As a new first-time mom, I aspired to consume as much pregnancy knowledge as I could from the moment I found out I was expecting. I wanted to do everything I could to help my baby develop properly and have a positive birth experience that ends with a healthy little one. And thats exactly what I did. I write this article now as a new mom to a happy, healthy baby girl.
In this article, I will share a review of the 9 pregnancy books I read during my pregnancy. I list the books in order from the book that was most helpful to least helpful to me. I hope that this list of best and worst pregnancy books will help other first-time moms find helpful pregnancy books. It may surprise you to learn that some of the most popular pregnancy books were actually my least favorite reads. For each book below, I include a summary of what to expect within its pages, along with information about its layout, a peek inside the book, and what I liked or disliked about it.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on Amazon. Thank you for your support! Please also keep in mind that this article contains simply my opinions, and yours may differ. I do not claim by any means to be a pregnancy expert, just a person who has had a baby recently and read a lot about pregnancy during that time.
Pregnancy Book List
Click on the links to view and buy the book on Amazon. Scroll down to learn more about each book and why I liked or didn’t like it.
- Your Baby, Your Birth: Hypnobirthing Skills For Every Birth by Hollie de Cruz
- Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong–and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster
- The Mama Natural Week-by-Week Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth by Genevieve Howland
- Your New Pregnancy Bible: The Experts’ Guide to Pregnancy and Early Parenthood by Keith A. Eddleman and Joanne Stone
- 100 Best Foods for Pregnancy by Parragon Books Ltd
- The Healthy Pregnancy Book: Month by Month, Everything You Need to Know from America’s Baby Experts from Sears Parenting Library
- The Whole 9 Months: A Week-By-Week Pregnancy Nutrition Guide with Recipes for a Healthy Start by Jennifer Lang MD and Dana Angelo White MS RD
- What to Expect When You’re Expecting (2008 Version *Newer 2016 version available) by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel
- Fit & Healthy Pregnancy: How to Stay Strong and in Shape for You and Your Baby by Kristina Pinto and Rachel Kramer
+ The book my husband read that’s for first time dads:
We’re Pregnant! The First Time Dad’s Pregnancy Handbook by Adrian Kulp
1. Your Baby, Your Birth: Hypnobirthing Skills For Every Birth by Hollie de Cruz
This is hands-down, my favorite pregnancy book. Don’t let the word Hypnobirthing throw you off – this book does not include the words “You are getting very sleepy…” anywhere in the text. This book about preparing for birth is essentially about empowering you as a woman. It teaches you not to fear birth, but understand it. It reminds women that we are capable and in charge of our births, and that birth can be a positive experience if you go into it with the right mindset.
Hollie de Cruz is a hypnobirthing coach. Your Baby, Your Birth is designed for anyone interested in learning about hypnobirthing, understanding the process of birth, the power of having the right mindset going into birth, and how capable you are as a woman. It includes countless takeaways, activities and tools to help you become better prepared to have an empowering birth experience of your own. The book is broken down into three main sections: pregnancy, birth, and beyond. Each section ends with a positive birth story.
This book, along with the free meditation and affirmation recording links within it (*I highly recommend listening to these often during pregnancy) helped me go into my birth with a positive mindset and have an empowering natural childbirth experience. It is worth noting that hypnobirthing is not just for those hoping to have a natural birth. Hypnobirthing concepts can be applied to all births, including epidurals and cesarean births.
If there is one book you read about birth, make it this one.
Expecting Better is one of the only pregnancy books I found that gives a full explanation while citing reputable studies, for the common things that pregnant women are told not to do, like eat certain types of fish, or drink alcohol. Over and over again during pregnancy, I learned what I should and shouldn’t do during pregnancy, but rarely were the reasons why those things are unacceptable fully explained with sources.
Written by a micro-economist, Expecting Better looks at common pregnancy rules and questions, like ‘how much coffee can I drink?’ and ‘how fast does fertility really fall with age?’, while fully weighing the pros and cons, risks, sharing related studies and eventually, getting to her answer as to how much coffee she believes is safe to drink and the rate in which fertility falls per various age brackets and why.
Expecting Better is my favorite chapter book about pregnancy.
3. The Mama Natural Week-by-Week Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth by Genevieve Howland
As you might imagine given the title of this book, The Mama Natural Week-by-Week Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth is a pregnancy book that focuses on making more informed natural choices, like choosing organic vegetables while pregnant, getting rid of toxic chemical cleaners, and aiming for an intervention-free birth. Each chapter tells you what’s happening with your body, and what’s developing for baby. It also shares what side effects you may be experiencing, like nausea in he first few weeks and different ideas for how to treat it naturally.
This book is great for the more ‘crunchy’ mama’s to-be. It was great for me, but might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I loved the little anecdotes sprinkled throughout it, along with the well-placed illustrations and recipes throughout. Out of the 3 week-by-week formatted pregnancy books I read, this one had the most unique content and was the most fun read.
*Side note: I recommend getting at least one week-by-week pregnancy book. Making it to the next week in pregnancy is a milestone, so it’s fun to have something new to read and learn what is happening both with your changing body, and the developing baby in your belly!
4. Your New Pregnancy Bible: The Experts’ Guide to Pregnancy and Early Parenthood by Keith A. Eddleman and Joanne Stone
Your New Pregnancy Bible reads like a school textbook. I really enjoyed the presentation of this book. I especially found the first and last sections helpful. Here’s why: Unlike all of the other pregnancy literature I was reading, this book went deep into how a baby is formed from the very beginning – I’m talking sperm meeting egg, journeying to the uterus, and how a baby develops from a zygote to a morula to a blastocyst and so on. This book covers birth from more of a scientific point of view. I loved this. I really wanted to understand the inner workings of pregnancy and the baby’s development and this book covered that in depth.
Another aspect of this book I really like is that it went past birth, into what you might expect to see when you newborn arrives, how to care for them, and really great information about breastfeeding (Did you know that your baby gets more watery milk when they start on a breast, and it transitions into more nutrient rich milk as they empty it? That’s why it’s important to fully empty a breast before moving onto the next. Now you know!)
5. 100 Best Foods for Pregnancy by Parragon Books Ltd
100 Best Foods for Pregnancy is my favorite pregnancy food book for a few specific reasons that sets it apart from other books. It’s incredibly well thought through design and layout make it a powerful recipe book that’s more than just recipes. This useful book teaches readers how specific foods effects your body and the development of the growing baby within it. It shares 100 foods in total, showcasing the food in a gorgeous two-page spread (see below). #11 in the book is Quinoa. The left page shares information about Quinoa. Did you know it provides all of the essential amino acids needed, which are crucial for reproduction? (That’s why quinoa can be found in the first section of the book, which features foods that are crucial fertility and conception.) On the right page is a healthy recipe that features it: Quinoa and walnut salad, including a gorgeous full-color picture of the recipe (it looks delicious, by the way).
Admittedly, I didn’t use this book enough during my pregnancy. I moved across the country during my pregnancy, living in corporate housing for a month, then an AirB-n-B for another two months, making it so my pantry was never really stocked for trying fun new recipes… I did however page through this book every once and a while and remind myself that lentils need to be in my diet, as well as spinach, avocados, and a plethora of other rotating foods to make sure my body and my baby were getting nutrients from a rainbow of foods. I plan to further utilize this book for pregnancy number two, given I’m not undergoing a lengthy move again!
6. The Healthy Pregnancy Book: Month by Month, Everything You Need to Know from America’s Baby Experts from Sears Parenting Library
The Healthy Pregnancy Book is similar to book #4 in this list, New Pregnancy Bible, except it focuses primarily on the mom, not the mom and the baby. If you’re only going to read one pregnancy book, this is a good choice as it covers a variety of subjects and does so well. The first section of the book covers everything about how to have a healthy pregnancy, from how and what to eat, healthy weight gain, safe exercise, how to sleep, and practicing self-care. The second half of the book is a month-by-month guide to pregnancy. Here the book highlights FAQ’s and common situations that happen at certain times throughout pregnancy, like spotting during the first month, and how to choose a labor coach and pediatrician later on.
What I like best about this book is how in-depth and educational it is. As someone who read multiple pregnancy books, some tips and Q&A’s are found in all of them, like that Salmon is a good choice of fish for pregnant women. In this book, you learn that “Wild Pacific Salmon is best because Alaskan seafood is grown in the wild in pristine waters, and Alaskan fishery authorities enforce regulations to ensure safe seafood.” They have some of the highest levels of omega-3, and they contain “astaxanthin, one of nature’s most powerful antioxidants for boosting your immune system.” AKA – This book covers a wide variety of pregnancy subjects pretty darn well.
7. The Whole 9 Months: A Week-By-Week Pregnancy Nutrition Guide with Recipes for a Healthy Start by Jennifer Lang MD and Dana Angelo White MS RD
The Whole 9 Months: A Week-By-Week Pregnancy Nutrition Guide with Recipes for a Healthy Start is another good pregnancy food book. It’s probably not what you think, either. It’s not just a recipe book, but a very well thought out, informative book that reminds you of different foods to eat during pregnancy and why.
Part I of the book reviews healthy eating habits and more overarching info, like how to read a label, and what the dirty dozen and clean fifteen are. Part II is broken down by trimester, sharing tables of iron rich food sources for the third trimester, along with helpful answers to questions like “Can I eat flavored yogurt as my source of probiotics?” The answer: You can, but the probiotic content is minimal. A good supplement is a much better option for probiotic bacteria. Part III Shares actual recipes. Only about 10% of the recipes show a photo, though, which is a negative for me. I like to see the recipes I might make. The nutrional content is shared, though, so that’s a plus.
8. What to Expect When You’re Expecting (2008 Version *Newer 2016 version available) by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel
What to Expect When You’re Expecting is a really popular pregnancy book, however, it just wasn’t for me. The book is primarily in a Q&A format that is another week-by-week pregnancy guide. I didn’t love the book because I don’t think the book takes into consideration the anxiety many pregnant women can have about the health of the developing baby inside them. This became obvious to me in the first section of the book: Your Pregnancy Profile… Within the section, it talks about preterm birth, incompetent cervix, obesity, underweight, and eating disorder questions, and so on. All of the negativity in the framing and order of these questions just made my pregnancy anxiety go through the roof. When I was pregnant, I wanted to surround myself with positivity and education. What I didn’t want to focus on was what could go wrong that I had no power over. *Note that this review is for an older version of the book (the 2008 version) and the newer version might be better.
9. Fit & Healthy Pregnancy: How to Stay Strong and in Shape for You and Your Baby by Kristina Pinto and Rachel Kramer
Fit & Healthy Pregnancy is a pregnancy book about you guessed it, exercise while pregnant. Truth be told, many of the other books cover exercise during pregnancy in one of their sections, making this book much less useful. In terms of the actual exercises they share that other books skipped, a book isn’t really the best medium for that type of information. This made the book seem a bit outdated, given I can watch YouTube and follow along with a prenatal yoga instructor to learn safe stretches and so on. Perhaps this book would be more helpful for actual athletes who need more information about staying fit while pregnant, and how to get make into training postpartum. For me, an active person but not an athlete, it wasn’t really necessary.
Hopefully you’ve found this list helpful. If you are here to find a book to gift to a pregnant friend or family member, consider one of the food based books above, or perhaps a pregnancy journal instead.
I was gifted a pregnancy journal during my pregnancy and I thought it was a really thoughtful and useful pregnancy gift. See the journal I was gifted below. I love the layout of the journal: It’s broken up into sections with really sweet quotes about babies and pregnancy. Within each section, you fill in what month of pregnancy you are in. Then you fill out how you are feeling, how your body has changed, what you’re looking forward to, and how you are preparing for the baby. The sections also have other unique prompts as well that match up with how far along you would be when you are filling it out. I like how this journal helps you self reflect on the positive aspects of pregnancy, which is so important during pregnancy. Pregnant women reading this: stay positive and practice self care! You can do this, your body was meant for birth. You got this, mama!
I think a pregnancy journal is a fantastic gift to send someone early in their pregnancy, so they can journal the whole process. If you’re looking to gift someone a bit further along, perhaps opt for Your Baby, Your Birth which focuses on birth more so than pregnancy. Kudos to you for treating the pregnant person in your life!
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