The Mother of All Pregnancy Books: An All-Canadian Guide to Conception, Birth, and Everything In-Between (Excerpt)

Introduction Table of Contents | 1 | 2 The bookstore shelves are overflowing with books on conception, pregnancy, and birth. In fact, the last time I was in one of the big chain superstores, there were no fewer than four bookcases devoted to the business of making babies. (Clearly, the pregnancy book world is experiencing a population explosion of its own!) While some folks might argue that the last thing that the world needs is another pregnancy book, I beg to differ. You see, what's been missing from bookstore shelves (at least until now) is a fun yet informative guide to pregnancy that is published by and for Canadians. That's why I decided to write this book. Why A Canadian Pregnancy Book? Flip through a typical American pregnancy book and you'll find pages and pages of material that simply doesn't apply to Canadian parents: chapters that deal with such topics as coping with health insurance nightmares (a U.S. phenomenon, thank heaven!) or your rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act (the American government's maternity leave legislation). And even those chapters that are relevant to Canadian parents suffer from a major failing: the expert sources that get cited time and time again in these books are almost always exclusively American. What Canadian parents need is a book that reflects what it's like to give birth here in Canada—a book that talks about the unique challenges that Canadian parents face (like the chronic shortage of obstetricians in rural Canada, for example) and that contains up-to-date advice from Canadian health authorities such as the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and the Canadian Pediatric Society. (Believe it or not, health authorities on both sides of the border don't always see eye-to-eye on such important issues as prenatal testing, circumcision, and infant feeding.) Of course, it wouldn't be possible—or even advisable—to write a pregnancy book that completely ignores what's happening south of the border. After all, some of the most significant medical breakthroughs in the treatment of pregnancy loss and infertility in recent years have happened in medical labs in the U.S. What Canadian parents need, however, is a pregnancy book that looks at that information through Canadian eyes and that interprets it for a Canadian audience. But enough with the flag-waving for now! Let me tell you a bit more about The Mother of All Pregnancy Books. A One-of-a-Kind Pregnancy Book As you've no doubt noticed by now, pregnancy books tend to fall into one of distinct categories: bossy books that treat pregnancy as a nine-month exercise in deprivation and that leave you feeling like a bad person if you ingest so much as a single Tylenol, during your entire pregnancy; and humorous books that treat pregnancy and birth as one big joke. (Hey, I enjoy a laugh as much as the next gal, but there are times when I'd prefer a hefty serving of hard medical facts!) The Mother of All Pregnancy Books doesn't fall into either of these classic pregnancy book traps. It doesn't pretend to know what's best for you (like preaching to you about the evils of eating junk food during pregnancy, as one bestselling pregnancy book likes to do). Nor does it waste pages and pages talking about such inane topics as your fantasies about your obstetrician (the type of subject that another bestselling pregnancy book takes particular delight in talking about). Instead, The Mother of All Pregnancy Books arms you with the facts so that you can make up your own mind about such important issues as nutrition during pregnancy, prenatal testing, pain relief during labour, circumcision, and breastfeeding. More....

 

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