Mother of all Pregnancy Books
Author: Douglas
The ultimate guide to conception, birth, and everything in between.
Unlike all those otherbossy, tell-you-what-to-do titles, this funny, entertaining guide presents expectant parents with all the facts on such perennial hot topics as pain relief during labor, episiotomy, and circumcision, and empowers them to make informed personal choices. It's packed with tools you won't find anywhere else, including:
- Charts highlighting the risks of using various over-the-counter drug productsduring pregnancy
- Lists of the ten best -- and worst --baby products
- A set of emergency childbirth procedures
- Forthright discussions of difficult topics like infertility, high-risk pregnancy, and pregnancy and infant loss that other books are loathe to tackle
Table of Contents:
Introduction | 1 | |
Chapter 1 | Are You Really Ready to Have a Baby? | 7 |
A Question of Timing | 8 | |
What it really costs to raise children | 11 | |
Career considerations | 14 | |
The age issue | 16 | |
Other health considerations | 23 | |
Emotional readiness | 24 | |
When you and your partner don't agree | 25 | |
When Mother Nature has other plans | 28 | |
Chapter 2 | Your Pre-Game Plan | 31 |
Training for the Big Event | 32 | |
Watch your weight--but not too carefully | 32 | |
Do a nutrient check | 40 | |
Kick your smoking habit | 45 | |
Skip that glass of wine | 48 | |
Just say no to drugs | 49 | |
Get your partner on the program | 49 | |
Kick your coffee habit | 51 | |
Don't douche | 52 | |
Keep your stress level down | 52 | |
Watch out for workplace hazards | 53 | |
What to Expect from Your Preconception Checkup | 54 | |
Chapter 3 | Sperm, Meet Egg | 73 |
The Numbers Game | 74 | |
The Science of Conception | 75 | |
A tale of two phases | 77 | |
The sperm connection | 81 | |
What You Can Do to Increase Your Odds of Conceiving Quickly | 84 | |
Know thy cycle | 85 | |
Make love on the right days | 95 | |
Have unbelievably great sex | 95 | |
Don't get too much of a good thing | 96 | |
Create a "sperm-friendly" vaginal environment | 97 | |
Get your partner on board | 98 | |
Can You Choose Your Baby's Sex? | 98 | |
Chapter 4 | Missed Conceptions | 101 |
Do You Have a Fertility Problem? | 102 | |
The infertility workup | 103 | |
The Major Causes of Infertility | 104 | |
The Brave New World of Assisted Reproduction | 125 | |
Damned lies and statistics | 127 | |
Reading between the lines | 128 | |
Money talk | 129 | |
How to Stay Sane | 132 | |
Chapter 5 | Winning at Baby Roulette | 135 |
A Little Bit Pregnant | 136 | |
Testing, testing | 137 | |
How you may feel about being pregnant | 143 | |
Sharing your news with the world | 146 | |
Sharing your news at work | 147 | |
Finding Dr. Right | 150 | |
Hospital or home birth? | 157 | |
Your First Prenatal Checkup | 162 | |
What your due date really means | 164 | |
Multiple pregnancy | 166 | |
The Incredible Growing Baby | 168 | |
Chapter 6 | Operation Healthy Baby | 175 |
The Weighting Game | 176 | |
Nutrient Check: The Sequel! | 180 | |
The deprivation trap | 187 | |
Special diets | 188 | |
Food safety | 190 | |
Exercising During Pregnancy | 192 | |
Sex During Pregnancy | 199 | |
Working During Pregnancy | 202 | |
Other Things You Need to Know to Keep Your Baby Safe | 207 | |
Chapter 7 | The Worry Zone | 221 |
The Top Ten First-Trimester Worries | 222 | |
The Top Ten Second-Trimester Worries | 237 | |
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act | 246 | |
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 | 247 | |
Maternity wear | 249 | |
Baby gear | 253 | |
The Top Ten Third-Trimester Worries | 258 | |
Chapter 8 | The Complaint Department | 269 |
What's Normal and What's Not | 270 | |
Pregnancy Complaints from A to Z | 270 | |
Abdominal muscle separation | 275 | |
Acne | 276 | |
Backache | 276 | |
Belly button soreness | 277 | |
Bleeding gums | 278 | |
Bleeding and spotting | 279 | |
Braxton Hicks contractions | 279 | |
Breast tenderness and enlargement | 280 | |
Breathlessness | 281 | |
Carpal tunnel syndrome | 282 | |
Constipation | 282 | |
Cramping | 283 | |
Cravings | 283 | |
Eye changes | 284 | |
Faintness and dizziness | 284 | |
Fatigue | 285 | |
Food aversions | 286 | |
Gassiness and bloating | 286 | |
Headaches | 287 | |
Heartburn | 288 | |
Hemorrhoids | 289 | |
Hip soreness | 290 | |
Insomnia | 290 | |
Itching | 292 | |
Leg cramps | 292 | |
Linea nigra | 293 | |
Mask of pregnancy | 293 | |
Morning sickness | 294 | |
Perineal aching | 299 | |
Public-bone pain | 300 | |
Rashes | 300 | |
Restless legs syndrome (RLS) | 302 | |
Rhinitis | 302 | |
Round ligament pain | 303 | |
Sciatica | 303 | |
Skin changes | 304 | |
Smell, heightened sense of | 306 | |
Stretch marks | 306 | |
Sweating | 307 | |
Swelling and fluid retention | 307 | |
Thirstiness | 308 | |
Urinary incontinence | 308 | |
Urination, increased frequency of | 309 | |
Vaginal secretions, increased | 309 | |
Varicose veins | 310 | |
Weepiness | 312 | |
Yeast infections | 312 | |
The Joys of Being Pregnant | 313 | |
Chapter 9 | To Test or Not to Test? | 317 |
What Prenatal Testing Can--and Can't--Tell You | 318 | |
Is Prenatal Genetic Testing the Right Choice for You? | 319 | |
Types of Tests | 321 | |
What to Do If the Test Brings Bad News | 328 | |
Chapter 10 | Lights, Camera, Action! | 331 |
Prenatal Classes: Who Needs Them? | 332 | |
Decisions, Decisions | 335 | |
Doulas are a girl's best friend | 336 | |
Writing a birth plan | 338 | |
Episiotomy: The unkindest cut of all | 341 | |
Pain relief during labor | 343 | |
The circumcision decision | 348 | |
Breast or bottle? | 351 | |
Eight Months and Counting | 353 | |
How to Tell if It's the Real Thing | 356 | |
Prelabor symptoms | 357 | |
True versus false labor | 359 | |
When to call your caregiver | 364 | |
When to go to the hospital | 365 | |
What Labor Is Really Like | 366 | |
The three stages of labor | 367 | |
What other pregnancy books won't tell you | 373 | |
What to expect during a cesarean delivery | 377 | |
Vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) | 381 | |
Going Overdue | 382 | |
Is my baby at risk? | 384 | |
To induce or not to induce? | 386 | |
What to expect during an induction | 387 | |
Meeting Your Baby | 389 | |
How you may feel about meeting your baby | 390 | |
Chapter 11 | When Pregnancy Isn't Perfect | 393 |
What Does the Term "High-Risk Pregnancy" Really Mean? | 394 | |
Surviving bedrest | 403 | |
The Unique Challenges of a Multiple Pregnancy | 409 | |
Premature Birth | 413 | |
Possible health problems | 414 | |
Risk factors | 416 | |
Prevention | 417 | |
Welcoming a premature baby or a baby with special needs | 418 | |
When a Baby Dies | 421 | |
What can go wrong | 422 | |
Miscarriage | 423 | |
Ectopic pregnancy | 430 | |
Molar pregnancy | 432 | |
Stillbirth | 434 | |
Intrapartum death | 437 | |
Infant death | 437 | |
Grieving the Loss of Your Baby | 443 | |
Preparing for Another Pregnancy | 450 | |
Physical healing | 451 | |
Emotional readiness | 451 | |
Chapter 12 | Life After Baby | 455 |
Your Postpartum Body: What to Expect | 456 | |
Cesarean recovery | 467 | |
Getting Back into Shape: What's Realistic and What's Not | 468 | |
How You May Feel About Becoming a Mother | 473 | |
More than the baby blues? | 476 | |
How Your Relationship with Your Partner May Change | 479 | |
The Postpartum Survival Guide | 482 | |
Appendixes | ||
Appendix A | Glossary | 489 |
Appendix B | Birth Plan | 511 |
Appendix C | Emergency Childbirth Procedures | 517 |
Appendix D | Directory of Organizations | 521 |
Appendix E | Web Site Directory | 541 |
Appendix F | Statistics at a Glance | 549 |
Appendix G | Recommended Reading | 559 |
Index | 563 |
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Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be
Author: Rebecca Eckler
Rebecca Eckler is a popular newspaper columnist who lives the fabulous life and gets paid to write about it. So when a tipsy romp with her fiancé on the night of their lavish engagement party leaves her unexpectedly expecting, she is utterly at a loss. How will a woman who loves nothing more than a night out on the town sipping cocktails with her fellow party girls survive the pregnant life?
Knocked Up is the witty, engaging and refreshingly frank chronicle of a modern woman’s journey into motherhood. We follow Eckler from the first trimester (a.k.a. the longest three months of her life), through the “fat months” of the second trimester, on to the "even fatter months" of the third. Flipping the pages of this Bridget-Jones-style diary, we share in Eckler’s discovery of prenatal vitamins and nursing bras, ultrasounds and obstetricians. And we experience her growing horror at the physical symptoms of pregnancy: all-day “morning” sickness, fatigue, varicose veins, and cravings. And the weight gain, oh the weight gain. Who knew the day would come when she could no longer put on her own socks?
Along for the ride is a cast of characters as comical as any met in fiction. There’s the Sexy Young Intern, a Sophia Loren look-a-like with her skinny eyes set on Eckler’s job; the glamorous friends who continue to drink Manhattans, while Eckler sips Perrier; and the Cute Single Man who knows just when she needs a carton of ice cream or a game of Scrabble. And then there’s the fiancé, living in another city, who, thanks to the miracle of long-distance phone lines, appreciates better than anybody the highsand lows of the hormonal rollercoaster pregnant Eckler is on.
Lighthearted, intimate, and very funny, Knocked Up is the diary of a modern mother-to-be determined not to let pregnancy and motherhood change her life. Not. One. Little. Bit.
Publishers Weekly
Canadian journalist Eckler was a young hipster covering club openings, trends and the minutiae of yuppie life for a newspaper when a "whoopsie" moment after her engagement party (later dubbed the Conception Party) left her pregnant. The 29-year-old author and her fianc , who lived far away and whom she planned to marry and move in with at some point, were initially shocked but later accepting. This wasn't exactly in Eckler's plan (though what was in the plan isn't quite clear, either). She becomes cautiously excited about her vague perception of parenthood, but repeatedly horrified by what pregnancy brings: weight gain, a ban on alcohol, stretch marks. Eckler writes, diary-like, about each of these revelations as well as more than anyone would want to know about both her weight and her daily trips to McDonald's. Eventually, she and her fianc move in together and seem genuinely excited about the baby's arrival, which may comfort readers unimpressed with some of Eckler's other decisions (she doesn't completely stop smoking; she schedules a C-section for nonmedical reasons). Sometimes this mommy memoir feels like a humorous crash course in maturity, though at other points the author's attitude comes dangerously close to that of one who has a baby as a chic accessory. Agent, Denise Bukowski. (Apr. 5) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
This is the type of book that Bridget Jones would write if she suddenly discovered that Mark Darcy had gotten her pregnant. Whether it succeeds wholly depends on the reader's tolerance for self-absorbed neurosis as occasion for humor. At 29, Eckler, a columnist for Canada's National Post, and her fianc unexpectedly conceived their daughter, Rowan, and this diary-style memoir details the author's thoughts and feelings as she changes from boozing, big-city scribe to mother of an infant. While she fortunately avoids the usual clich s of discovering the "real" meaning of life, her aforementioned self-absorption can be tedious rather than hilarious. This could hit the mark among twenty- and thirtysomething mothers; for larger memoir collections in urban areas. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The art of navel-gazing carried to a new high (or low) in a sometimes whiny and exasperating, yet very funny diary of a pregnancy from six hours after conception to two weeks after C-section. Eckler, a lifestyle columnist for Canada's National Post, a job that involves interviewing celebrities and covering film and bar openings, is sure she's pregnant when she wakes up the morning after her engagement party. A couple of weeks later, she confirms it with no fewer than four home pregnancy tests. When she proposes writing about it for the National Post, her boss agrees and gives the story a front-page headline. A minor celebrity in her own right, and an unabashed fan of celebrities ("Kate Hudson is pregnant! I'm so excited. It's so much better when you live your life alongside a celebrity's. It makes what you're going through all the more relevant"), Eckler is determined that pregnancy and motherhood won't change her glamorous, party-girl life. She divides her diary, based on her columns in the Post, into trimesters, "The Longest Three Months of My Life," "The Fat Months" and "The Even Fatter Months." Appearance is clearly paramount. While pleased when her breasts grow fuller, she is appalled when her eating-for-two diet of Big Macs and fries shows up on her hips. "Is my ass fat?" she asks again and again and again of the nameless father-to-be, referred to throughout as simply "the fiance." Meanwhile, she worries that a certain "Sexy Young Intern" is after her job, acquires an attentive new friend, "Cute Single Man," and struggles to keep up with her single, designer-clad, still slim, barhopping girlfriends. Not to be mistaken for a pregnancy guide, Eckler's chronicle offers little advice,unless you count the recommendation to get a bikini wax and a pedicure before going to the hospital. The self-absorption can be off-putting, but the frankness, quirky style and light touch are a winning combination even so.
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