My husband and I have been talking about starting a family sometime in the next few years. I’d like to know which books about pregnancy and parenting you Doper parents found most (and least!) helpful. We’re excited and terrifed about the prospect of parenthood, but I’ve always been a research hound and I know I’ll feel a little better if I can read about things ahead of time and feel at least somewhat prepared and informed.
Then all we’ll need to do is figure out exactly how people buy houses (we need to have HOW much money upfront?!?) and we’ll be all set!
She (and her girlfriends) gets down to the nitty gritty. I learned a lot that I wouldn’t have learned in the more technically written books.
I’m probably in the minority, but I don’t like What to Expect When You’re Expecting. It’s in a question and answer format and many of the questions are of the “worst case scenario” variety. So that one may be a nice supplement to other books, but don’t stick with that one, primarily.
My pregnant sister and her husband enjoyed both Pregnancy Sucks and Pregnancy Sucks for Men. They’ve already read through each book once, early in her pregnancy, and they seem to refer to it every month to refresh themselves on what she’ll be going through and how to deal with it.
The Mother of All Pregnancy Books* was the one I kept going back to during my pregnancy. It has medical info like what medications are safe without being too clinical, and tells you what to expect each month. It also has a big section on conceiving so it’s a good one to have beforehand too.
I thought Girlfriend’s Guide was an entertaining read, but it won’t replace a look-it-up type pregnancy book. It’s more like a collection of personal anecdotes. Entertaining, but I found myself annoyed with her at times too. Worth a read but not the only book you will want to have around.
I felt the reverse. Iovine came across to me as a vain and shallow moron. I think the second book did spend a little too much time on worst case scenarios but was much better written and more realistic.
For getting pregnant, I’m pretty attached to Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weissler (sorry, can’t link from work). I can now pinpoint exactly when I ovulate, and now I can do it without ovulation sticks or thermometers.
If it doesn’t get me a pregnancy, I’m hoping for a book deal with Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
I bought a couple of pregnancy books to have when I do get manage to get and stay pregnant, and I honestly hateGirlfriend’s Guide. I don’t know what it is about the tone, but she makes me want to slap her upside the head several times with a diaper pail.
I’m one of those people who liked the *What to Expect * series (for pregnancy and they also have a book for the 1st year and the toddler years). I like technical information and to know the worst case scenario. YMMV
For after the baby’s born, in addition to the WTE books (which have good baby milestone markers), I had the Dr. Sears book (semi-useful to me for overall parenting) and the American Pediatric Association’s Baby Book (I forget the exact name, but they have one for the 1st year and one for the first three years). The APA book was the most useful to me, especially for medical stuff, when to call the doctor, and all that practical stuff.
While I usually agree with Ellen Cherry in all things, I respectfully differ with her like for the Week by Week book. The drawings are fascinating, but I found the book unnecessarily alarmist. The author has a “disease of the week” feature that was the last thing I needed to read. You know, “This is the time in pregnancy when some fetuses develop extra appendages. This disfiguring malady may be diagnosed by ultrasound…” Yikes.
I was a big fan of the books written by Dr. Bill Sears and his wife, Martha. They’re a little crunchy but loaded with helpful information.
For parenting, the Gesell institute had a great series with names like “Your One Year Old” and “Your Two Year Old” and so on. This slim volumes really deliver well the message that development is varied and a lot of things that may worry you are actually quite normal and will pass.
When my sister-in-law had her first kid, I gave her & my brother Parenting for Dummies and they said the book was great, and that it really helped out a lot.
I liked WTE for the most part, but when it came to baby’s first birthday and they deplored white sugar for the cake–and gave recipes for the organic, healthy cake to celebrate with–I drew the line.
WTE can also be somewhat sanctimonious–at least for me. I liked Operating Instructions by Anne Lemott alot–but it’s not really a baby book per se. She herself calls it an anti George Bush (1) baby book…
There are so many books out there–probably one for each “style” of parenting, so I will leave you with this.
Take every book with a grain of salt. Use what advice you find helpful and discard the rest. NO one child “authority” knows all–or even anything about your child/baby. Try not to get sucked into the “if my baby hasn’t done this milestone I suck as a parent or there must be something seriously wrong with baby” mentality. My oldest child didn’t roll over until she was 8 months old. I held her at the doctor’s office at 6 months, saying, “you can tell me doc, she’s retarded, isn’t she”–all because of those damned books. She is not retarded–she is taking the AP track in high school. Not that milestones aren’t important, but no need to obsess.
Another example, the books I read (waaay back in the day-- this baby is now almost 16) said to NEVER allow baby to nap after 3 pm–and so we started a horrible cycle of bed at 7pm and up at 0500…if I had it to do over, she would have had that nap at 4pm and bed at say, 9 pm and maybe I wouldn’t have seen every winter sunrise for 1990…
Last bit of advice: if baby is upset and doesn’t settle and you have tried everything and you have called your mother and his mother and your friends etc–call the doctor. Alot of parents don’t want to bother the doc and/or are embarassed to call over a “minor” thing–call (don’t wait til 3 am, but call). That’s what the doc is there for. And if the doc is unresponsive or snarky–get another doc…
:::waving at Cranky:::: You know, I don’t remember that sort of alarmist stuff in the book. Maybe I’m the type that wants to know everything, so it didn’t bother me. I was 40 when I had my last baby, and concerned about problems that could develop because of my “advanced maternal age” (I want to smack the surely male doctor who came up with THAT term). :rolleyes:
If your baby ends up having sleep issues, I strongly recommend Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Happiest Baby on the Block was also good. If you’re going to be breastfeeding and working, Nursing Mother, Working Mother is great.
Read some parenting books while you’re pregnant - it’s easy to get too caught up in the pregnancy books, and you don’t have nearly as much time to read once the baby is born.
As you can see, the deal is to find the books that work for you. A library can be a great place to start - so can your recently delivered girlfriends.
Books about raising children are great before you have them. For me, once I had them I no longer had time to read through every stage. And you start needing to live in the moment. That great time out idea - yeah, works on my first - not so good with the second.
That said, I really liked the Girlfriend’s Guide. I like my book on childhood diseases - its nice to know what a febrile seizure is. I have a Dr. Spock and a Penelope Leach - both which are fine. I don’t like the “What to Expect” books, but if you don’t have at least one now, you will have one eventually. I have a whole library on raising adopted kids - which turns out to be a whole lot like raising the not adopted ones. Taking Charge of Your Fertility is a good book if it works - but Elza B’s “I’ll apply to Ripley’s” comment rings true - she makes it sound so easy to get pregnant and completely dismisses “sometimes there aren’t any problems found and you have sex at the right times, and you do this for years and you still don’t get pregnant and no one can tell you why.” In her book, everyone gets pregnant, or discovers some huge cause to their infertility. Trust me, it ain’t that easy, and when it wasn’t, that book was infuriating!
My mother had a copy of Babywise lying around to give to my sister. I ranted and railed and she looked at me like I was nuts “what, its worked fine for your cousins, they love this book.”
If I were having kids now, I don’t know if I’d buy the books, or just spend a lot of time on the internet.
I only have one friend with kids right now, but she has four and is an obstetric nurse! I’m sure a few more of our friends will have kids by the time we get around to it.
I do realize that no book is going to be a perfect manual for any one child, never mind all children everywhere. But this discussion’s been good because there are a lot of different opinions and, hooray for SDMB, reasons given about why those opinions are had. It’s been fun reading all this, so keep chatting.
I cruised my local Barnes & Noble to check out some of the titles mentioned here. I wasn’t crazy about The Girlfriend’s Guide myself. I’m fine with irreverent humor, but her life experience seems completely alien to me. She lost me when she asserted that worrying about the financial impact of a baby is something only the man needs to worry about. HA!
I’ve haven’t spent much time on What to Expect… yet, but I’m automatically suspicious of it simply because it’s so popular. This might be irrational, but I’m glad to hear folks saying it really isn’t all that great. Now I feel justified.
Also, does anyone have a favorite useful baby name site? My favorite for humor value is Baby’s Named A Bad, Bad Thing.
Ooo! Another chance to plug the Baby Name Wizard, and her addictive java tool the NameVoyager. No info on what names mean, but great for figuring out what’s popular now, what’s about to be popular, and what used to be popular and now sounds musty.
Her book of the same name offers more big-picture analysis of trends and her studied opinion about selected names. We found her stuff really, really useful.
As for parenting and pregnancy – as someone who recently had a kid (well, my wife had her, but you know), we quickly realized that pregnancy lasts 9 months and the kid lasts forever. So my wife read the Week by Week book when she was curious and we focused more on parenting stuff. My favorite? Dr. Spock. (I found Dr. Sears kind of annoying, actually.)
Oh, and I almost forgot – the yang to just about every other parenting book’s yin: Judith Rich Harris’ The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, which points out that whatever you do, your child’s personality is not yours to program like a computer. Your genes have already done it for you.
