The Pregnancy Book By William Sears M.D. and Martha Sears R.N.

This book is part of the Sears Library of Books. Written by the very popular William and Martha Sears, this book is one of a family of several other books. William Sears is a well respected pediatrician and loved by many parents for his alternative ideas.

I have mixed feelings about this book. In one regard, I’m a fan of Dr. Sears and his wife. They’ve raised eight children. They present some wonderful ideas. I’m sure they have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing. I simply didn’t agree with everything in the book. Not that I fully expected too (if you’ve read our review of The Vaccine Book, this wouldn’t be a surprise). I feel that even though the Sears present alternative ideas at times, it does not mean that every recommendation they make is fully holistic. While it is possible for a medical doctor to be holistic, this is not a doctor’s main training. Therefore, I tend to be a little leery of anything written by a physician because their fundamental beliefs often differ from my own.

Without further ado, I’ll mention the things I enjoyed as well as the parts I didn’t. To begin, this book is very thick. It is not by any means a quick read. What is the saving grace for this book is that it is set up by the months of pregnancy. This makes reading it more enjoyable and easier as you can simply read one section each month and obtain the information necessary for each month.

Each month gives information of what you may be feeling emotionally and physically, changes that may be occurring, concerns you may have, and how the baby is growing. Each section has extras as well. One month contains information about work, another has information of childbirth classes and giving birth, and yet another on nutrition during pregnancy. I would say if you read this book, you will have quite the well rounded amount of information a pregnant women should have. One thing I do feel that is left out however is things to do for various circumstances. This book offers no advice or remedies or ways to handle certain situations. It merely informs, describes, and explains a lot of information. While this can be good, I personally like when a well informed author shares their conclusions about the things in which they have written. This way I can take the information and use it or I can leave behind what I don’t want. For example, each month lists some discomforts of pregnancy. For some of the discomforts, there is advice of what you can do to help, but other times, the authors merely explain what you may be experiencing with no information on what to do about it. So, if you’re having hip pain, and you look in this book, it explains that hip pain is something you may be experiencing. So you think, “Great, at least I know this is normal.” Well, what do you do next? Live with it? Personally, I would rather have information or recommendations on something I could do to help it. This is why I love other pregnancy books written by midwives or herbalists because they usually know a lot more about little tricks of things you can do. Physicians usually have a lack of understanding in these areas because they don’t learn about complementary medicine. There’s a lot of other treatment modalities in our world besides just conventional medicine. Many medications are not a good idea while pregnant, which makes me have to ask if they are really a good idea at any time, but that’s a discussion for another time.

There are also some recommendations that I don’t like in this book. An example would be for every woman to be on an iron supplement. This is bad advice. For starters, a woman’s iron is tested during pregnancy. If it isn’t too low, and the woman has no symptoms of iron deficiency, this is unnecessary. Iron supplements are hard to digest and can easily cause constipation. This is something that can be difficult for a pregnant woman to handle as constipation is already a problem for some pregnant women as well as hemorrhoids. I’m not going to go into detail for every tiny thing I disagreed with, but my advice is simple. Be a bit picky about the information and check it against other sources. There are certainly enough pregnancy books out there.

Some positives for the authors is that they recognize the importance of VBACS and seem to understand episiotomies well. These are two important areas to know if a book is a total loss or not. I would have liked to see a whole lot more discussion of natural childbirth however. There’s a wealth of information on the epidural. I don’t agree with many of the conclusions they’ve drawn about the epidural. Some of the information presented is okay, but a lot of it gives the wrong impression of epidurals. Epidurals really bother me. I think they are a travesty for women. Most who research them feel this way in my opinion. Once you realize the benefits of natural childbirth, you can’t really go back. I like when authors who are knowledgeable can come right out and say this.

I could go on all day as this book is long. I’ll stop here with one closing remark. I would pick this book any day over What to Expect When You’re Expecting, however, just don’t let this be the only pregnancy book you read. There’s more out there that will give you a better perspective of some things. If you read this book, also check out Pushed, Born in the USA, and The Natural Pregnancy Book for further information.