Your Pregnancy and Childbirth
Month to Month, Seventh Edition
Your Pregnancy and Childbirth is a thorough health guide that’s designed to calm and empower prospective moms, helping them to deliver healthy babies.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’s Your Pregnancy and Childbirth is a comprehensive medical guide to every stage of becoming a mother.
This book contains more than forty chapters of vetted medical advice designed to educate women about their health and the health of their babies, empowering each to make choices and ask questions at every stage of their pregnancy. It begins with prenatal and preconception information, covering fetal development with classic fruit and vegetable analogies. It names changes to a mother’s body, and advises establishing a strong connection with the medical care team.
The book’s sections on labor, delivery, and postpartum experiences cover the stages of labor, a wide array of pain management strategies, and decisions around breastfeeding and bottle feeding. The book has dedicated sections on the problems that can arise during pregnancy, including preeclampsia, preterm labor, and pregnancy loss, as well as interventions like cesarean sections, turning a breech baby, and forceps and vacuum delivery assistance.
This is a vital guide for prospective parents. With its clarity, medical wisdom, and calm narration, it keeps worries at bay and helps ground mothers-to-be who are facing a plethora of one-sided or opinion-based pregnancy advice. The book acknowledges the difficulties that can occur at every stage, with unwavering, body-positive support.
This work is rooted in a medical perspective, though it includes nonmedical topics, like selecting car seats and child care options. While this means that it discourages some trends, including home births, it also acknowledges the potential value of nontraditional medical approaches, like having a doula at the birth. And this seventh edition contains vital updates that focus on women’s needs, including information about exercise and a helpful FAQ chapter that’s organized by topics, including nutrition and labor. There’s also of-the-moment coverage of genetic testing and COVID-19.
This work is inclusive, affirming that people of different gender identities also experience pregnancy. Its photographs, sketches, and concerns are racially diverse, covering topics such as which screening tests women from different backgrounds need to have. It eschews traditional visions of stay-at-home motherhood to cover work and travel during pregnancy. There are also tips for partners that empower them to be an engaged part of the process.
Easy-to-understand diagrams of fetal development, women’s body changes and anatomy, and labor stages are included, as are quick resource tables, including one that compares false and true labor. Resources and tools to help women put their knowledge into action, as well as forms and checklists to help with decision making and communicating with doctors, make this work even more useful.
Your Pregnancy and Childbirth is a thorough health guide that’s designed to calm and empower prospective moms, helping them to deliver healthy babies.
Reviewed by
Melissa Wuske
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
