Your Pregnancy Week by Week, Fifth Edition

Rating:
Summary: There is a reason this is in the bargain bin!!!
Review: When I was pregnant my insurance company actually sent me this book--I never would have spent anything for it. The male author of this book adopts a condescending tone that, as an intelligent woman looking for information, I resented. He medicalizes birth, and ignores the need for empowerment of women in an arena that belongs to us. Not a single mention of current trends in childbirth such as birth centers, water birth, midwives, doulas (or, heaven forbid a HOME BIRTH!!)...If you are looking to be empowered with knowledge for a rewarding pregnancy and childbirth experience, I recommend anything by Penny Simkin or Sheila Kitzinger. (the authors my midwive recommended to me)

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book to read
Review: I loved this book. It was very useful in learning about my pregnancy. I read this book cover to cover. Each week it gave you more information with out flooding your mind with to much to soon. I liked how I was able to read how I was changing and the baby was growing each week. I recommend this book to eveyone. I am on my second pregnancy and I have continued to read this book through out this pregnancy as well. I started from the beginning and read one week at a time and It has helped me understand so much even in the second pregnancy.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book and add worry to your already sleepless nights
Review: I bought this book for my second pregnancy assuming that the week by week chronicle of progress would be exciting and enjoyable to read about. Although the illustrations and explanations of development are well done in this book; they are offset by so many scary scenarios of what may go wrong with your pregnancy. Often somewhat normal pregnancy symptoms are described with a "call your healthcare provider immediately" tagline on the end. Now in my 3rd trimester, I have been prompted by the book to call my doctor every other day of this healthy pregnancy! The chapter that shelved this book for me was one that explains how cancer can develop during pregnancy because of increased hormones. Is it that prevalent that it must be mentioned and send us already anxious sort examining our moles for changes?!!! I feel much better now that I have put this book away. I picked up an old copy of the Sears' Pregnancy Book at a thrift store. Whatever your opinion on them may be, they have one thing right in their book. They address major complications in an appendix at the end off the book. If you want or need to go there you can, but otherwise are spared of useless worries.

Rating:
Summary: Love it, Love it, Love it
Review: I could not have gotten through pregnancy without this book. I really enjoyed knowing what was going on with the baby, and what could possibly go wrong. There is nothing worse than when something is happening and you have no idea what is going on. I have passed my book on to many of my friends and have purchased it as gifts for family and friends.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, better than the "best"
Review: I had, like so many other expectant mothers, bought What to Expect when your Expecting. I was so dissapointed with that book. Yes it had a lot of information in it, but it was in such large groups and glazed over as if there was nothing that a pregnant woman should worry about. Which only made my worries seem out of the ordinary when they were not. I picked up Your Pregnancy week by week and I couldn't be happier!! This book goes week by week with important information. It is not overwhelming and does not make a pregnant woman feel like her fears are unreasonable but natural and completley normal. I have personally recommended this book for every expectant mom that I know and I am happy to recommend it to thoes that I don't.

Rating:
Summary: This is a great resource book
Review: This book is a great resource for the fist timer and the experinced mom-to-be. The weekly format is this book's strong point, it's like a weekly snapshot of what your baby is doing. I used it all through my first pregnancy, and I was amazed at how well the book explained what tests will be done at what time during my pregnancy. The book also gave me basic information about what to expect in labor and delivery. I was able to use information from his book to help me ask clear and poined questions specifically about my pregnancy for my doctor at each visit.

Now I am expecting twins, and this book is still my favorite resource. I go every 4 weeks for a sonogram to measure growth. I look at the weighs in the book to compare my babies' growth, and I am always encouraged that the twins are right on target!

The wekly format sort of restricts the author's ability to explain other pregnancy related issues such as nutrition, maternity leave, and other things that do not necessilary fall into a specific week. The author sticks these tid-bits in throughout the book. So, for example, if you want to know if it is safe to drink coffee, you'll best find that type of answer by looking in the index. The weekly format by no means prevents you from jumping ahead if there is a specific topic of interest to you.

I absolutely do not agree with other reviewers' asessments that this is a very negative book. I think it is a very realistic and honest book. The author is a doctor, and gives you a lot of medical information. While pregnancy is a beautiful miracle, it is not all sunshine and roses. There are miscarrages and other complications. I appreciate knowing about them rather than being caught off guard by them.

I do agree that the author's tone is someimes condecending, and some of the dad tips are comical, like telling him to take mom out for dinner, or ask that mom record the heartbeat if he can't make it to a pre-natal appointment. But if you can see your way past that, the book really is a wonderful resource.

Rating:
Summary: you can tell an OB from a midwife....
Review: I appreciated this book solely for its pictures, and for the fact that, even when I was pregnant with my fourth child, and had read at least 20 pregnancy books, I still liked having something week by week to help me get through the monotony of counting weeks.
I got this book for myyy...second pregnancy, I think. I've used it every pregnancy hence for the above stated reasons. My first two births were natural only in that they were vaginal. I had almost every kind of intervention there was--pitocin, epidural, AROM, episiotomy. My third I wanted to try to go natural and have a homebirth but after calling every midwife in Syracuse, resorted to just natural. I stayed home till I felt I had to go to the hospital and got there at 8 1/2 cm...my son was born 45 minutes after arrival. I did it. With my fourth, I dug a little deeper and found a homebirth midwife in Ithaca, an hour and a half away, but loved her. I had my son at home in a birthing pool last November. I am now newly pregnant with my fifth, and will not even glance at this book. Why? Because after I had my last child, I was browsing in Borders, saw the revised edition of this book, and immediately picked it up and went to the index to see what he might have to say now about homebirth. It was as though no one would have a homebirth unless it was an emergency, and by purposely doing so, you may be placing your baby in grave danger. It was totally cold and unaccepting of homebirth, and thereby a whole culture of woman caretakers who seek to empower and BLESS a mother in her finest moment, and thereby a whole culture of women who want to be the ones to birth their baby, not be managed and delivered of the baby.
I am a student of midwifery now, I seek to become one, and it is in large part due to the cultural acceptance of medicalized, managed birth. Women need to know about the growing movement of women who are trying to take back birth from the doctors and hospitals, about what their bodies are really capable of in capable hands, and that the birth of your child can be so different than what we think of as normal. Books like this purport the myth that we need doctors and hospitals to have a healthy normal birth, and that anything else is just foolhardy and dangerous. It isn't so and I'm proof, I've been on both extremes.
Don't buy this book, unless you like being ignorant. Buy a pregnancy book by Sheila Kitzinger, or Ina May Gaskin, or Henci Goer, and at least be educated about this other realm of pregnancy and birth.
I titled this review as such because a doctor seeks to scare you into thinking that you couldn't do it without him, you're helpless and stupid. A midwife seeks to empower you, teach you, support you so that you can be the one in control, so that the sense of pride and accomplishment you feel after delivery, is not just in that beautiful angel in your arms, but in what your body and your will and your spirit was able to endure, and achieve, and triumph.

Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as people say!
Review: I found this book extremely helpful in knowing what to expect. It is written by an OB/GYN. Yes, I agree that you should read other books, but I also recommend doing that for information about caring for a pet! My only complaint is that sometimes the info in the current week is not relevant to that time and can get a bit ahead of us for first time moms.

Rating:
Summary: Not Enough Developmental Information
Review: This book has the potential to be an excellent companion for every pregnant mother, but it falls short each week. The weekly chapters are 8-10 pages long, but only the first page or so contains information about how the baby is developing and how the mother is changing. The rest of the chapter usually deals with something rather obscure, like the military's leave policy for expectant mothers, or with some horrible complication most women won't, fortunately, experience. My husband and I read this book each week, but we now joke about what the disease of the week will be. Save yourself some money and sign up for the weekly updates from BabyCenter.com instead

Rating:
Summary: Information rather than ignorant fears
Review: This book was the finest book I read, out of probably 15 books, during my pregnancy in 2000-2001. I have recommended it many times and have just purchased the newer version in a gift-pack for my sister-in-law. If knowing is "negative," as many other reviewers suggest, then it may be best to not have a baby at all. Many smaller concerns as well as disasters can come from lack of knowledge and it is a responsibility of any mother-to-be to rely on the best information available, to choose carefully her doctor or midwife, and to learn and attempt some time-tested form of natural birth. I was extremely hungry for knowledge in the process of my first pregnancy, and this book comforted me with learning. It was good to know the worst and best case scenarios, to know that odd symptoms were not so odd, and also it was heartwarming every week to open my chapter and read it aloud with my husband. We were able to see beautifully drawn pictures of baby development each week, and were able to feel more and more in touch with the baby even when it hadn't been felt yet. Each chapter begins with positive and worthy information and continues with a small taste of the ins and outs of pregnancy. My lasting and cherished memory is of the weekly updates denoting the typical size of the baby (plum-sized for instance!) I found myself thinking of my baby as an adorable plum, a banana, a whatever. It was refreshing and much more of a connective tissue to my baby than the other books ever were.
I felt that its traditionalism did conflict with my Bradley training, but that was a factor in any of the mainstream pregnancy books at the time and I'm sure still is. Allow yourself to take and use what you can if you are aiming for a more non-traditional birth. Moreover, if you don't like to know anything, how comforted will you be if you sand lead paint for the nursery or eat fresh-water fish more than once a month--or assume that hot yoga is safe for baby. Beyond that, should problems arise, you might find that through study you are better able to handle them because you are not shocked to the absolute core. There is a reason that education is important. Better to know than to make a regrettable error or persist in dangerous outdated practices. As they say, ignorance of the law is no excuse.