book review

I have to talk about this book, and besides, Shannon's not the only family member who can do reviews!

Naturally with your first pregnancy there's a lot happening with your body that you're just not sure whether it should or not. Successive pregnancies must be a doddle in comparison. After a few weeks of knowing I was pregnant I wanted to buy one of those books that can help guide you through the 9 months of this body and mind changing journey.

So off I trundle to my local bookstores, only to find that most of the books were about what to do with baby once it's born. They also had cutesy vomitty pictures of angelic little babies, yeah right.....

Then to my relief I spotted Up the Duff by Kaz Cooke. Kaz is a writer and cartoonist, this book came about as a result of her own first pregnancy and the lack of realistic books about it. Each chapter is based on each week of pregnancy, and also goes beyond to when baby arrives home. A lot of books stop at birth. The start of each chapter tells you 'what's going on' and then gives an excerpt from Hermoine's diary, which is loosely based on Kaz's own journal and is hilarious.

This is the beauty of this book, it always tells you that you can expect a certain thing to be happening but not to be worried if it doesn't straight away. The best example I can think of at the moment is when you first feel baby's movements, this is mentioned at Week 18 but also states that some women don't feel it till later. (this example is fresh in my mind because I've been feeling baby tickle me this week and hey, I am at 18 weeks!)

Since we've gone public with our baby news, so many friends have told me to get this book (more unsolicited advice, it's amazing the amount of things I HAVE to do or be because they say so). Thankfully I can smugly say that I already have it. Even my obstetrician says it's a great book, so there you go.

So before baby is born I need to get this book methinks -
And then I shall be complete.

To change the subject entirely, it's by birthday next week and I'm turning the big 4 - 0. We're having a garden party on Sunday arvo, weather permitting. Rain, rain and more rain has been forecast. Still, hopefully I'll have some pretty pictures of Mum's garden to post next week.