Product Description

Combining medical and historical information with real life accounts of ordinary women, this book is an essential guide to the facts, feelings and emotions experienced during pregnancy and birth. It takes you week by week, from the decision to conceive, through to first impressions of life with your baby, offering invaluable information. Topics include: Conception - If and When; Feelings for Your Growing Baby; Your Career and Financial Position; Fear that Something May Go Wrong; Changing Relationships with Family and Friends; Choosing Where and How to Give Birth; How Others Felt - Women Relate their Experiences; The First Few Days with Your Baby

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #228066 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

Review
'A really good and reassuring read. Highly recommended' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Sensible advice on pain relief, midwives and Vitamin K is interspersed with tips on surviving hospital cuisine...' INDEPENDENT 'written in a very personal way... If you're a first time mother and looking for a companion to get you through your pregnancy, this should be for you.' IRISH INDEPENDENT

New, revised edition of a very different pregnancy handbook, which gives pride of place to personal views while not stinting on providing factual information. Its narrative, conversational style is highly reassuring and expertly interleaved with the technical details. The rich variety of interviewees' accounts, on everything from the decision to conceive, or not, to the first few days after birth, impart a sense of shared experience, while the excellent - and referenced - factual details offer information about many issues, from water births to the effect of cannabis, the foetus's response to mother's mood to test tube baby techniques. Justifiably acclaimed. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Kate Mosse is an author and broadcaster and the Co-founder & Honorary Director of the Orange Prize for Fiction. Kate and her husband and two children live in West Sussex and Carcasonne, France.

Customer Reviews

The best, most reassuring book I read as a first time mum.
This book is not a manual about how to do your breathing exercises during birth or what to eat etc. Instead it is about how it feels to be going through all the different stages of the pregnancy and then the labour itself. I found it both facinating an re-assuring to know that everyone else was going through the same emotions as me. It takes each stage of the pregnancy seperately and I couldn't wait to get on to the next stage so I could read the next chapter. Much more useful than a whole shelf full of manuals

My wife and every other mother loves this book
A friend gave this book to my wife, who found it the most useful thing she read in her whole pregnancy. Since then, I've bought it for any friend who's become pregnant and they've all loved it. One said she had to ration herself to only a chapter a day as she didn't want to finish it too quickly.

I haven't read it myself, but my wife says Ms Mosse is supposed to be working on an equivalent for fathers. That, I'd read.

The book I returned to over and over again in pregnancy
I bought this book when I was first pregnant and I read it in one go, and then reread it several times. It concentrates on the emotional and social aspcts of pregnancy and includes diary entries and comments from pregnant women and mothers.Far more interesting than a bog standard manual.Itelligent and reassuring,I reccomend this book to all my pregnant pals.