cover image You: Having A Baby: The Owner's Manual to a Happy and Healthy Pregnancy

You: Having A Baby: The Owner's Manual to a Happy and Healthy Pregnancy

Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet C. Oz, . . Free Press, $26.99 (464pp) ISBN 978-1-4165-7236-7

Media-star physician authors Roizen and Oz have published no less than six bestsellers beginning with You: The Owner's Manual . Having covered optimal self-health, diet and nutrition, longevity and beauty, they now tackle the issues and questions of parents-to-be. In their familiar straightforward, colloquial and often humorous style, and assisted by ob/gyn Margaret L. McKenzie and other expert writers, they take on pregnancy and birth in this brand-extending volume. Like other pregnancy guides, the book covers all the basics: fertility; risks; prenatal nutrition and supplements; managing stress, “pregnancy brain” and mood; physical symptoms; exercise; sex; choosing a birth plan and medical professional; delivery; the postpartum period; and infant care, along with self-tests, sidebars, food plans and recipes, and content-heavy appendixes. Proceeding topic-by-topic instead of the formulaic week-by-week or month-by-month diary approach of most pregnancy books, it also provides interesting biological and physiological information about hormones, digestion, morning sickness and other maternal-fetal interaction. Although the updated edition of What To Expect When You're Expecting is in many ways a more useful reference, this volume will serve as an excellent compendium. (Dec.)