The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby: A Week-By-Week Guide to Your Pregnancy

Did you know that as early as 12 weeks old, your unborn baby has all the growing senses to know you--to hear the sound of your voice, to suck it's thumb, to be lulled to sleep by your loving rock, to play with you?Our doulas have used this book to share with many clients how to understand, play with and love their babies right from the start. We believe parenting begins at conception, and this is a book that finally shows the science behind the intuition.Blessings,

I bought this book before my first son and found it interesting. There are some ideas in it that are far-fetched, but still thought-provoking. The part that really stood out to me was the gender selection at the beginning of the book. My friend had had two boys and was thinking of trying for a third child (she wanted a girl). She followed the diet and lo and behold, had a girl. I just had my second son and if I can convince my husband to have a third child, I'll try the diet too. This book is not a pregnancy bible, more of just a study aid. Still, I learned a few things and did enjoy the pictures.

As background material for this book, the reader is referred to "The Scientist in the Crib" (Dr. Gopnik, et al; Perrenial, 2001). It offers a fresh and detailed evaluation of the language acquisition process by infants. At about 6 months of age, a critical change seems to occur. The specific pronunciation patterns of the language(s) heard begin to be retained in a very focused manner. Also see "The Monday Tape" (The Snow Water Corporation) at Akilo.com for more insight into this process. This audio tape, one of a series, provides multilingual speech patterns for infants. ... It appears that they should help an infant (birth to age 2) gain good pronunciation skills for many widely used languages.

There's a new book, The Miraculous World of Your Unborn Baby by Nikki Bradford that incorporates prenatal psychological development and bonding as part of "A Week-by-Week Guide to Your Pregnancy". This is now my current top recommendation about the changes of pregnancy. Overall, it's outstanding.Some particularly interesting points:p. 125 - "Labor pain does not come directly from your womb, but is due to ischemia, a lack of blood in the uterine muscles produced by the womb working hard. This hurts for the same reason that a heart attack or angina hurts; lack of oxygen to the muscles, and a buildup of cellular waste products which irritate nerve tissue."I especially love the following paragraph at the end of p. 123:"But perhaps the best news of all is that birth memories are something all future parents can influence positively, for their own children. We do not have to repeat the mistakes previous generations have made. We can, by making the transition of newborns into our world as gentle, loving, and respectful as possible, help ensure that their first -- and lasting -- impressions are good ones."It's only by contrast with the overall excellence that the following points stand out as questionable:p. 92 - Endorphins too large to cross placental barrier? Morphine is known to cross the placental barrier, and it's known that epidurals in a laboring woman change the baby's level of endorphins at birth. I'd like to see some research behind this claim.p. 118 - The discussion of due dates ignores the research that shows the average healthy, well-nourished caucasian woman naturally birthing her first baby will give birth eight days after her due date. That means that half of them don't give birth until *after* eight days past the due date.p. 127 - The picture shows a woman laboring lying flat on her back. This position is almost always significantly more painful to a laboring woman than an upright or side-lying position, and it could possibly cause circulatory problems.p. 134 - In the discussion of how a newborn experiences birth, there is mention of a fear of dying that may go back to feeling unable to breathe immediately after birth. This section ignores the option of leaving the cord intact to continue delivering oxygenated blood to the newborn during the time it takes to convert to breathing air.p. 137 - The picture caption describes the baby as having been gently washed, weighed, and diapered before being wrapped in a soft blanket and placed in his mother's arms. This is amazingly backward for a book about perinatal psychology. I feel quite certain that washing, weighing, diapering and swaddling are all much lower on the baby's priority list than being placed in the mother's arms. This caption also perpetuates the myth that newborns are warmer wrapped in blankets. In fact, since newborns have trouble generating their own body heat, wrapping them in layers of insulation keeps them

I got this book hoping it would have the information that I was looking for. I wanted to have pictures mainly of a developing baby. This book was more than I had hoped. It is beautiful! The week by week guide that shows you "actual" pictures is done with a lot of style. The other parts of the book labor, your newborn, etc. are exceptional. I enjoyed reading this book so much and it gave me some information that I had not gotten any where else. I don't feel that it gave any "negitive" messages or information to cause worry. I am currently pregnant with my second child and I enjoyed the book so much I bought one for a pregnant friend. If you are pregnant or thinking about trying GET THIS BOOK!