Smoothed Over with Feeling: Poems for New Parents

This collection of poems and drawings celebrates the strength, complex emotions, and ongoing creativity of new parents.

Early parenthood can be focused and clear, but also overwhelming and murky. As new parents themselves, Vanessa Hope Schneider and Carissa Potter Carlson offer glimpses—of giving birth, feeding, and long car rides in the backseat—each handled with the regard and wonder they deserve.

The book is an offering of recognition and an invitation for kinship. It elevates the community around a family, with a perforated back cover that new parents can use to create a note of gratitude for someone who has offered support.

Text by Vanessa Hope Schneider and Drawings by Carissa