Books!

I am an avid reader, and have had to stop myself from stockpiling a children's library for the baby. I don't know that I will be holding off that much longer. I will force my child to love reading...ha ha ha.

I was VERY into reading pregnancy books while trying to conceive and very early on in pregnancy. However, I'm sort of over them now. I get these weekly emails that tell me about the baby's development and that does it for me (I'll recap those in the future). The development of the baby is the most interesting to me. Once you read one pregnancy book, you kind of know what symptoms, etc they will talk about in all of them. I also was slightly frustrated because some of my symptoms weren't mentioned, making me feel like a freak until I visited my doctor who reassurred me all was fine.

SOOO...Because I have checked out literally every pregnancy book that our library has to offer, I will now offer my review. I must offer this caveat - I have not read past the pregnancy parts of any of these books. I tried reading about labor and delivery and realized that I am just not ready to go there quite yet. I also can't remember the titles of some of the ones I checked out, so I'm obviously not even going to bother with those.

Let's start with ones to skip.
Our Bodies Ourselves Pregnancy and Birth. I wanted to love this one. I was a women's studies minor in college and was obsessed with Our Bodies Ourselves (the non-pregnancy one). I bought it for my sister. Loved it. Perhaps it was because I read the pregnancy version after reading so many other ones, but I didn't find it that useful.

You Having a Baby. Again, I looked at this after reading a lot of stuff so I didn't find it that useful. I thought it was organized in a strange way and not easy to follow.

Now let's go to my two favorites, as far as information goes:
Mayo Clinc Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. Everyone tells you to get this book, and there is a good reason for it. It is excellent. The purple one is the newest one, but I think I also have a previous huge hardcover edition that I picked up from goodwill. It might be this book. I actually like this old Hardcover version better than the new one. It might not even be an older version - I just know it has MAYO CLINIC in the title. I obsessed over this book (the hardcover version) from the minute we decided to start trying. I checked out the purple book (new edition) from the library and have been continually renewing it. It is a great source because you know the info in it is legit.

Your Pregnancy Week by Week. Again, I have an old edition of this given to me as a hand me down from one of Nate's coworkers, but I have compared it to the newer version and it is pretty similar. I love things that break down week by week. Each week, I read the chapter relevant to that week. It goes over the baby development as well as common symptoms, feelings. It is quick, easy to read.

Exercising through your pregnancy. I must confess that I actually read this book 2 years ago and haven't revisited it since actually being pregnant. I thought it was a great read at the time, as I previously had thought that you weren't suppossed to exercise during pregnancy. I might have to revisit this one because as I recall the book was divided into two parts - one explaining research behind exercise and pregnancy (aka the part I read) and one actually designed for pregnanct women looking to exercise.

Funny books
The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy. Another hand me down from Nate's coworker. I enjoyed this book and was the first book I read after finding out that I was truly pregnant. I thought it was funny and as it professes, tells you some things that you probably didn't know about. I did not like the exercise chapter in this book - I thought it was very anti-exercise. I also did not like the maternity clothes chapter where their helpful advice was to raid your husband's closet. I don't think I will be fitting into/nor wanting to wear my husband's suits. However, a coworker of mine did tell me that she wore her husband's clothes a lot. She did say that her husband and her were similar in size to begin with though. Regardless, this book is a good lighthearted look at pregnancy, especially when you are very early on. If anyone wants this book, please let me know and I will give it to you.

What to Expect When your Wife Is Expanding. As I mentioned before, I got this for Nate because I knew he would be really into the pregnancy and this book is also light and humorous. I wouldn't buy it if you wanted to give your guy a serious read, but it does do a nice job explaining why we turn crazy the minute conception occurs. :) I know my husband likes it and he reads parts of it to me a lot, which are funny.

Books I have Perused, but not delved into. I think this was the point when I reached information overload:

From the Hips. This isn't a bad one, but I didn't spend much time with it. I think I checked it out when I had already whittled down what I truly was going to keep reading vs what I didn't like and this didn't make the cut for no good reason other than I started to have my fill of pregnancy information.

Eating Well When You are Expecting. This book was sent to me by my insurance company, I kid you not. Our insurance company has a free prenatal program where a nurse checks in with you every few weeks and they send you this huge batch of information right away. I haven't even cracked this book open. They were going to send me What to Expect When you are Expecting but I vetoed that. I have a huge bias against this book since my women's studies days where we were told that this was the worst book ever to give a pregnant women. It may very well be a fine book, but I haven't been able to shake the bias.

The Expectant Father. This book was also given to us as a hand me down from Nate's coworker. He has it on his table but I don't think he has opened it, so I can't comment on it.

Books about Babies
So since I haven't really read about labor and delivery, you can bet that I haven't read any chapter dealing with newborns or any books about babies. I do have the following two books though:

The Baby Book by Sears & Sears. I have heard good things about Dr. Sears. That and this book was marked down to $5 brand new when our Pottery Barn Kids went out of business here.

Dr. Spock. This is the book that my mother-in-law and my own mother mentioned and used. "Oh, Dr. Spock" they laughed. It turns out that my mother-in-law still had her copy. I can't even find a link to the old version that I have. I think this might be a funny book to read as I am always really interested in how recommendations for babies and pregnancy change in such a relatively short period of time. While watching Mad Men, set in the 60s, those women are drinking and smoking CONSTANTLY while pregnant and are not at all fazed by it, much less worried about their deli meat consumption.

And now, I will reveal the book that has been recommended to me umpteen times from several different circles of friends, in several different states:
BABY BARGAINS
My friend HB loaned me this book. HB is a very practical person, and a great mom to a now one-year old. The hubs and I have often talked about how HB and her husband are good parenting role models. So when she recommended this book, I knew it had to be a good one. Fast forward a few days, and my boss actually brought in the most updated version as a gift for me. AWWWW. So sweet. My boss said she also found the book really helpful. I haven't really had a chance to sit down with it yet and I also plan on asking as many moms that I know about their advice, but this is a great book to start with.

So that's that. You might now think I am totally crazy. I know my husband certainly started making fun of me when I made repeated trips home from the library with stacks of pregnancy books. You can see why I'm sort of over reading about pregnancy. :)