After reading several other pregnancy books, although reading over the same topics, Ann Douglas provides more helpful information. Her writing style is easy to read, funny at times and not biased. You feel as if you are listening to a friend sometimes. This book covers everything from preconception to delivery. This book provides excellent questions for interviewing doctors/midwives. She provides helpful charts. I would recommend the purchase of this book.

My wife is in her twelfth week of pregnancy and this book was read but not used as a reference for her pregnancy. We tried to figure this out since it got some outstanding reviews. I concluded the style (breezy) appeals to certain people and the reason for the good reviews. We ended up using The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy as the cover to cover and everyday reference book for her pregnancy. The Mayo was a power pack book of information that was organized exceptionally. If you like a breezy, casual girlfriend chatty type book then the "Mother" book is for you. Otherwise stick to the Mayo.

I bought this book to figure out what I should be doing prior to getting pregnant. I did not know how to alter my diet, exercise, when the best time was to try to get pregnant, how to best 'interview' my doctor. This book was very helpful in providing answers to those questions. Although I am not pregnant yet, I did go for my "preconception check up" at the doctor's and am taking the steps toward a healthy, planned pregnancy.

At 35 my husband and I have decided it might be time to grow up and start a family. I bought this book because I'm a little nervous, have heard stories about "high-risk" situations and the like. I found this book to be somewhat informative, but the tone is condescending and the author is self-righteous. I felt like a school child being scolded. I found her tone to be very demeaning. Maybe she is just trying to get on a level that everyone can understand, but I found it to be a little too much. I think I could have learned this information by searching online for free. Save your money I say.

I got this based on the reviews, expecting something really awesome. I honestly just found it OK. It seems extremely basic, which can be good for an overview type of book, but I thought it would be much better. I wish I had flipped through it at the bookstore before deciding to purchase it. One of the things I like about it, opposed to many other pregnancy books, is that it has a little section on pre-conception, which is what I was looking for. It talks about some things you can do to prepare before getting pregnant, but it doesn't go into as much detail as I was hoping. I will keep it to have on hand, but would definitely not consider it "the best pregnancy book."

I just bought this book amongst others and it is average, not "the mother". Ironically, the book I was most hesitant to buy "What to expect when your expecting" had more information about DHA, supplements, etc. than this one did.

I was excited to receive this book based on the glowing reviews when I learned that I was in fact pregnant. Now I am telling anyone who will listen to NOT buy this book (they can have mine if they really want it). Ann Douglas is so very negative throughout this book. If you are overweight or over the age of 35, certainly DO NOT BUY this book. Under the guise of being realistic, I believe Ann Douglas lets her own distaste for such individuals attempting to have a baby shine through (although, judging from her author's photo - she is no spring chicken herself).

She is so negative when approaching pregnancy complications, that simply reading her "advice" may exacerbate any complications you are having as a result of added stress. She thinly veils her distaste for "What to Expect when you are Expecting", but that is the book (I have 6 pregnancy books) that I turn to FIRST everytime I have a question. If I feel guilty about something that I may have done to have caused concern during my pregnancy, I turn to Ann Douglas for a good scolding or to find out immediately that my babies could die. Did she not have an editor or publisher to recommend that she approach concerns with a positive attitude/solution first and then discuss what MIGHT happen.

I am concerned this

I am still trying to concieve and I have been reading the first few chapters of this book over and over! There is just so much information! Now I know how my body actually works to have a baby! I've been charting my temperature which I find exciting :) I can't wait to get that possitive test back and delve into the rest of the book!

I have been reading this book prior to conception and it has been very useful. Right now, I'm skipping some of the parts about "When a pregnancy goes wrong", because I don't want to scare myself, but other than that, this book talks about everything you could possibly want to know, and them some! Easy to read, focuses on emotional, physical, and physiological...very thorough book.

This book was okay. It of course is a "pregnancy" book. It touched on several subjects, but alot of the information I was already aware of. This book is okay if you have NO clue about pregnancy or how to prepare for it. It does however have an excellent section on multiple pregnancy or abnormal pregnancy, but that doesn't apply to the average mom-to-be. My husband wanted to read the book with me, but he didn't like it. It was about the yucky parts of pregnancy that he didn't want to know. Husbands need a book about after baby gets here and how their lives will change. That is what a man needs to know.

This book is very informative. It has good material and answers quite a few questions. It would be nice if it had a more detailed section about the progression of your pregnancy though. But overall a good read.

When you're tired of being preached at by "What to Expect When You're Expecting" or you really need to hear from a relaxed mom who's been there, pick this book up! This book is also invaluable for any couple struggling to get pregnant because there is a whole section on conception, fertility charting, knowing your cycle, and when to see if there is a problem. It's like getting advice from a good friend instead of the nurse at your doctor's office.

This has been a decent resource, but not my favorite of the two books I have been reading. I am 21 weeks along in my first pregnancy and I bought this book when I became pregnant. The first 130 pages or so are about trying to conceive, which is great for those looking for that info. For me it didn't apply. Also, this book does NOT have a break down of the developmental stages and what goes on during the pregnancy. It discusses what you will want to do to during your pregnancy, concerns you might have, complications that can arise, prenatal testing, and giving birth. All great info but I also wanted to know what was going on with my growing baby and my body. I recommend this book along with "Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy" from the Mayo Clinic, that has been my go to book. Between these two books, I have a lot of great info which has been a big help.

The Mother of All Pregnancy Books: The Ultimate Guide Is a wonderful book. This is a book that you will actually WANT to read. It truly is and enjoyable book, and that isn't something that is said about most informative conception, pregnancy, and birthing books. The information provided is very easy to understand, funny at times as well as professional. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get pregnant, is pregnant, or parents all ready. They have included fathers in this book as well. I have read many books on pregnancy and conception and by far find this one to be the most useful and easy to read. While they do provide you with the medical terms, they break it down so that you don't need to sit there with a dictionary while you are reading it.

This is wonderful! So I'm not going to read it all until I'm actually pregnant, the first half of the book mixes all the facts with fun commentary. It is really putting everything in perspective.

This was the first pregnancy book I bought. I thought it had a lot of info, but was not what I was looking for. I will keep it around as a quick reference...

First, beware that the author is a midwife and not a doctor. Second, there is vital information missing for first time mothers. An example of this is the avoidance of nitrates for pregnant women and children. This includes avoiding hot dogs, bacon, and cured meats. Studies show that pregnant women who eat hot dogs have children that are more likely to have brain tumors. And young children who eat nitrate containing meats are nine times more likely to have certain types of cancer.

Just thought you should know, I wished I did before my first pregnancy.

This is a great book all the way through and answered just about every question I've had about pregancy, plus taught me things I never would have known to ask or think about. Unlike many pregancy books, this one also has a section on conceiving, and within ONE MONTH of following the advice given, we conceived! After 2 years of trying. Yay!
I also like the non-clinical tone this book has. It's much more like talking to a friend over coffee than to a doctor.

I really love this book. It's not so boring and I enjoy the little blips of information from actual parents. I've been reading this book over and over again the entire time I've been trying to get pregnant. I love all the information and it doesn't scare me as some other books I've tried to read have.

Yep, it's the best pregnancy book evah. Great info on infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth while still covering the basics, and all without terrifying the reader(s). I love the resources section in the back as well.
I'd recommend this book to all moms of all ages and sizes.

I thought this book was really ridiculous in that it went into incredible detail about issues related to pregnancy, but never seemed to indicate how rare these issues are. I am currently pregnant and after reading some of the information in this book, I started having nightmares! Women who are pregnant do not need to feel more worried than they already may be.

This book was extremely helpful. It gives you the pros and cons of pregnancy and doesn't leave anything out.

I bought this book for my daughter because of its ratings. She wanted a different one, but when she got started reading it, she liked the fact that every question she had was answered. The format was a little different than she had expected.

I Was very pleased with this item and would definately recommend it and the supplier as well as use the supplier again myself if the oppotunity presents itself.

I have picked up and read several books trying to get specific information about the fertilization process. Alot of books just have the same generalized, generic information that you would get in an average text book, but didn't clearly clarify whether it was best time to try before you ovulate or right after. This is the only book I found so far that really gave me down to earth and very practical information about the most effective timing for getting pregnant and why. I loved that it was both readable and scientifically detailed in its delivery of information. I wish I'd read this two months ago. Alot of pregnancy books including What To Expect When you Are Expecting and The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy didn't even touch on the specifics of trying to get pregnant. In fact the first chapter of the Mayo book just spends a lot of time scaring women over 35, like me, of how risky and statistically challenged our pregancies might be. These two books might be fine once you get pregnant, but they weren't helpful for getting pregnant.

This book in my opinion bridges the gap between a general info baby book and an infertility book. In fact the book points out that a lot of couples who think they are infertile just don't know when to start trying and how to properly calculate their fertility window. My friend and I are trying to get pregnant and the same time, and when I read her the section on getting pregnant, she was like....this is fascinating. This book is great for people who want specific scientific information in a down to earth delivery.

This is the second time I bought this book and everyone says it is so informative. Thank you. :)

In a sometimes frustrating struggle to conceive, this book was my bible and Ann Douglas my guru. I read and re-read the chapters on infertility and conception over and over - drifting to other books but always coming back to the "Mother". She doesn't get caught up in too much technical jargon, doesn't preach or offer judgment, and presents a very large amount of material in a straightforward, easy-to-read fashion. The charts are great, and although there is some scary info in here about miscarriages, ectopic, stilbirths, etc., it's important to include, and presented very well. I haven't found it quite as useful or comprehensive for late pregnancy and preparation for birth, but it's still a valuable part of my (large) stack of pregnancy books.

This book reads like a novel because it is very informative and has bits of humor. It dares to go where most books rarely go: when pregnancy goes wrong. It delves into pre-pregnancy and speaks frankly about conception. It doesn't go into too much detail about the baby's growth and development, but it informs about pregnancy symptoms and when to expect them. I haven't gotten to the birth part yet, but I expect it to be just as good as the rest of the book. Author has an excellent writing style that isn't textbook-ish, very refreshing for a pregnancy novel.

The conversational tone of the book was a little distracting, and I didn't care for the way it was organized, but I appreciated the positive attitude it portrayed.

There is some good information, but there are other books with more complete information and better organization. My favorites are "1000 Questions About Your Pregnancy" and "Mayo Clinic Complete Book of Pregnancy & Baby's First Year". They are both extremely thorough, well-organized, and work great for reference. Both of these books tend to put things in perspective, maintain a positive tone and really present you with all the facts. In general, I think the pregnancy books written by doctors are the best.

Great resource to read even before you become pregnant. Modern book, so is written for people considering getting pregnant and details things you would like to know and offers guidance and tips on all aspects of getting pregnant as well as the actual pregnancy.

We aren't pregnant yet but we wanted to start trying. This book gave us great info. For both mom and dad.

I thought this was very informative without being frightening. Well-organized, very detailed--great for first time moms. I much preferred it to "What to Expect When You're Expecting."

I really like the way that this book is organized and written. It's so straightforward that you can sit and read it cover to cover, or find quick answers to questions. It has the strength of going over the baby's development thoroughly while answering the usual and unusual questions.

I was very disappointed by this book. It contains the same information that every other pregnancy book has but the way it's organized is very annoying. All of the pull outs and blurps scattered in the text are distracting from the content and I found the chapters didn't flow with my pregnancy. I was very excited about getting this book because of all the posative reviews and I didn't bother to buy the What to Expect series because so many people thought this was better. Thankfully a friend gave me a copy of What to Expect which I found informative and easier to read.

First off, I really appreciated the hard facts that were included in this book. I read it twice before I became pregnant, and now during pregnancy I consult the tables therein. But, I found myself often uneasy about the dialog - it is set-up to keep one's attention and to be an easy read (in a friendly "talk" manner). That may be great for some, but I would have preferred a drier commentary. I didn't like that being thorough in checking cervical fluid is labeled as "really obsessive," nor the other judgmental words that are included. What I will do is hang onto this book during my reproductive years, for select browsing. What I will not do is buy another solo book from this author.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about starting a family to those who suddenly find themselves without that choice. Ann Douglas has a wonderful way of taking the reader through all the steps. She provides insight and references real couples and what they did in the different situations. What I really liked about it is the fact that she presents different alternatives to handling situations instead of taking a dictatorship tone "you must do this". She also has a way of presenting the multitude of issues that need to be kept in mind through out the pregnancy in a way that doesn't make you feel too overwhelmed at the prospect of having a child.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about starting a family to those who suddenly find themselves without that choice. Ann Douglas has a wonderful way of taking the reader through all the steps. She provides insight and references real couples and what they did in the different situations. What I really liked about it is the fact that she presents different alternatives to handling situations instead of taking a dictatorship tone "you must do this". She also has a way of presenting the multitude of issues that need to be kept in mind through out the pregnancy in a way that doesn't make you feel too overwhelmed at the prospect of having a child.

This book has all the info you need for planning to conceive in the future and all the info that you might be curious about. It is for couples who are thinking about getting pregnant or couples who are already pregnant or have babies already. It is also good for husbands to read. It will help them understand some thing that are hard for them to understand. Especially if he thinks that you can wait longer to have a baby. I totally recommend it!

This book reads like a magazine which means that it is able to capture and sustain the reader's interest through the entire book. Given the easy format -- lots of charts, large text, good white space, anecdotal exerpts -- you can learn a lot in a very short period of time. The 488 pages of actual body text (excluding appendices) can be consumed in just a couple days. Its' success at getting readers from beginning to end may very well mean that expecting moms will read about issues early and thus provide them with the ability to approach issues unemotionally and pragmatically.

The book has a good organizational flow. I also enjoyed the first few chapters on pre-pregnancy topics. It helps to dispell the myth that having a child is predominantly an accidental act. Conceiving a child arises from decisions and this book allows this important decision to be grounded in a broad base of knowledge. If people plan their gardens, their careers, or the watching of sunrise while on vacation, why would these same people approach the life-changing event of pregnancy in a haphazard way? Of course, taking a haphazard approach is a choice in itself and if that's the course taken, then this book isn't very good as a general reference since there is no Table of Charts (and you won't find Tylenol in the index even though it's in a chart).

I only wish that the editors would remove the slang (e.g. "guff"); the cliches that made me physically flinch; the inferiority complex displayed in vague references to some other bestselling pregnancy book (I think the average person buys more than one book on any given topic); and other minor typographical mistakes. I also wonder why they can't get impartial reviewers to provide acclaim for the book. A good number of the quoted authors had their books recommended within later chapters!

On technical merits alone, I'd give this book 3 stars but given its good "bedside manner", I'm sure that women past the planning stage could easily see it as a 4 out of 5.

This is probably not the ONLY book that one should read on the topic of pregnancies. It certainly doesn't have the largest word count, it doesn't have the wondrous educational illustrations of other books, and some of the theories presented are just theories -- you may want to compare and contrast discussions on specific topics between different books.

This book was delivered to my home on 2/8/07. I was so "baby hungry" that I finished reading its 500 pages on 2/11/07. It was very pleasant to read and very informative (i don't have any kids and needed to know what to expect for a pregnancy). I feel that I acquired a good ammount of information. Definetely a "must have" for first time mothers-to-be. Most if not all the questions I had were answered. It was the first book I read on the start of this jorney [...]. I strongly recommended it!

For someone that has not read any of this kind of book before I found this a very good overview. It has more than 2 pages on pre pregnancy, which was what I was interested in. Not too heavy, possibly could have gone into more detail in some areas.

Look, this is a nice book, with a lot of interesting information. One thing I really like about it is the charts - well organized. However, "What to Expect When You're Expecting", which I was trying to get away from, actually gives a better month-by-month description of what's going on during pregnancy.


So if you're looking for a supplemental book for your pregnancy library, go ahead and get this book. If you're looking for the one and only book you'll need for 9 months, this isn't it - sorry.

I LOVE this book- I actually have been giving copies of this book to my friends when they announce that they are pregnant (or trying!) for the first time! This book is informative and tells you what you need to know, and while it is written so it is easy to understand, they author hasn't gone out of her way to sound like she's your 'girlfriend'. I'd read another book that was supposed to sound like that and didn't appreciate it- I wanted an informative book that I felt I could trust: this book is it!

I am a scientist and this is my first pregnancy. I bought this book on the basis of the Amazon ratings and regretted it almost immediately. The book is written in a bossy style ("DO this" "DON'T DO that") and is poorly organized. The health information is mostly cut-and-pasted from government websites (e.g., Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health). I recommend instead the "Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy" which is organized in an intuitive manner and written in a more professional tone.

I am pregnant with my first baby. I bought this book and the What to Expect book before becoming pregnant. I never finished reading the What to Expect book, but have read this one many times. It has some really great information on preconception and planning for a baby. Unlike the other book it had a great easy to read, fun to read format. I would definitely recommend this book to any pregnant or trying to get pregnant woman.

I am thinking of having kids in a few years and wanted to learn more about how the whole process would be. This book has been a wealth of information and is written in a fun, lighthearted style. I'm amazed that a book about such a serious topic could be this fun to read.

I think this book is helpful when discussing preconception/conception and in describing some of the tests, but when it comes to pregnancy -- the "everything in between" -- it is not very useful. I read this book before I got pregnant, but I have barely glanced at it since.

Of my dozens of pregnancy books, this one is the hands-down best. It is the only pregnancy book that answered the questions I had before I actually became pregnant, since there's more than one chapter on issues of fertility and planning. It is also still the book that I refer to most frequently when I want to know what's happening inside my body (I love the week-by-week chart), what symptoms to really worry about (I love the reasonable & accurate information), and for sensible tips for alleviating the minor discomforts of pregnancy (I love the ginger tea).

This book has the tone of a wonderful older female relative -- especially if you happen to have an older relative with deep medical training combined with a great sense of perspective, a relative who may be a little long-winded but ends up being the person you want to talk to most often while you're pregnant.

Some pregnancy books are paranoid, some are overly-flippant, and many are addressed only to women who are already pregnant instead of to partners who are trying to get pregnant. This book avoids all those pitfalls. I wish I had bought only this book and not all the others. The only other book necessary to complement Ann Douglas's great guide is Armin Brott's _The Expectant Father_.

If you walk into B&N and flip through (not even buy!) the other "well known/recommended" pregnancy books you'll get much more information than what Douglas offers.

If you're lazy/want a quick read, this book is for you.
If you're looking for a comprehensive tell-all (which the title and reviews lead you to believe), this is *not* the book for you.

This was a total waste of money! If I had know it was this bad I would have just used my money to buy diapers instead.

When I was preggo I loved this book. It was easy to read and it had a lot of info in nice charts that were easy to read. The author is very funny, she is like a good girlfriend walking you through pregrnancy. This is great for your first baby but it has a lot of stuff when you have another baby. I also bought this for my girlfriend she loved it too. she said it was easier to read then "what to expect" Buy this book I read it cover to cover about three times. You will enjoy it.