What to Expect When You’re Expecting: 4th Edition
Announcing a brand new, cover-to-cover revision of America’s pregnancy bible. What to Expect When You’re Expecting is a perennial New York Times bestseller and one of USA Today’s 25 most influential books of the past 25 years. It’s read by more than 90% of pregnant women who read a pregnancy book–the most iconic, must-have book for parents-to-be, with over 14.5 million copies in print.

Now comes the Fourth Edition, a new book for a new generation of expectant moms–featuring a new look, a fresh perspective, and a friendlier-than-ever voice. It’s filled with the most up-to-date information reflecting not only what’s new in pregnancy, but what’s relevant to pregnant women. Heidi Murkoff has rewritten every section of the book, answering dozens of new questions and including loads of new asked-for material, such as a detailed week-by-week fetal development section in each of the monthly chapters, an expanded chapter on pre-conception, and a brand new one on carrying multiples. More comprehensive, reassuring, and empathetic than ever, the Fourth Edition incorporates the most recent developments in obstetrics and addresses the most current lifestyle trends (from tattooing and belly piercing to Botox and aromatherapy). There’s more than ever on pregnancy matters practical (including an expanded section on workplace concerns), physical (with more symptoms, more solutions), emotional (more advice on riding the mood roller coaster), nutritional (from low-carb to vegan, from junk food-dependent to caffeine-addicted), and sexual (what’s hot and what’s not in pregnant lovemaking), as well as much more support for that very important partner in parenting, the dad-to-be.

Overflowing with tips, helpful hints, and humor (a pregnant woman’s best friend), this new edition is more accessible and easier to use than ever before. It’s everything parents-to-be have come to expect from What to Expect… only better.

So what sent me back to recreate What to Expect–for a fourth time? Today, there’s definitely no lack of information on pregnancy. In fact there’s more information than ever before (a quick online search of pregnancy or a glance at pages and pages of pregnancy and parenting options right here on Amazon will clue you in on that). But often what’s still hard to find is the right kind of information. Information that’s accurate yet empathetic, reassuring yet realistic–that empowers you, but doesn’t overwhelm or confuse you, that guides you but doesn’t dictate to you. And it’s not just about the right information, it’s about information that’s presented in the way that’s most helpful–easy to access, easy to digest, easy to use. It’s about information that makes your pregnant life less stressful–more enjoyable, and, well, easier.

The fourth edition is a new What To Expect for a new generation of readers–you!–and I’m excited to say it’s the best What To Expect yet. It’s packed with all new information, of course (since things tend to change quickly in the baby-making and baby-delivering business–something you’re probably all too aware of already if you’ve made more than one trip to the birthing room). But it doesn’t only take into account what’s new in obstetrics and what’s new in pregnancy; it takes into account what’s relevant to pregnant women now. Lifestyle. Working. Eating on the run. Juggling the pregnant life with real life. Keeping up with relationships. Birthing options that are family friendly and pregnancy care that incorporates the best that complimentary and alternative medicine has to offer. Managing multiples (which more and more moms are carrying). Sorting out the information from the misinformation–the reality from the hype, fact from Internet legend.

The fourth edition also takes into account how you likely use books these days, so the format is even more accessible than ever. More geared to in-the-moment, find-it-in-a-flash reading.

Most important of all, the fourth edition celebrates pregnancy. I have a passion for pregnancy, and always have. I love moms, I love dads, and I love babies. But everything about this fourth edition from the happy, excited mom-to-be on the cover, proudly caressing her beautiful belly and its even more beautiful contents, to the adorable week-by-week description of the making of your baby, to the positive (yet realistic), mom-to-mom tone throughout–this fourth edition is not just an explanation of those 9 amazing (though often bewildering) months you have ahead of you. It’s a celebration of them.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting fourth edition is everything moms and dads have come to expect from What to Expect… only better. And I can’t wait to start sharing it with you.

I guess you can say–I’m a proud mama all over again.

–Heidi Murkoff

What to Expect: Eating Well When You’re Expecting

What to Expect the First Year

The What to Expect Pregnancy Journal & Organizer

Author: Heidi Murkoff, Sharon Mazel
Paperback:  616 pages
Company: Workman Publishing Company  (2008-04-10)
ISBN: 0761148574
List Price: $14.95
Amazon Price: $5.00
Used Price: $5.35

The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country’s recent shames and devastations–the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions–in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940.

The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads’ refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: “They’re a-workin’ away at our spirits. They’re a tryin’ to make us cringe an’ crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin’ to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on’y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin’ a sock at a cop. They’re workin’ on our decency.”

The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the “Okies,” is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: “You got to have patience. Why, Tom–us people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people–we go on.” It’s almost as if she’s talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck’s characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book’s final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon–Rosasharn, as they call her–the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. “‘You got to,’” she says, simply. And so do we all. –Melanie Rehak

Author: John Steinbeck
Paperback:  464 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics)  (2002-01-08) (2002-01-03)
ISBN: 0142000663
List Price: $16.00
Amazon Price: $9.02
Used Price: $6.50

The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child (Sears Parenting Library)
Author: Robert Sears
Paperback:  304 pages
Company: Little, Brown and Company  (2007-10-22)
ISBN: 0316017507
List Price: $13.99
Amazon Price: $6.98
Used Price: $6.99

The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness

Author: J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teasdale, Zindel V. Segal, Jon Kabat-Zinn
Paperback:  273 pages
Company: The Guilford Press  (2007-06-01)
ISBN: 1593851286
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $12.30
Used Price: $11.32