Your Pregnancy Week By Week (4th ed) - Glade B. Curtis, M.D., and Judith Schuler, M.S.

Summary: New life is growing inside you and your body is changing. With this fact-filled book and your doctor's prenatal care, you can follow your baby's progress and confirm what's happening in your own body.

This book provides the answers to your questions about all stages of pregnancy. Whether you are just planning your pregnancy or are already pregnant, you'll find advice for taking care of yourself and having a healthy baby.

Each week you will learn about:

• Your baby's growth and development
• How your activities and actions affect your baby
• Medicines and medical tests
• Health precautions and illnesses
• Special considerations

Illustrations show clearly how you and your developing baby change and grow week by week. A delightful new feature offers a tip-of-the-week to new as well as experienced dads. Plus nutrition hints every week!

The most medically up-to-date book available, Your Pregnancy Week by Week is written by a leading obstetrician and fertility specialist. (Summary from book - Image from healthpress.com)

My review: During my first pregnancy, I read every book under the sun in my quest to be the perfect incubator. Seriously. I worked at a bookstore. I had access.

About midway through my second pregnancy, I went back and flipped through many of the books that I owned, stopping in certain chapters to review or look up certain questions. There were a few that I re-read, just to refresh, but for the most part I skimmed.

Here I am in the final throws of my third pregnancy and this book is the only one I tore my house apart to find. It’s also the only book I haven’t donated to Goodwill.

My reasons for this were two fold:

First, Your Pregnancy Week by Week is informative but easy to read, with short sections and concise answers to problems you might be facing in pregnancy. Because the book is broken up into weeks, I never felt pressured to read a ton in one sitting. This is especially helpful if you’re occupied with something – like two other kids, a migraine, or the pressing need to worship the porcelain god.

Second, I knew my girls (ages six and four) would love it. It has great illustrations of the baby as well as the uterus, placenta, etc., if you’re looking to explain some things about fetal development and human anatomy. I felt comfortable enough with its’ contents to be able to hand it to my six-year-old to look at by herself when she wanted to, with a “let me know if you have any questions.” In the earlier weeks of pregnancy, the illustrations offer actual size comparisons and later relate the size of the baby to fruit and other common objects so you can really visualize its’ size. My kids had fun calling the baby “bean” one week and “olive” the next.

I also made frequent use of the fairly thorough index, glossary of common pregnancy terms, and found lots of helpful tips for both parents to make pregnancy and childbirth run more smoothly. Overall, I’ve found this book to be a very useful pregnancy resource and the only one that I actually look forward to reading when I see those double lines.

My Rating: 5 Stars

Sum it up: My go-to-guide for pregnancy.