Pregnancy is an exciting time in any woman's life. It's also a time of nervousness and unknowns as your body changes to accommodate the precious little one inside you. You may wonder or even worry about how to do everything you can to give your baby a healthy start. The best way to alleviate your fears and give your child the best start is to understand your pregnancy and to be prepared for what is to come. A Complete Guide for First-Time Mommies seeks to help you prepare for your journey into motherhood and develop confidence along the way. This guide offers answers to your new-mom questions, as well as comprehensive step-by-step instructions for everything from preparing your nursery to preparing your body for the birth of your child. The checklists included will help you stay organized, focused, and always one step ahead. With pertinent information on infant care, this guide also serves as an excellent reference for after your baby is born. Congratulations on taking this step to becoming the most knowledgeable and well-prepared mommy you can be

Learn how to be a great dad and partner with this practical, hands-on guide to welcoming the newest member of your family.

How does my baby develop over 9 months? What can I do to be supportive during pregnancy and labour? And exactly how sleepless are those sleepless nights everyone talks about? Becoming a dad is all about entering a new phase in life, and it’s normal to have questions! With Dad’s Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies, you can stop stressing about the unknown and learn how to step up in your new role as a parent.

This handbook walks you through how you can be there for your partner from conception to birth, as well as the first steps for settling in at (your newly baby-proofed!) home and caring for bub. Not only will you discover new ways to help mum throughout this journey, but you’ll also get advice on how to find support for yourself as a new dad.

You’ll quickly get up to speed on:

• The nitty-gritty on how to make a baby (and where to find help if things don’t go to plan)
• What happens at each stage throughout pregnancy, including how to navigate morning sickness, ultrasounds, making a birth plan and more
• What to expect in the delivery room―and what you can do to make things easier
• How to get your home ready for your baby―like what to buy and how to baby-proof your life!
• Up-to-date advice on what it means to be a great dad today

By parenting expert (and father of six!) Dr Justin Coulson, this newly revised edition of Dad’s Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies is a must-read for fathers-to-be who are keen to build a happier, healthier family life right from the very beginning.

Women's experience of childbirth in the mid-twentieth century, revealed in their own words. For pregnant women in the 1930s and 1940s Dr. Grantly Dick-Read (1890-1959) proposed natural childbirth as the "normal" way to have babies, making drugs, instruments and hospitalization unnecessary. His book Childbirth withoutFear, first published in 1933, spoke of the joys of natural childbirth; women from around the world wrote long, detailed, and poignant letters in response, describing their own experiences in giving birth. This edited collection of the correspondence affords a rare look at childbirth experiences in the hospitals and birthing centers in post-war America and Britain from the perspective of the patient, as women discuss the way they were viewed bysociety, by hospitals, and by physicians and nurses, and their own feelings on childbirth; overall, the book provides an important opportunity to evaluate the treatment of women in the 1940s and 1950s, the generation who gave birth to the so-called "baby boomers." Professor MARY ALVEY THOMAS teaches at Bentley College, Waltham.

In 2006 over 60% of medical graduates in the UK were female, and the number of women going to medical school as 'mature students' is steadily increasing. Some of these women will, at some point, choose to have a baby, but the question always asked is how to fit it in with a medical career? Along with the problem of finding time to actually have a baby, and coping as a pregnant doctor, there is the problem of finding information when it is most needed. This book addresses this problem, bringing a wealth of information together in one easy-to-use resource. Written by a mother, who has faced the joys and frustrations of combining medicine and being a mother, this book is a "one-stop-shop" for all mothers and mums-to-be.

They grow up so quickly! Keep a journal of the first twelve months for you to look back on and to show your little one when they're older. This book helps you to record and store all those special memories of your baby's first precious year, with ideas and spaces for things like milestones and what the world was like during the first year of their life. The front title section can be pulled off to turn it into a lovely journal type book with the adorable elephants on the cover. Inside you can jot down different baby's names - it's always fun to know if you might have been called something else! You can fill in your family tree and tell your baby how you felt when they arrived. When they're older your child can learn what the world was during their first year, so don't forget to write down who is currently the president, your favourite contemporary music artist, and the prices of stamps and milk. There's plenty of space to let them know all the details of their first year that were special and memorable. You can include what your baby learns, their new experiences and favourite toy! There will be lots of firsts for baby, and you will want to recall them all, like the first time they smiled, learned to kiss or call you mama or papa. There are pockets for photographs so you can capture their first steps and remember them forever. The bestselling baby and kids' cookbook author Annabel Karmel provides information on your baby's development and helpful advice to encourage new achievements. She has included five recipes to inspire delicious, healthy food for various stages, and for that special milestone - a birthday cake! A Keepsake Journal Of Milestone Moments A lovely book to give as a baby gift, that will become a wonderful memento that families and loved ones can look back on, and spend time together sharing your baby's first year. Inside this baby journal you can fill in and use: - Month-by-month sections to record new achievements. - Five delicious recipes for baby food. - Pockets for keepsakes and photographs.

The bestselling authors of the First Forty Days encourage mothers-to-be to care for themselves-and not just their babies-during pregnancyThere is so much noise surrounding pregnancy and birth. There are countless books teeming with information-what test does what, the "rights" and "wrongs" of eating, and "safe" or "risky" lifestyle choices-but few that hold a woman through the experience, acting as an elder sister, a matriarch, or a circle of women might hold her-with compassion, nonjudgment, and, most of all, wisdom. To the authors of Nine Golden Months, this is exactly what's needed now, in an era of high-speed living, endless demands, and more than a little anxiety and fear. A woman needs to feel connected to others, rooted in the knowledge that many have done this before her, and calmed and fortified by time-honored practices that nourish her body, soothe her mind, and hold up her spirit. The (still-growing) success of The First Forty Days showed that women are longing to experience the deeper aspects of becoming a mother. Nine Golden Months shares timeless guidance from the authors' extraordinary circle of practitioners, guides, and wisdom-keepers specializing in prenatal care; it draws from Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, and features rituals and self-sourced wisdom, so that it addresses all aspects of a woman's pregnancy experience: emotional, mental, physiological, and spiritual.

This study contributes to positive social change by bringing awareness of preeclampsia, risk factors, and the need for early recognition and prompt treatment to first-generation Nigerian women living in the United States. Although numerous studies have documented the need for early recognition and treatment of preeclampsia to attain a good prognosis, first-generation Nigerian women living in the United States tend to seek obstetrical care after the first trimester (twelve weeks), by which time prompt recognition may be missed.

This gorgeously presented keepsake is the perfect gift for expectant parents, enabling mums- and dads-to-be to bond with their unborn baby. By the third trimester your baby's ears are ready to hear! Featuring expert insights, a gentle rhyme to read to bump, beautiful illustrations and pages to personalise. With an introduction by Dr Kimberley Bennett (@the_psychologists_child) about reading to children, even before they are born, expectant parents will learn the importance of sound and rhythm for their child's development in utero. There are pages to personalise, with a letter to be written to baby ahead of their birth and a page to record their name, weight and date of birth, making this book a treasured heirloom to pass on to the child. To the back of the book is a secure envelope where parents can keep scan photos and other treasured items. The rhyming text which follows is a beautiful, lyrical poem which touches on the emotions of pregnancy and the hopes and dreams of life with a new child. Parents are encouraged to read the poem aloud to bump, creating a loving, bonding routine which enables the unborn baby to become familiar with their parents' voice - whether they are the birthing parent, or not. The poem is accompanied by the stunning illustrations of Anneli Bray, featuring parent and baby animals, curled up together. Bedtime Book for Bump is the perfect pregnancy gift for baby showers, Mother's Day, Father's Day... or just because!

This volume uses a feminist approach to examine the vast amount of material on breast-feeding. Baby milk manufacture is usually seen as the sole cause of the decline in breast-feeding. Using interviews with women, the author looks at other dimensions: the sexualization of breasts; the conditions under which the infant feeding takes place and professional interventions into mothering. Policy documents and popular breast-feeding books are shown to be preoccupied with getting women to do what they deem natural rather than with women's real needs.

The "Jason Bourne of fertility" (The New York Times Book Review) presents a personal and deeply informative account of one woman's journey through the global fertility industry. On paper, conception may seem like a simple biological process, yet this is often hardly the case. While many would like to have children, the road toward conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy can be unexpectedly rocky and winding. Lawyer Elizabeth Katkin never imagined her quest for children would ultimately involve seven miscarriages, eight fresh IVF cycles, two frozen IVF attempts, five natural pregnancies, four IVF pregnancies, ten doctors, six countries, two potential surrogates, nine years, and roughly $200,000. Despite her three Ivy League degrees and wealth of resources, Katkin found she was woefully undereducated when it came to understanding and confronting her own difficulties having children. After being told by four doctors she should give up, but without an explanation as to what exactly was going wrong with her body, Katkin decided to look for answers herself. The global investigation that followed revealed that approaches to the fertility process taken in many foreign countries are vastly different than those in the US and UK. In Conceivability, Elizabeth Katkin, now a mother of two, exposes eye-opening information about the medical, financial, legal, scientific, emotional, and ethical issues at stake. "A well-researched, informative, and positive account of a very long journey to motherhood" (Kirkus Reviews), Conceivability sheds light on the often murky and baffling world of conception science. Her book is an invaluable and inspiring text that will be a boon to others navigating the deep and "choppy waters" of fertility treatment (Publishers Weekly), and her chronicle of one of the most difficult, painful, rewarding, and loving journeys a woman can take is as informative as it is poignant.

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What makes us the "w"ay "w"e are? "Some say it's the genes we inherit at conception. Others are sure it's the environment we experience in childhood. But could it be that many of our individual characteristics--our health, our intelligence, our temperaments--are influenced by the conditions we encountered before birth?
That's the claim of an exciting and provocative field known as fetal origins. Over the past twenty years, scientists have been developing a radically new understanding of our very earliest experiences and how they exert lasting effects on us from infancy well into adulthood. Their research offers a bold new view of pregnancy as a crucial staging ground for our health, ability, and well-being throughout life.
Author and journalist Annie Murphy Paul ventures into the laboratories of fetal researchers, interviews experts from around the world, and delves into the rich history of ideas about how we're shaped before birth. She discovers dramatic stories: how individuals gestated during the Nazi siege of Holland in World War II are still feeling its consequences decades later; how pregnant women who experienced the 9/11 attacks passed their trauma on to their offspring in the womb; how a lab accident led to the discovery of a common household chemical that can harm the developing fetus; how the study of a century-old flu pandemic reveals the high personal and societal costs of poor prenatal experience.
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Origins "also brings to light astonishing scientific findings: how a single exposure to an environmental toxin may produce damage that is passed on to multiple generations; how conditions as varied as diabetes, heart disease, and mental illness may get their start in utero; why the womb is medicine's latest target for the promotion of lifelong health, from preventing cancer to reducing obesity. The fetus is not an inert being, but an active and dynamic creature, responding and adapting as it readies itself for life in the particular world it will enter. The pregnant woman is not merely a source of potential harm to her fetus, as she is so often reminded, but a source of influence on her future child that is far more powerful and positive than we ever knew. And pregnancy is not a nine-month wait for the big event of birth, but a momentous period unto itself, a cradle of individual strength and wellness and a crucible of public health and social equality.
With the intimacy of a personal memoir and the sweep of a scientific revolution, "Origins "presents a stunning new vision of our beginnings that will change the way you think about yourself, your children, and human nature itself.

The raw, relatable call-to-arms memoir, breaking the silence on postnatal depression - from the bestselling author of Animals and Adults 'I am so grateful for this beautiful, honest book. It has helped me immeasurably' Pandora Sykes 'I loved this book' Clover Stroud 'Totally relatable ... had me laughing and crying in equal measures' Christie Watson 'Dazzling' The i An Unmissable Memoir, Stylist A Hot Summer Book, Refinery29 Six months after the birth of her son, Emma Jane Unsworth finds herself in the eye of a storm. Nothing - from pregnancy to birth and beyond - has gone as she expected. A birth plan? It might as well have been a rough draft! Furious and exhausted, her life is the complete opposite of what it used to be. She's swapped all night benders for grazed labia and Whac-a-Moling haemorrhoids. How did she end up here? In this brave, vital account of postnatal depression, Emma tells her story of despair and recovery. She tackles the biggest taboos around motherhood and mental health, from botched stitches and bleeding nipples to anger and shame. How does pregnancy adapt our brains? Is postnatal depression a natural reaction to the trauma of modern motherhood? And are people's attitudes finally changing? After the Storm is a celebration of survival, holding out a hand to women everywhere. 'This book will make new mums feel accompanied, which is the most sacred thing' Jenn Ashworth 'Hilarious, heart-breaking and wise' Leah Hazard, midwife and author 'Truth and power and lots of LOLs too. I loved it' Amy Liptrot 'A brave and compelling part memoir, part manifesto' Marie Claire

From Heidi Murkoff, author of the world's bestselling pregnancy and parenting books, comes the must-have guide every expectant couple needs before they even conceive - the first step in What to Expect: What to Expect Before You're Expecting. Medical groups now recommend that all hopeful parents plan for baby-making at least three months before they begin trying. And who better to guide want-to-be mums and dads step-by-step through the preconception (and conception) process than Heidi Murkoff? It's all here. Everything couples need to know before sperm and egg meet. Packed with the same kind of reassuring, empathic and practical information and advice that readers have come to expect from What to Expect, only sooner. Which baby-friendly foods to order up (say yes to yams) and which fertility-busters to avoid (see you later, saturated fat); lifestyle adjustments that you'll want to make (cut back on cocktails and caffeine) and those you can probably skip (that switch to boxer shorts). How to pinpoint ovulation, keep on-demand sex sexy, and separate conception fact from myth. With fully updated information on immunisation, genetic screening, Zika, ovulation tracking, how fertility can be affected by travel as well as BPA and phthalates, plus when to seek help and the latest on high- and low-tech fertility treatments - from IVF to surrogacy and more. Complete with a fill-in fertility journal to keep track of the baby-making adventure and special tips throughout for hopeful dads. Next step? What to Expect When You're Expecting, of course.