent more than a decade as an inclusive therapist working with individuals and couples toward healing and growing, and toward becoming grounded, integrated people with better access to their own instincts, wisdom, and creativity. Hoppe also offers virtual retreats for parents and expectant couples, based on her book Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents, a 2021 INDIES finalist. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, Parents Magazine, Psychology Today, Fatherly, and YourTango, among other publications. She lives with her husband and two children in Pioneertown, CA, and sees clients in private practice via telehealth.

 

 

Praise for Baby Bomb

  • “‘The couple comes first.’ Strange how radical these words seem, but also how right. Baby Bomb insists—and gives parents concrete ways to remember—that their health and partnership is never any less important than their baby. This book is a breath of fresh air that helps lighten even the hardest days of early parenting” —Angela Garbes, author of Like a Mother 

  • “There is a saying that the best thing you can do for your children is to have a great relationship with each other. BABY BOMB is a manual for making that happen. Every parent to be should read it, and everyone who is already a parent should read it. Your children will thrive, if you do.” —Harville Hendrix, PhD, and Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD, Coauthors of Giving the Love that Heals: A Guide for Parents

  • “Vivid and emotionally spot-on. Baby Bomb doesn’t miss a beat in giving you helpful tools, examples, and dialogue right from the first chapter. This book tackles the pervasive problem of traditional gender roles in parenting, elevates the conversation, and challenges us to think deeper about nurturing our partner relationships after baby comes along.” —Heather Turgeon, psychotherapist and author of The Happy Sleeper

  • “After the birth of a baby, the relationship of the parents is often left untended, like a fallow field. Baby Bomb is the guide you need to help return nutrients to the soil of your relationship, plant seeds of new growth, and celebrate the bounty of your relationship for years to come.” – Britta Bushnell, PhD, childbirth and new parent specialist, and author of Transformed by Birth

  • “Baby Bomb is a gift for young couples. The principles of attachment theory and nervous system regulation are the basic elements of ‘Parenting 101.’ And Kara’s fresh voice of experience explaining how to apply those principles is the bow on top.” – Diane Poole Heller, PhD, creator of the Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning Experience (DARe), president of Trauma Solutions, and author of Healing Your Attachment Wounds and The Power of Attachment

  • “Buy this book now. Give Baby Bomb to every expectant couple you know. It is an indispensable guide for all new parents and pregnant couples. There is none other like it. It will nourish the couple; teach them how to care for one another, make collaborative decisions, and flourish as a strong team.” – Ellyn Bader, PhD, cofounder of The Couples Institute, creator of the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, and coauthor of Tell Me No Lies

More about Baby Bomb:

I joined forces with Stan Tatkin (We Do, Wired for Love, owner of The PACT Institute) to write Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents (New Harbinger, 2021). Baby Bomb is based on the premise that successful partnering is the first step for couples to become successful parents. This book will help you build a secure-functioning relationship with your partner so you can both offer secure attachment to your child(ren).

Here’s the link to order.