DNF. A good read but had my little guy early. Not going to finish ATM. Might come back to it.

I found this book to be a good place to start. I greatly enjoy the research and information-gathering process, so this book presented a jumping-off point for me in my quest to arm myself with knowledge about my pregnancy and birthing options.

Overall, I found "Expecting" to be:
- user friendly
- easy to read
- clearly laid out
- thorough
- fairly moderate & inclusive in its opinions & advice

Was this book my only resource during pregnancy? Absolutely not! Was it my favorite resource? Nope! Was it worth reading? Yes! I happily skimmed through some sections, skipped others altogether, and allowed some information to push me towards further, more specific research from other sources.

So comprehensive.

Very helpful, lots of information, gives a thorough picture of pregnancy to birth - how to care for yourself and baby, what to watch for, what to do and avoid. Repetitive, but I think this is so if you pick up the book and just want to read about one aspect they made sure you have all the information you need. A little cutesy for me but I appreciate they are trying to keep it light and fun.

Early in our pregnancy I found this book really helpful and often reassuring. We picked up invaluable insights into how we could adjust our lifestyles to make our baby the healthiest he could possibly be.

But around the 100th page it became a bit of a grind to read this book. My biggest issues were:

1) It became very repetitive. Basically every chapter recommends Kegels and eating five smaller meals per day. Great advice, but these points were brought up constantly

2) Too jokey. This is a thick book that has a lot of banter in it. If they made half as many wisecracks the book would be at least 100 pages shorter

3) Very American. It says it right on the back: “America’s Pregnancy Bible.” All the parts on the science of pregnancy are solid as humans are humans around the world, but any sections on health care or insurance are mired in one particularly country’s backwards approach to taking care of its citizens

This was a little... long. I originally skimmed thru as we went thru each month but I ended up going and rereading my highlights. This was the first book I got from the library when I started educating myself about child birth but I don’t think it’s the best out of the bunch, I liked Expectant Father and Expecting Better.. better.

In what an omniscient narrator would call "foreshadowing," I was reading the last part of this book that was relevant to me -- the part about labor -- the day before my water broke.

This is probably not the worst pregnancy book in the universe, but it is the worst one I've ever read. Unfortunately it's also the most popular, no doubt due to its admittedly catchy title and unavoidable ubiquity. I'm sure that many, many women, like me, zipped off to the library and grabbed this first thing after their positive pregnancy test.

I had zero ambivalence about being pregnant, but I imagine that for other thinking women less sure they want a baby, this book could do a lot to make them decide that in fact they might not. A lot of people have complained about its alarmist tone and cataloguing of things that can go wrong, but I don't particularly remember that; what I hated was its insultingly cutesy-but-hideously-uncute, grating, idiotic style. The entire book is written in peppy, spunky awful-puns-that-aren't-even-really-puns and moronic-jokes-that-aren't-actually-jokes. These aren't real examples, because I don't have the book, but seriously the whole thing is like, "Being pregnant is a gas! And you'll have gas the whole time your little bun is in the oven... Speaking of buns, you may want to indulge your cravings for sticky buns, but be careful or your buns will get fat and no one wants that! Teeheehee!" I mean, obviously that is not a direct quotation, but in essence it really is not so far off. I hate this book because it makes pregnancy seem stupid, and seems to imply that being pregnant is going to make you stupid. If this is something you're already kind of worried about, What to Expect can be a highly distressing read. I found its tone so nauseating and awful that it made me slightly less excited about being pregnant for awhile. It really made the whole thing seem like a lame project for stupid, infantilized women, and something I didn't want to be a part of at all despite really wanting a baby.

To be fair, I have a hard time with a lot of accepted pregnancy book conventions, beyond just this book. Use of the word "baby" with no article rankles me, and referring to a six-week-old embryo as a baby (or, infinitely worse, just as "baby") completely skeezes me out. A lot of this is due to a lifetime of programming and conviction about reproductive rights, but it's also because I'm aware that there are high rates of miscarriage in the first trimester. Of course it's a personal choice when you decide to think of your fetus as having personhood, but it seems irresponsible to me the way all these books start personifying and burbling on about an adorable bundle of joy so early on in the process... But of course, that's just me.

I'm not made of stone and I was incredibly emotional and excited about being pregnant, but I found the discourse of these books really alienating, and this one was the worst. A lot of people seem to love it, but if you're like me you'd do better off with something else. Honestly, I didn't ever find a pregnancy book I loved (childbirth yes; pregnancy, no) and wound up getting most of my intel from the BabyCenter website, which isn't perfect but is decent and has an infinitely more tolerable tone.

Zumindest die stark überarbeitete deutsche Ausgabe (2008) dieses eigentlich amerikanischen Klassikers ist nicht nur das beste Buch über Schwangerschaft und Geburt, das ich finden konnte, sondern auch insgesamt das erschöpfendste und umfangreichste Sachbuch, das ich je zu einem Thema gelesen habe. Es bleibt wirklich keine noch so scheinbar naive Frage unbeantwortet und hat mir viel Recherchearbeit, aber auch unnötige Sorge erspart. Und dazu ist es noch aufmunternd und humorvoll geschrieben!

This book paired with my pregnancy app really helped me learn a lot of things I did not know about pregnancy and also helped me not freak out so much about lesser-known or talked about symptoms! Definitely a must-read for pregnant individuals

I have a couple questions after reading this book.

1) why does this author think I am a child?
2) why does this author think I am an idiot?
3) what is the value of reading this book if the answer to every question is “ask your doctor” or “just avoid it to stay safe”?
4) why are there so SO many asides?!
5) how did THIS become the book/brand with the following it has? HOW?!
6) what else can I read that will make me feel like smart, thoughtful women with brains also desire having children? And would like to apply their own intelligence and thoughtfulness to the process? (The answer is Emily Oster).


That’s all.

I bought my copy in 2004 and loved it. For me it was more like a reference book, I took what I needed from it, but did not read all of it because that would have been overwhelming. 5 out of 5 stars.