The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby : A Week-by-Week Guide to Your Pregnancy

Rating:
Summary: A Midwife's Top Recommendation
Review: There's a new book, The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby by Nikki Bradford that incorporates prenatal psychological development and bonding as part of "A Week-by-Week Guide to Your Pregnancy". This is now my current top recommendation about the changes of pregnancy. Overall, it's outstanding.

Some particularly interesting points:

p. 125 - "Labor pain does not come directly from your womb, but is due to ischemia, a lack of blood in the uterine muscles produced by the womb working hard. This hurts for the same reason that a heart attack or angina hurts; lack of oxygen to the muscles, and a buildup of cellular waste products which irritate nerve tissue."

I especially love the following paragraph at the end of p. 123:

"But perhaps the best news of all is that birth memories are something all future parents can influence positively, for their own children. We do not have to repeat the mistakes previous generations have made. We can, by making the transition of newborns into our world as gentle, loving, and respectful as possible, help ensure that their first -- and lasting -- impressions are good ones."

It's only by contrast with the overall excellence that the following points stand out as questionable:

p. 92 - Endorphins too large to cross placental barrier? Morphine is known to cross the placental barrier, and it's known that epidurals in a laboring woman change the baby's level of endorphins at birth. I'd like to see some research behind this claim.

p. 118 - The discussion of due dates ignores the research that shows the average healthy, well-nourished caucasian woman naturally birthing her first baby will give birth eight days after her due date. That means that half of them don't give birth until *after* eight days past the due date.

p. 127 - The picture shows a woman laboring lying flat on her back. This position is almost always significantly more painful to a laboring woman than an upright or side-lying position, and it could possibly cause circulatory problems.

p. 134 - In the discussion of how a newborn experiences birth, there is mention of a fear of dying that may go back to feeling unable to breathe immediately after birth. This section ignores the option of leaving the cord intact to continue delivering oxygenated blood to the newborn during the time it takes to convert to breathing air.

p. 137 - The picture caption describes the baby as having been gently washed, weighed, and diapered before being wrapped in a soft blanket and placed in his mother's arms. This is amazingly backward for a book about perinatal psychology. I feel quite certain that washing, weighing, diapering and swaddling are all much lower on the baby's priority list than being placed in the mother's arms. This caption also perpetuates the myth that newborns are warmer wrapped in blankets. In fact, since newborns have trouble generating their own body heat, wrapping them in layers of insulation keeps them separate from sources of heat, such as their mother's belly. The best way to warm a baby is skin-to-skin on mom's belly, all covered by a blanket. Regarding a Leboyer bath, this may have advantages, but it also has disadvantages in washing the amniotic fluid off the baby; the smell of the amniotic fluid is a clue to the baby of what breastmilk is like, and the more mother and baby continue to smell the same after birth, the better breastfeeding will go.

p. 137 - Another piece of misinformation is the recommendation to "Breastfeed right away if you can." This slogan originated in a time when babies were often separated from their mothers for many hours after birth, and there was an attempt to reduce this time to an hour or less after birth. Unfortunately, this information has been misinterpreted so that mothers are now trying to force feed their babies before they're ready to nurse. Babies are not subtle - they have no manners. When they are hungry, they will let you know. Typically, a baby's first priority is figuring out the breathing routine. Then, the baby wants to gaze at faces to help organize the visual part of the brain. Then, some time later, typically 20-30 minutes after birth, the baby becomes interested in finding the breast.

Rating:
Summary: A Midwife's Top Recommendation
Review: There's a new book, The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby by Nikki Bradford that incorporates prenatal psychological development and bonding as part of "A Week-by-Week Guide to Your Pregnancy". This is now my current top recommendation about the changes of pregnancy. Overall, it's outstanding.

Some particularly interesting points:

p. 125 - "Labor pain does not come directly from your womb, but is due to ischemia, a lack of blood in the uterine muscles produced by the womb working hard. This hurts for the same reason that a heart attack or angina hurts; lack of oxygen to the muscles, and a buildup of cellular waste products which irritate nerve tissue."

I especially love the following paragraph at the end of p. 123:

"But perhaps the best news of all is that birth memories are something all future parents can influence positively, for their own children. We do not have to repeat the mistakes previous generations have made. We can, by making the transition of newborns into our world as gentle, loving, and respectful as possible, help ensure that their first -- and lasting -- impressions are good ones."

It's only by contrast with the overall excellence that the following points stand out as questionable:

p. 92 - Endorphins too large to cross placental barrier? Morphine is known to cross the placental barrier, and it's known that epidurals in a laboring woman change the baby's level of endorphins at birth. I'd like to see some research behind this claim.

p. 118 - The discussion of due dates ignores the research that shows the average healthy, well-nourished caucasian woman naturally birthing her first baby will give birth eight days after her due date. That means that half of them don't give birth until *after* eight days past the due date.

p. 127 - The picture shows a woman laboring lying flat on her back. This position is almost always significantly more painful to a laboring woman than an upright or side-lying position, and it could possibly cause circulatory problems.

p. 134 - In the discussion of how a newborn experiences birth, there is mention of a fear of dying that may go back to feeling unable to breathe immediately after birth. This section ignores the option of leaving the cord intact to continue delivering oxygenated blood to the newborn during the time it takes to convert to breathing air.

p. 137 - The picture caption describes the baby as having been gently washed, weighed, and diapered before being wrapped in a soft blanket and placed in his mother's arms. This is amazingly backward for a book about perinatal psychology. I feel quite certain that washing, weighing, diapering and swaddling are all much lower on the baby's priority list than being placed in the mother's arms. This caption also perpetuates the myth that newborns are warmer wrapped in blankets. In fact, since newborns have trouble generating their own body heat, wrapping them in layers of insulation keeps them separate from sources of heat, such as their mother's belly. The best way to warm a baby is skin-to-skin on mom's belly, all covered by a blanket. Regarding a Leboyer bath, this may have advantages, but it also has disadvantages in washing the amniotic fluid off the baby; the smell of the amniotic fluid is a clue to the baby of what breastmilk is like, and the more mother and baby continue to smell the same after birth, the better breastfeeding will go.

p. 137 - Another piece of misinformation is the recommendation to "Breastfeed right away if you can." This slogan originated in a time when babies were often separated from their mothers for many hours after birth, and there was an attempt to reduce this time to an hour or less after birth. Unfortunately, this information has been misinterpreted so that mothers are now trying to force feed their babies before they're ready to nurse. Babies are not subtle - they have no manners. When they are hungry, they will let you know. Typically, a baby's first priority is figuring out the breathing routine. Then, the baby wants to gaze at faces to help organize the visual part of the brain. Then, some time later, typically 20-30 minutes after birth, the baby becomes interested in finding the breast.

Rating:
Summary: Good Amount of Information but a Bit Confusing
Review: This book is chock full of information that I have not seen elsewhere. The photo illustrations are also pretty good. However, it's difficult from page to page to determine if they are basing the information on the embryo/fetus' development from the date of conception or from the Last Menstrual Period(LMP). Every time I thought I had it figured out, they threw in another curve. This can be a bit confusing because the 2 weeks differential can make a world of difference in tracking the rapid growth and change of my future baby.

Rating:
Summary: A book that only New Age mothers will appreciate
Review: This book reminded me of a Hallmark card. It's filled with pastel color-pencil drawings of floating babies, photos of couples in flowery outfits joyfully embracing each other and articles on topics like "What Your Baby Dreams About." If like your baby info with fuzzy pictures and without cold, hard facts or edgy, ironic humor, then this is the book for you. However, the book is hard to get through -- it kind of rambles along in an unfocused way. That said, an early section on fertilization, which offers great photos of sperms attacking (oops -- I mean, embracing) eggs, was highly entertaining, and almost made up for all the incoherent sections like "Games Your Unborn Baby Plays" and "Preparing Your Baby For Birth."

Rating:
Summary: Title is deceving but generally good
Review: We bought this book for the photos week by week. Instead, it is 4 weeks by 4 weeks and there are not enough unborn baby photos that we expected. Most of the unborn baby photos only cover the first half of the book. There aren't enough information based on week by week. She instead summarizes the whole 4 weeks.

There are some new age or mystical info. She talks about mother-baby communication via hormones and via psychic. She talks about baby dreams.

At 23 weeks, she says baby may cry with sound. But the baby can't cry with sound since there is no air inside his or her lungs.

She address the baby as an "IT" during early stages then calls the baby as she/he or his/hers. We don't like the way most baby books address unborn babies as "IT'S". That baby is a child with personality - an unborn human being. It could also be the fault of the English language having no neutered gender.

The best way is to see any book personally first before buying it.

Rating:
Summary: A bit deceiving
Review: We expected that there would be a page or two dedicated for a specific week. What we found is that a few weeks of development are summarized in 2 or 3 pages. We got this book because we expected to see specific photos for each week. Instead, there is one photo that covers several weeks. We got the book specifically for the photos so less illustrations and more real photos would be nice. [e-mail]