Last week on Instagram I asked y’all to share with me any pregnancy books that you found very helpful or even baby/parenting type of books! Then everyone also wanted me to share the list, which you know I am always happy to share anything I know or find!! So here is everything I received about pregnancy & baby book recommendations…with links to each if I could find it and a brief synopsis of what it’s about. Hope you find it helpful! If there’s anything not included that you would recommend, please leave it in a comment below!!
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong–and What You Really Need to Know – I’ve read this after my friend gifted it to me telling me how much it helped her…and I really enjoyed it and found it so informative, realistic, helpful, and not “scary”. Here is the info:
What to Expect When You’re Expecting meets Freakonomics: an award-winning economist disproves standard recommendations about pregnancy to empower women while they’re expecting. From the author of Cribsheet, a data-driven decision making guide to the early years of parenting
Pregnancy—unquestionably one of the most profound, meaningful experiences of adulthood—can reduce otherwise intelligent women to, well, babies. Pregnant women are told to avoid cold cuts, sushi, alcohol, and coffee without ever being told why these are forbidden. Rules for prenatal testing are similarly unexplained. Moms-to-be desperately want a resource that empowers them to make their own right choices.
When award-winning economist Emily Oster was a mom-to-be herself, she evaluated the data behind the accepted rules of pregnancy, and discovered that most are often misguided and some are just flat-out wrong. Debunking myths and explaining everything from the real effects of caffeine to the surprising dangers of gardening, Expecting Bettering is the book for every pregnant woman who wants to enjoy a healthy and relaxed pregnancy—and the occasional glass of wine.
The Nanny Connie Way: Secrets to Mastering the First Four Months of Parenthood – Nanny Connie is here with all the solutions you need for every baby-care dilemma from comforting a colicky infant to trying to breastfeed in public. Her sweet and sassy drawl seeps right out of these pages, reassuring you that everything will be fine, as she guides you with her God-given wisdom, larger-than-life compassion, and three decades worth of experience and patience.
The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy – Your doctor gives you medical advice. Your mother buys you baby clothes. But who can give you the real skinny when you’re pregnant? Your girlfriends, of course—at least, the ones who’ve been through the exhilaration and exhaustion, the agony and ecstasy of pregnancy. Four-time delivery room veteran Vicki Iovine talks to you the way only a best friend can—in the book that will go the whole nine months for every mother-to-be. In this revised and updated edition, get the lowdown on all those little things that are too strange or embarrassing to ask, practical tips, and hilarious takes on everything pregnant.
Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer – Thousands of parents, from regular moms and dads to Hollywood superstars, have come to baby expert Dr. Harvey Karp to learn his remarkable techniques for soothing babies and increasing sleep. Now his landmark book—fully revised and updated with the latest insights into infant sleep, bedsharing, breastfeeding, swaddling, and SIDS risk—can teach you too!
Real Food for Pregnancy: The Science and Wisdom of Optimal Prenatal Nutrition – Prenatal nutrition can be confusing. A lot of the advice you have been given about what to eat (or what not to eat) is well-meaning, but frankly, outdated or not evidenced-based. In Real Food for Pregnancy, you will get clear answers on what to eat and why, with research to back up every recommendation. Author and specialist in prenatal nutrition, Lily Nichols, RDN, CDE, has taken a long and hard look at the science and discovered a wide gap between current prenatal nutrition recommendations and what foods are required for optimal health in pregnancy and for your baby’s development. There has never been a more comprehensive and well-referenced resource on prenatal nutrition.
Precious Little Sleep: The Complete Baby Sleep Guide for Modern Parents – Parenting a baby or toddler is the grandest adventure of all when you’re not miserably exhausted. Sleep expert Alexis Dubief, of the wildly popular website Precious Little Sleep, imparts effective, accessible, and flexible strategies based on years of research that will dramatically improve your child’s sleep. This book will help you tackle the thorniest sleep snags, including:
•Navigating the tricky newborn phase like a pro
•Getting your child to truly sleep through the night
•Weaning off the all night buffet
•Mastering the precarious tango that is healthy napping
•Solving toddler and preschooler sleep struggles
Moms on Call: Basic Baby Care 0-6 Months – Advice from two pediatric nurse moms with over 20 years of experience. Everything that modern parents need to know about caring for babies in the first 6 months, including: step by step guidelines for getting babies on a routine hour by hour schedule at a glance; feeding instructions for breast, bottle, or both; what symptoms warrant a trip to the emergency room; how to get your baby to sleep all night so you can too; plus much more.
The Panic-Free Pregnancy: An OB-GYN Separates Fact from Fiction on Food, Exercise, Travel, Pets, Coffee, Medications, and Concerns You Have When You Are Expecting – While most pregnancy books only address the stages of the baby’s development, The Panic-Free Pregnancy comprehensively covers the lifestyle issues and questions that confront every mom-to-be. Dr. Broder separates fact from fiction, media hype from old wives tales, and drawing on the latest scientific research offers an accessible, comprehensive reference book that answers questions about…
* Caffeine
* Exercise
* Flying
* Prescription and over-the-counter medications
* Sex
* Cosmetics
* Alcohol
* Herbal remedies
* and more
Organized in an easy-to-use question-and-answer format, this book will help women have the safest, healthiest, most anxiety-free pregnancy possible.
FOR DADS:
The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be – Brott’s reassuring month-by-month overview of your partner’s pregnancy gives you the tools you need to support your partner, prepare for the baby’s arrival, and take care of yourself during this exciting time. Each chapter covers:
—What’s going on with your partner, emotionally and physically
—What’s going on with the baby, every step of the way from fertilized egg to newborn
—What’s going on with you, as you adjust to the new life stage of fatherhood
—How to stay involved: specific ways you can help (and feel included), from attending birthing classes with your partner to starting a college fund
This fully revised fourth edition also includes:
—More information about adoptions, multiples, infertility and assisted reproductive technology, and dads in the military
—A special section on labor and delivery: what to expect on the big day
—A special section on what comes next, in the first few months after the baby’s arrival
—A handy resource section, connecting you to the best information on every topic related to pregnancy and fatherhood
Hacking Fatherhood: Preparing for Success in the Biggest Role of your Life – Hacking Fatherhood is the 24-month guide for serious dads-to-be. This is the information you need before your little one arrives. The chronological action plan is loaded with little known insights and superior strategies to become a family hero in the modern age. It’s the ultimate manual for guys who are willing to work smarter to achieve elite success. Much more than a collection of tips for merely surviving pregnancy, this is the advanced plan for thriving as a new father and family leader. Each section is packed will valuable tactics to fortify your marriage, save your wallet, and transform you into the man you were designed to be.
Dad is Fat – (for fun) Though he grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family, Jim was satisfied with the nomadic, nocturnal life of a standup comedian, and was content to be “that weird uncle who lives in an apartment by himself in New York that everyone in the family speculates about.” But all that changed when he married and found out his wife, Jeannie “is someone who gets pregnant looking at babies.”
Five kids later, the comedian whose riffs on everything from Hot Pockets to Jesus have scored millions of hits on YouTube, started to tweet about the mistakes and victories of his life as a dad. Those tweets struck such a chord that he soon passed the million followers mark. But it turns out 140 characters are not enough to express all the joys and horrors of life with five kids, so hes’ now sharing it all in Dad Is Fat.
From new parents to empty nesters to Jim’s twenty-something fans, everyone will recognize their own families in these hilarious takes on everything from cousins (“celebrities for little kids”) to growing up in a big family (“I always assumed my father had six children so he could have a sufficient lawn crew”) to changing diapers in the middle of the night (“like The Hurt Locker but much more dangerous”) to bedtime (aka “Negotiating with Terrorists”).
Dad is Fat is sharply observed, explosively funny, and a cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home.
PODCASTS:
Then some Podcasts were recommended: Birth Kweens, The Informed Pregnant Podcast, The Pregnancy Podcast, and Birth Hour
COURSES:
Then I had a ton of people recommend the Taking Cara Babies courses and I had already been looking into them myself! I love her tips on Instagram and on her blog so def worth checking out too.
xo,
Bess
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