Your Over-35 Week-By-Week Pregnancy Guide: All the Answers to All Your Questions about Pregnancy, Birth, and Your Developing Baby

I found this book so much more helpful than the "What to Expect" books, and not nearly as alarmist. Since I was pregnant with my first child at the age of 35, it was nice to have something that was really accessible -- the format was great too, and made it very easy to find information on specific weeks, or specific subjects. This is the only pregnancy book that I bought, and it was the only one that I felt I needed.

This book was a lifeline for me during my last pregnancy. Although it was my 4th time expecting a baby, being over 35 does change the way you react both physically and emotionally to pregnancy. The book is meant to be personalized to your particular pregnancy, with spaces for you to write the dates and record your emotions and physical feelings each week. The author is an over 35 mother herself and she discusses her personal history of loss and infertility just as if she were a close personal friend helping you navigate your own pregnancy. The analogies to help you picture what your baby looks like are especially innovative (she uses food items as examples of weight and length) and really gives you a peek into what's happening inside you when you can't actually see it yourself.

This is the one book I turned to again & again during my pregnancy, particularly during the latter half of the pregnancy. There is a chapter for each week of pregnancy, and over the course of forty weeks, the book covers all the topics. I especially enjoyed the sketches of a pregnant woman's body at different stages of the pregnancy, showing the size & position of the uterus and the fetus, and the commentaries about the size of the baby at different times pregnancy (most of which relate to food -- your baby is now the size of a pea, a grapefruit, a banana, a loaf of zucchini bread, etc.) The book also features plenty of photographs of pregnant women of all shapes & sizes, and you get a sense that Dr. Shananan really admires their beauty and their "pregnancy glow." I thought that the book celebrated pregnancy -- one of the other reviewers found that the book was too scary, talking about all of the risks of pregnancy, but I found it to be much less so than many of the other books on the market. Dr. Shanahan discusses risks realistically (she had three miscarriages before her daughter was born), but she doesn't dwell on them. Dr. Shanahan is very candid in her discussions of her own pregnancy -- like a friend telling you about her own choices, what she would have done differently, and discussing those areas in which she didn't really follow her own advice. For example, she discusses her teenage bout with eating disorders that led her to gain less weight than she should have during pregnancy, and the small (but perfectly healthy) baby that resulted. There is a picture of her in the delivery room with her baby five minutes after birth, looking like she doesn't have a clue about what to do next. She shares her journal entries to the baby, written while pregnant, about how she's not going to feed her baby fast food or stick her in front of the TV. Obviously, she knows her stuff -- but she's also a real person and her willingness to show that makes the book all the more enjoyable.

I wonder if bsobwick was reading a different book than I was since I found this book to be unusual in how positive it was -- a couple of the other over 35 pregnancy books out there really did scare me! Yes, there are discussions of what can go wrong, but in every chapter (I'm up to week 32) there is affirmation of how blessed a time pregnancy is.My husband is a doctor and although he is not an ob, he has commented on how accurate the medical information is. My own doctor recommended this book to me. I may be highly educated (I'm a lawyer), but I don't know medicine, so I appreciate how this book is written in laywoman's terms and is understandable without being condescending.

My sister is a patient of Dr Shanahan and sent me her book even though I'm only 25. I think it is great! It is so full of information, and I like reading about what my baby is doing each week. a few of the chapters are geared to older women, but most of the book applies to anyone. I like the question and answer sections, and the ultrasound pictures are really cool. If I didn't live so far away in Tennessee I'd like to have Dr Shanahan as my doctor.