I would characterize this guide as "moderately crunchy"--the Sears are generally anti-intervention but not really pro-home birth (Dr. Sears feels that the maternity system in the US, as opposed to certain countries in Europe, is not set up to safely accommodate it; hospital transfer, for instance, is an issue). They also discuss situations when an epidural can be helpful to the mother. The month-by-month format is perhaps more realistic than the week-by-week, which is fun but results in the authors not having enough to say (as anyone will have noticed who gets those babycenter.com updates telling you your baby is not the size of a "large heirloom tomato"). My criticism is that when they do discuss weeks, they discuss weeks of fetal development, rather than weeks of pregnancy. As pregnancy progresses, it becomes increasingly confusing to have your doctor calling you, for instance, 16 weeks pregnant, while according to the Sears, you're still on week 14.

The Sears generally take a conservative, easy approach to pregnancy--they advice against strenuous exercise (big fans of swimming) and say you might just keep five pounds of baby weight. While their nutrition prescriptions are fairly simple, avoiding the ridiculous prescriptivism of the new What to Expect, they do recommend eating 80 to 100 grams of protein a day--a goal I found absurd and like a full-time job. My doctor told me to just try to get "more" protein and not stress about counting it. And Martha's recipe for pregnancy salad sounded gross (including tuna, cottage cheese, and beans). ( )

Nothing extremely new. Seems to be the same information that I have found in other books. I skimmed this for the sections I needed and did not read the book in it's entirety. ( )

Nothing extremely new. Seems to be the same information that I have found in other books. I skimmed this for the sections I needed and did not read the book in it's entirety. ( )

Another Sears classic. ( )