[.ca] Conception Pregnancy & Birth (ISBN 1405306122)

great additional information:
My husband and I really like this one as a supplemental pregancy guide. The pictures/photos are terrific and provide a great overview of what is happening to mom & bubby. It also has good 'real life' reports of say a working mom, diabetes mom, rhesus neagtive one etc. And covers most aspects of what is happening during pregnancy from a more medical/scientific perspective on a high level and therefore very easy to understand but so that it's still valuable.

Short on real information:
Topics in this book are each given two pages, in order to cover the widest range of topics (often with very helpful pictures and case studies). But with so little space allowed for such important subject material, it can only generalize. In order to get any real information one needs to look elsewhere. Many pregnancy guides offer advice that isn't fully explained, or that is contradicted in other literature (avoid raspberry leaf tea, raspberry leaf tea is good, and so on). This book occasionally makes suggestions for which there are no reasons given, which just kind of adds to the confusion unless you decide to accept it as fact. What surprised me the most though, was in a Case Study of a "mother who has miscarried," this is written to explain why a first pregnancy might end in early miscarriage: "an immature uterus needs to mature by having a trial run before it is fit to carry a pregnancy to term." Surely this is unfounded, and I think this kind of statement is appalling. This makes me question the author's expertise.

Great book!:
My husband and I are trying to conceive and I bought this book earlier this week and just finished it. I have also read The Mother of All Pregnancy Books by Ann Douglas (really good resource for couples thinking about TTC), and Your Pregnancy: Every Woman's Guide by Glade Curtis (Eh. It was not so good). I found this book to be an enjoyable, easy read and very informative. I particularly found the photographs, illustrations, case studies and sidebars helpful. My husband hasn't read it yet, but I'm going to recommend it to him, as Dr. Stoddard (unlike many pregnancy authors) actually addresses concerns of personal interest to fathers-to-be. Some of the other reviews have mentioned that it doesn't go into sufficient detail on some subjects, and that's true, but no book can be everything, and I found that it covered enough so that if you need to know more about a particular subject or issue, this book gives you enough information to ask the right questions or find other resources.

Excellent book!:
I bought this book a few weeks before my husband and I tried to conceive. I bought it because I'd heard so many terrible things about "What to Expect When you're Expecting" and wanted to steer clear of feeling bad about myself for our first child. This book is very informative and has absolutely wonderful pictures, and I look at it pretty much everyday! There's not one thing in there that makes me feel bad about myself as a new mother. I'm looking forward to reading the entire thing to get a better understanding of what pregnancy entails! I would definitely recommend this book to anyone pregnant or trying to become pregnant.

Conception, Pregnancy & Birth by Miriam Stoppard:
This is by far the best conception/pregnancy/birth book that I have read. I bought the book while trying to conceive my first child - followed the advice - and got pregnant EASILY! Now I'm pregnant again - with the help of this book. During my first pregnancy I read a dozen different books, but this time around this is the only one I will be refering to. It has excellent pictures and does a great job describing the different stages of pregnancy. I highly recommend this book!