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.
Migraine aura picture from 
Hey, Diane! So glad to hear about your coming little one.
I read and despised The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy when I was with child. Right there with ya!
However, I also hate the entire What to Expect franchise. Reassuring is right, but I found WTEWYE reassuring in a way that somehow displaces empowerment. All the passages go back and forth — well, it could be this, could be that — and ultimately end up with “but if you’re concerned, ask your doctor.” Drove me crazy. Also, the kid glove treatment it gives modern abominations like routine circumcision, epidurals and cesaereans infuriated me. The message throughout — just don’t argue with the docs, they know what’s best. (What to expect? An epidural and a C-section.) Worst, it was counterfactual in places, like in the passage on episiotomy, where they perpetuate the complete myth that a “nice, clean cut” is better than a “ragged tear.”
Here are the books that influenced and impressed me most:
- Anything by Ina May Gaskin
- The American Way of Birth by Jessica Mitford
- Obstetric Myths Versus Research Realities: A Guide to the Medical Literature by Henci Goer (fabulous!)
- Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf
- Birth as an American Rite of Passage by Robbie E. Davis-Floyd
I would be eager to hear your thoughts on these and others as your reading/learning journey continues!
Comment by Vesna — September 7, 2008 @ 8:57 pm |
Hi, Vesna – sometimes you and I think so much alike, it’s scary. It’s true that WTE may be somewhat overly reassuring, but at least it wasn’t written by a spoiled brat. Iovine’s comments about manicures and pedicures, bikini waxing, indulgence in food, avoidance of exercise, etc. spell “pampered diva.” I don’t have any girlfriends like that. Heck, most of my girlfriends view my monthly pedicure as a bit self-indulgent. (I readily grant that it is. I would give it up if money were tighter.)
Thanks for the book recommendations! I have also gotten halfway through a book called “Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering” by Dr. Sarah Buckley, which gives the best scientific explanation I’ve seen of why it is not a good idea to induce, augment, or give epidurals without a serious medical need.
The excuse often given for these interventions is that it spares the lives of mothers and children – the whole “women used to die a lot more in childbirth than they do now” chestnut. But I read somewhere recently that the outcomes were exactly the same for American women in the 60s, when the C-section rate was 3-4%, as it is now.
I have in the back of my mind a post or two about feminism and pregnancy. Pregnancy does seem to be one area of a woman’s life where she is encouraged to cede control rather than keep it, which feels regressive to me. But my life is out-of-control busy right now!
Comment by psipsina — September 8, 2008 @ 8:51 pm |
Looks like GBGM was published in aught five, the year after I had my baby – hence after my birthing book reading spree. It has no reviews on Amazon, if you want to be the first to do it that good deed.
I do love making connections with like-minded souls like you out here on the ‘Nets!
Comment by Vesna — September 8, 2008 @ 9:19 pm |
try this is good
Comment by hemroids — May 9, 2009 @ 9:41 pm |
I recently read a review of this book and I just had to post it here because I honestly can’t explain my feelings about this book any better:
My wife added this book to our collective reading material. When I asked her what she thought, she said she quit reading it. My wife is an educated woman with a college degree and a good judge of many things. After seeing the title and reading the books description I was curious why she felt this way. Now that I have read the entire book I understand. Ms. Iovine’s choice of vocabulary and sarcasm does not come off as humorous but more like she has a chip on her shoulder. You get the impression that doctors and nurses are incompetent degenerates. It reduces the fathers role into nothing more than an insensitive, incapable neanderthal, whose only positive attributes are during conception. She tries to empower pregnant women with a crude almost paganistic sense of selfishness. The advice given seems to come from Ms. Iovine’s own collection of negative experiences. In the book the author advises not to breast feed your child due to how it will make your nipples look. If you choose not to breast feed – that’s fine – that’s every mother’s choice, but for Christ sake do it for some other reason than the fear of your nipple’s appearance. This shallow vanity is on every page. Words like “Fat” and “Ugly” are always paired together throughout the book. Ms. Iovine advice is prioritized more by what her friends might think, than the welfare of her unborn child. Parts of this book are flat out dangerous for inexperienced mothers. If you are a pregnant woman looking for an excuse to go on a nine month self indulged power trip, you will enjoy the book. There were a few crumbs of information but nothing you wont read 101 times elsewhere.
Comment by withBaby#1 — November 21, 2009 @ 8:42 am |