Book Review: The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy

Here is my Goodreads review of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy.

The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy: Second Edition by Vicki Iovine

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Or, as my husband aptly dubbed it, “The Girlfriends’ Guide to Being a Self-Indulgent Twit.”

Let me start by saying that there are a couple of good things about this one.

First, it is full of the kind of anecdotes about what pregnancy is like – swollen boobs, swollen feet, hemorrhoids, how to buy maternity clothes, when to expect morning sickness to end – that previous generations got from their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, sisters, and childhood friends. In a world where many of us live hundreds or thousands of miles from the most important women in our lives, it’s nice to have a reassuring compendium of all the stuff that happens, and to learn that it is completely normal.

Second, the list of what to take with you to the hospital when you go into labor looks to me to be useful and includes items I wouldn’t have thought of but plan to add to my suitcase.

So why do I rate the book so low?

Well, first of all, the constant theme of “x symptom is very common and normal in pregnancy, but we don’t know why – ask your doctor” is irksome. With apologies to my doctor friends, who learns anything useful from a doctor in a fifteen-minute appointment? I have learned at least nine-tenths of everything I know about my health and my body from reading books and trolling the internet, and frankly I was hoping Iovine would add to my store of knowledge instead of brushing me off. Had I bought the book instead of borrowing it from the library, I’d feel cheated out of 20 clams.

But more important, I was alarmed, rather than reassured, by Iovine’s insistence that interventions like caesarians, continuous fetal heart monitors, episiotomies, and the other, frequently unnecessary torture and mutilation that obstetricians inflict on women during labor and delivery are normal and somehow OK. She seems to have confused “frequent” with normal, largely because so many of her Girlfriends (the capital G is hers) suffered these procedures. This review is not the place to go into the alarmingly high 30% caesarian rate in the US, and how appallingly it exceeds the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 10% or less. (Yes, folks, that is almost 1 in 3 pregnant American women who will go under the knife.) Suffice it to say that I couldn’t help wondering if Iovine’s insistence that it is no big deal for a pregnant woman to gain substantially more weight than the current recommendations, or her bizarre, completely unsubstantiated opinion that pregnancy is a great excuse to avoid exercise (she seriously says this), had anything to do with the fact that apparently none of her Girlfriends-with-a-Capital-G managed to have a perfectly normal, natural delivery.

Give this one a pass – go for an informative, truly reassuring book like the classic What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

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My review

Book Review: The Pregnancy Cookbook

Here’s my book review of Hope Ricciotti’s The Pregnancy Cookbook from Goodreads:

The Pregnancy Cookbook, Revised and Expanded Edition by Hope Ricciotti

rating: 1 of 5 stars
I knew I wasn’t going to get along with Ricciotti when I opened the book at random and read the intro to her french toast recipe:

My review

 
Although traditional French toast contains plenty of carbohydrates, it also contains a considerable amount of fat from egg yolks and whole milk, not to mention the butter in which it is cooked. We have been preparing a lower-fat version for years using eggs and egg whites, and skim milk in place of whole, to keep the fat and cholesterol down.

This was my first clue that Ricciotti’s command of prenatal nutrition was weak at best. Why should a pregnant woman limit egg yolks? They are just about the most perfect food for pregnancy, loaded with multiple nutrients, including the fat soluble vitamins that are so important for fetal development. Plus, if you get free range eggs or eggs from hens fed omega-3 supplements, eggs are a great source of DHA, which is crucial for fetal brain development. And all this nutrition comes in a very calorie economical package: 70 calories for one large egg.

Furthermore, her praise of carbohydrates rings false in a world where an increasing number of mothers are diagnosed with gestational diabetes, a condition that puts the baby at risk for high birth weight and other complications.

What seems to be operating here is the current American hysteria about dietary fat combined with fears about excessive weight gain for mothers. I might have sympathy for this position if Ricciotti had not admitted, in her intro to the book, that it was only through sheer willpower that she managed to limit her pregnancy weight gain to the maximum recommended 35 pounds.

There is a fair amount of decent, basic information in the introduction about fetal development and what to expect during pregnancy, but you can find that information in many other books, without the dubious nutritional advice.

Or, as my midwife put it – get ample protein, eat a lot of vegetables, some fruits, and don’t go overboard on carbohydrates. Ricciotti seems to be offering the opposite advice.

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