Health Books about pregnancy
What is pregnancy?Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more embryos or fetuses by female mammals, including humans, inside their bodies. In a pregnancy there can be multiple gestations (for example, in the case of twins, or triplets). Human pregnancy is the most studied of all mammalian pregnancies. Human pregnancy lasts approximately 40 weeks between the time of the last menstrual cycle and birth (38 weeks from fertilisation). The medical term for a pregnant woman is "genetalian," just as the medical term for the unborn human is an embryo (early weeks) and then "foetus" (until birth). A woman who is pregnant for the first time is known as a primigravida or gravida 1: a woman who has never been pregnant is known as a gravida 0; similarly, the terms para 0, para 1 and so on are used for the number of times a woman has given birth. In many societies' medical and legal definitions, human pregnancy is arbitrarily divided into three trimester periods, as a means to simplify reference to the different stages of fetal development. The first trimester period carries the highest risk of miscarriage (natural death of embryo or fetus), while during the second trimester the development of the fetus can start to be monitored and diagnosed. The third trimester marks the beginning of viability, which means the fetus can survive if an early natural or induced birth occurs. Because of the possible viability of developed fetus, cultural and legal definitions of life often consider a fetus in the third trimester to be a distinct living person.
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an Intuitive Systems site
The book does well on the first count - it is a veritable encyclopedia of pregnancy. Unfortunately, that also means that it spends a LOT of time covering things that you as a pregnant woman may not want to spend a lot of time perseverating on. There's a whole chapter about infertility and what can go wrong when you're trying to conceive. A chapter about the common complaints of pregnancy (helpful, but written in a tone that was kind of depressing). A chapter about the top things you'll worry about when you're pregnant. And a very extensive, to the point of overkill, chapter about miscarriage, pregnancy and infant loss.
Although these chapters were informative, the overall tone of the book and the message I got is that pregnancy is an uncomfortable, worrisome condition with a high probability of catastrophic failure. Pretty much every positive statement is qualified with a warning about what can go wrong. The author also strikes a tone that she probably thought was flippant, but I found sarcastic and world-weary. Not really the encouragment I was looking for about my first pregnancy. And the "real mom" testimonials were not much help either - they were basically all about pregnancy worries, pregnancy complications, etc. Almost all were negative.
I am going to keep this book because the information in it is excellent and it will be a good reference book. But I have to say, after I got done reading it I was more depressed than anything. There was nothing about how magical pregnancy is, how exciting, nothing about the funner parts of pregnancy like getting a nursery or layette ready, equipment to consider, etc. The chapter on birth was pretty scanty and I felt the author would have done better to have spent less time and pages on the HUGE chapter about obscure pregnancy complications and pregnancy loss and more time discussing births and what to expect in a birth.
Overall, I think this is a better book than "What to Expect" but not by much. Still way too much negativism and too much time spent on what can go wrong instead of how to make things go right in your pregnancy.