Pregnancy and first-time motherhood is a time when our passions speak louder than our intellects. It’s a time when we witness our bodies performing miracles and are in awe of our newborns. But there are few songs that address this extraordinary time in a new mother's life. Before giving birth for the first time, I was like every other woman, with an outsider’s view of motherhood. From the inside, it felt like a perilous leap into the unknown. But along with all the difficulties and hurdles that are an undeniable part of the journey, there were also depths of emotion like none I had ever experienced. As a singer, I searched in vain for songs that fully expressed what I was going through. Not finding them, I was inspired to write them for myself. My hope is that you too will find your internal landscape of first-time motherhood reflected in my songs. May you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed writing and performing them. While you will bring your own meaning to each song, I’d like to share with you a brief overview of each song, so that you can choose which ones best give voice to what you are experiencing. 1) Wishmaker is an upbeat song about differing perspectives on reality, and how we are both encouraged and discouraged from trying to make our dreams come true. The question “You want to teach your child reality, but who’s really teaching who?” is an invitation to look again at what aspects of ourselves our baby reawakens that have lain dormant for a very long time. 2) An Old Lullaby is about the soft, gentle new rhythm that our baby teaches us. The duality of hectic times and quiet, reflective moments, happens precisely because there’s a baby to care for. 3) Angel in Disguise is about our ability to give even the simplest things other layers of meaning. This is something our newborns inspire in us. 4) Sea of Life is my story about pregnancy and giving birth. While my story and yours are personal ones, the birth story is both timeless and universal. I believe Sea of Life is the only song of its kind. It still baffles me that something this significant goes unsung! 5) The First Year contains both celebration and nostalgia. The first smile, first tooth, first word, first step of her child are all indelibly marked in every mother's memory. These are the precious markers that stay with her for a lifetime, and they are tinged with a kind of sadness that accompany moments that hold special meaning for our hearts. As Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has reasons the mind knows nothing of.” 6) Baby Harmonics is a compilation of the pre-verbal sounds made by a baby. Those sounds are always music to a mother's ears. 7) From Baby to Boy addresses a woman’s need to grapple with her own identity as separate but inextricably intertwined with her role as a mother. There is no perfect formula. Every woman must reinvent herself continually as she moves in tandem with the developmental needs of this most precious of all individuals, her first born, during this first year of first-time motherhood and beyond. 8) Let’s Play expresses my delight in playing with my son, Zachary. It has an upbeat rhythm of the playful adventures every woman has with her child on this road of motherhood. These fun times are the ones we remember forever. 9) Unconditional Love expresses a potential of which we have little experience until we become mothers for the first time. The choices we make out of love can turn out to be quite different than the choices that we would make based on other considerations. As with giving birth, this is a timeless and universal phenomenon — “It’s a love all mothers have known." 10) She Needs Us Both is not my story, but of a friend who was going through a divorce just after I had my son. Her courage and perspective as a single mother was my model for this song. 11) Through Your Eyes speaks to the first-time mother’s experience that everything in her life has changed, but not at all as she had imagined. The song also expresses how everything looks different through a first-time mother’s eyes, because of her newborn. 12) Tell Me Another One - Jabberwocky is about an experience every mother will have as her baby becomes a toddler — the insatiable appetite for round after round of bedtime stories. The story told in the second part of the song is Lewis Carroll's words set to a melody I wrote. 13) Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a song about how a mother soothes the groundless fears her child has of the dark. However, as mothers, we also have our fair share of fears too. Welcome to motherhood!