Review: Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy

Women looking for authoritative, accurate information from a reputable source will appreciate this pregnancy book from the world-class Mayo Clinic. It provides hundreds of pages of helpful information parents can use. Features include week-by-week updates on baby’s growth and month-by-month changes for mom, a 40-week pregnancy calendar, a symptoms guide, and a review of important pregnancy decisions. In this illustrated book you’ll also receive advice on how to get pregnant, meal planning, exercise, medication use and parenthood. Plus, you’ll find answers to difficult or embarrassing questions. This pregnancy book is the work of a team of pregnancy experts who find nothing in medicine more exciting and satisfying to experience than the birth of a child. Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy is an essential pregnancy resource for parents-to-be.

Customer Review of Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy

706 of 711 people found the following review helpful:

(Amazon): Back when babies were just daydreams, I received "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (3rd ed.) from a pregnant friend who had an extra copy. Not knowing any better, I was quite pleased. Once I became pregnant and actually needed a guide, however, that changed. I found the book to be poorly organized, overly conversational and condescending in tone (especially given my plans to be a stay-at-home mom), and generally useless for anything other than instilling fear and paranoia. Most exasperating, though, was the "organization." Symptoms that can arise during varying parts of pregnancy are scattered haphazardly amongst the monthly chapters. This means that the book must be read cover to cover and all material retained in memory if hunting through the index and flipping back and forth between sections doesn't sound appealing.

Enter the "Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy." Hallelujah! Not wanting to suffer through another mediocre guide to pregnancy, I looked through every book I could get my hands on, and this was the only one that satisfied my criteria. It is written by trustworthy professionals in clear yet -professional- language, it provides information on "pregnancy, childbirth and your newborn" in chronological order, and best of all, it contains separate sections entitled, appropriately, "decision guides for pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood," "pregnancy reference guide," and "complications of pregnancy and childbirth," each with a table of contents at the beginning of the section. Instead of having to take a wild guess at which chapter (or, more likely, chapters) cramping might have landed in in "What to Expect" or searching the entire index, I could find it, along with all the other things I might be wondering about, in the reference guide. Blessed simplicity!

The "Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy" was the only book I needed. Once I found it, "What to Expect When You're Expecting" went back on the shelf and stayed there. 

Get your copy here: Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy