"Up the Duff" by Kaz Cooke

An hilarious - yet informative - week by week breakdown of pregnancy. Completely lacking in assumptions about the circumstances of the reader - you could be single, married, have a same-sex partner, or whatever, and you shouldn't feel too excluded reading this book (tell me if I'm wrong here, if you have found otherwise). Not like some of the more traditional pregnancy books/mags full of pictures of hetero couples in bike pants rehearsing birthing positions as if they are on a higher plane and coping perfectly well with the totally freaky set of circumstances they find themselves in. (Despite being a hetero-married-up-the-duff woman, that is not the sort of pregnancy book I want to read).

Each week you get a run down of what is happening inside, and amusing fictional diary of a pregnant character to make you laugh, then a factual section that summarises useful info and where you can go to get more information. I got as far as week 36 before the info on giving birth, epidurals and pain was getting a bit much for me - now I'll just wait until I'm ready to read those bits - but the book has a whole lot of helpful prompts... hints that you should organise an appointment something for 4-5 weeks time, that you should think about how you feel about testing for downs syndrome etc, or that you really need to have somewhere sorted for giving birth to the baby soon.

A fun and informative read.