The very first thing I did after getting a positive pregnancy test result was to buy What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Belly Laughs. The first was obvious, the second I think I heard about on Oprah. For someone who hasn’t been pregnant before, reading up seemed very important, especially since the final exam involves pushing something the size of a watermelon out of your vagina. What to Expect reads like a college textbook, and should really be called Ways to Worry Yourself to Death for the Next 6,384 Hours, And Also Eat Your Vegetables. Jenny McCarthy’s book is really just about her personal experience, although she really enjoys trying to gross the reader out, especially with the stuff about pooping on the delivery table. Luckily I had already read that somewhere, so I didn’t pass out from fear. Again. But this left me with nothing to read but my one lonely copy of Fit Pregnancy and the Internet, which is a really good way to end up lying on the floor moaning that your baby is dooooooooomed.

This was my dilema until my wonderful, beautiful, super smart friend and current favorite person in the whole world Myrtle Beach Bum suggest a book to me. It’s called The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki Iovine and it is fantastic. I would almost recommend it as pre-pregnancy reading, especially if you think babies are in your not-too-distant future. It is smart, funny, to the point, and just the thing a pregnant woman needs. Especially since I have zero friends who have been pregnant in the last 20 years to take me to lunch and explain to me that wanting to kill my husband for not emptying the dishwasher is a totally normal feeling, and yes they will help me hide the body. Lifting heavy things is bad for pregnant women.

Tags: birth, concerns, pregnancy