Recommended Reading for Pregnancy

“Great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.”

–John Green.

When embarking on a journey such as motherhood, it is perfectly understandable that you may want to read everything you can find. It’s also perfectly understandable that trying to read everything you find might overwhelm and confuse you: there are, after all,  so many books out there on pregnancy and parenting. Here are a handful that we recommend:

The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth

by Sheila Kitzinger & Marcia May

Extensively revised to reflect the latest in scientific research and cultural trends, this authoritative guide to pregnancy and childbirth provides all the information women need to make decisions about prenatal tests, pain control, and how and where to give birth.

From the Hips

by Rebecca Odes and Ceridwen Morris

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of real parents ,as well as the expertise of doctors, midwives and other birth and baby pros, this indispensable resource is filled with the most accurate and up-to-date information about having and caring for a baby. A forward-thinking book that includes a wide range of voices and approaches, From the Hips reflects the many ways of being pregnant and parenting without insisting that there is one right way.

Birth Matters

by Ina May Gaskin

Renowned for her practice’s exemplary results and low intervention rates, Ina May Gaskin has gained international notoriety for promoting natural birth. She is a much-beloved leader of a movement that seeks to stop the hyper-medicalization of birth—which, arguably, has led to nearly a third of hospital births in America being cesarean sections—and renew confidence in a woman’s natural ability to birth.

Upbeat and informative, Gaskin asserts that the way in which women become mothers is a women’s rights issue, and it is perhaps the act that most powerfully exhibits what it is to be instinctively human. Birth Matters is a spirited manifesta showing us how to trust women, value birth, and reconcile modern life with a process as old as our species.

Do you have a favourite pregnancy book? If so, tell us about it in the comments!