Pregnant - Your Friendly Guide to the Next Twelve Months

Pregnant - your friendly, no-nonsense guide to the next 12 months is a new book prepared by a consortium of experts on maternity care and experiences. It offers a new approach to pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum providing information in a simple, easy to understand way. It will be availble in print (for selected public libraries), as a PDF (download link at the end of this article for free) and as an audio book (listen on SoundCloud).

How does it work?

This book is meant to be read from cover-to-cover when you are planning to become pregnant or are already pregnant. Chapters first present the normal mechanism of a bodily function, and then later describe variations and choices that you have, including their pros and cons. The topics are generally organised from the beginning of pregnancy towards postpartum. Not all topics fit into a certain week or month, and some topics (like postpartum) are best if prepared in advance, so it’s helpful to read the whole book and refer back to it as you have questions and concerns (or just need reassurance that what you’re feeling is normal :)).

The most important and complex topics are accompanied by illustrations that you can take photos of and have with you as needed. Or, share them on social media and tag us using the hashtag #PregnantGuide. We’ve tried to explain everything using simple language and with a smile, and we’d love to get feedback from you, the people who we’ve written this book for.

Finally, the authors of this book have also collaborated on a mobile app for pregnant families - Expecting. It’s available for Android and iOS devices and provides more detailed information on pregnancy week-by-week. More information is available here.

Read an excerpt from the introduction:

Excited, scared, overwhelmed, ecstatic. You’re feeling it all.
We’ve been there.

Together we are parents, midwives, psychologists, doulas, childbirth educators, maternity care advocates. We’ve had planned and unplanned pregnancies, IVF procedures, miscarriages, home births, hospital births (and on-the-way-to-the-hospital births), caesarean after previous caesarean and vaginal births after caesareans - in five different countries.

We were brought together because we’re all passionate about helping women find their way on the wild ride through pregnancy and the first few months of parenthood. Which is why we’ve written this guide to the next year of your life, a year that will be filled with roller coasters of pure joy, heartache, frustration, love, confusion and then all these made more challenging by a lack of sleep.

Think of this guide as your best friend in a new place, someone who shows you the way and tells it like it is with no hidden agenda, who encourages you to think about all the options and choose the ones that are best for you and is always on your side, cheering you on the whole time.

We know you can do it and we’re going to help you find the way that’s right for you.
Here’s to women holding each other up.

Check out praise for the book, listen to the audio book or download the PDF or EPUB at the end of this article!

(Please note, Vidi = View; Preuzmi = Download)

This book and its authors do not accept funding from the medical, pharmaceutical or infant formula industries and their opinions are fully independent of any commercial interests. They are just really passionate about giving women the information they need to make their own best decisions.

The authors of this book have made every effort to ensure that the information in it are correct at press time of publication. This book is not intended as a substitute for the health and medical advice of midwives and physicians. You should regularly consult a midwife or physician in matters relating to your pregnancy, physical and mental health. The way you use the information in this book is your responsibility, and not the responsibility of the authors of this book or their affiliated organisations.