Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy

Great information, great tone
My wife and I purchased and received many pregnancy books. This book is our favorite. It is simplistic, straight forward, and evidence based. My mother is 15 year childbirth educator and lactation consultant and she could not put this book down. She loved the tone and information. Start with this book for your pregnancy book library.

BEST pregnancy book I've purchased
This book was BY FAR the best of several pregnancy books we purchased. This book has a lot of information, and is organized in a very user-friendly way. You can find almost anything you're looking for. In addition, it gives a nice chart in each section listing different common pregnancy symptoms/ issues, and gives a corresponding list stating what severity of each symptom are probably "normal" at each stage in your pregnancy, and what severity of each symptom more likely requires a doctor's intervention.

Outstanding Guide for New Dad
As a first-time father in late 2007, this book was a life-saver. New dads and potential new dads: Arm Yourself With This Book. (My wife tells me that women may find this pretty useful, too- I'll just go ahead and take her word for it.) What may at first seem to new fathers as a terrifying and insane process (speaking for myself) this book tames the fear and gives you the facts, guidance, and information to carry on. It is quite simply the best, most essential guide to pregnancy out there, in my opinion.

First, the book is extremely well organized, ordered in such a fashion that you can readily reference any topic either through the Table of Contents, section headings, or the index. The book has a guide for what's happening to mother and baby week to week, but also what's going on before and after childbirth. It provides information, but guides, too, that help with so many new decisions you will be making for and because of your new baby. With so many questions that I had, I really appreciated that the format of this book, while absolutely packed with essential information and guidance, made the subject less overwhelming.

The writing is excellent, easy to read, and easy to understand. What was important to me is that it comes from a source that I absolutely trust- the Mayo Clinic. There are so, so many guides out here, to say nothing of advice from your own family and friends, so much that is conflicting and- face it- so much that is horribly wrong, that this guide stands out as steady, comforting, and authoritative. The beauty of it is that it is medically informative and accurate without being boring, difficult to understand, or preachy. It just gives you the correct facts in a comprehensive manner, in a way that is easy to understand.

Other than an excellent how-to guide in it's own right- I love that they include a section on what happens when you take baby home- it also provides useful and informative details of what is happening physically and emotionally with the mother week by week. My wife and I would sit down together and read about what was going on and it was really fun being able to track the changes and the development that was going on inside.

There are other guides out there, and we got a couple to supplement this one. The Mayo Clinic Guide was our go-to source for information, however, and the one we would have stuck with if we only had one. This isn't something that you would really put a price on, but it's silly how little this costs relative to its value to the newly pregnant. I recommend this unequivocally.

Organization of information not ideal
This book contains a wealth of information; however, how the information is organized makes it difficult to enjoy on a week to week basis. It is not in a week by week format, which is unfortunate because I like to sit down on the first day of each new week with my husband and go over what new and exciting things we have to look forward to in our baby's growth and development. Several weeks are lumped together at a time in this book. The growth and changes of baby are separate from the changes happening in the mother. This book is formatted more as a reference tool if you have a specific question rather than wanting to learn about your new baby as a means of bonding with hubbie and baby. The illustrations of the developing baby seem almost dehumanizing--they are not comparable with illustrations in other baby books, and most certainly not with real photos in the womb. The latter half of the book contains a wealth of information about complications as well as what to do at the hospital and afterwards. It is a good resource to own and use, but I would also recommend purchasing another book that makes learning about baby an experience of joy and bonding.

A wealth of helpful information
I wanted to get a pregnancy book that would give me plenty of useful information and also give me the complete picture of what to anticipate. Any time I've had a question or something I was concerned about, I could find information about it in this book. I feel like I've found a good guide through pregnancy to delivery. I guess I'll know for sure in 5 more months.