YOUR PREGNANCY COMPANION
Essential information, practical advice and natural remedies to guide you from pre-conception through delivery
By Sheila Lavery & Pippa Duncan
Publisher: MPH Publishing

This book attempts to provide the essential information, practical advice and natural remedies to guide you from pre-conception through delivery – that's a tall order. While this book does offer some natural remedies, it doesn't feature enough essential information and practical advice.

Your Pregnancy Companion is catered to those who love meditation, yoga and alternative healing methods.

While the introduction is devoted to natural aids for pregnancy and it includes meditation, yoga, aromatherapy, homeopathy and acupressure, the rest of the book only emphasises meditation. It would have been better if there were aromatherapy, yoga and acupressure options through the three trimesters as well.

There is, however, a lot of focus on meditation for each aspect of having a child – pre-conception, when trying to conceive, during pregnancy and at labour.

The book does cover foods to eat and exercise while trying to conceive, but I found the information glossed over. It's everything that is available in other, better books as well as information available online.

For example, when it comes to exercise, there wasn't information on which exercises could be harmful during the period of conception or while trying to conceive.

Among the interesting inclusions is the information on sexual positions and fertility signs as well as fertility options when you can't conceive naturally in the chapter on conception.

In the pregnancy chapter, the authors jump straight into the first trimester which also covers pregnancy tests, finding out you're pregnant, calculating your due date, diet, exercise and antenatal tests.

Strangely, it also throws in handling single motherhood and impending parenthood. I'm not sure how that fits in in this book – perhaps it would have been better to explore these separately in another chapter or book.

Through the chapters on the next two trimesters, the authors go through the same things – what to eat, exercises that will help, what to do about symptoms and antenatal issues.

The chapter on labour and delivery includes preparing for your baby's birth, packing for the hospital, signs of labour, contractions, pain relief and stages of childbirth.

Along the way, in each chapter there is something called “Mini visualisation” which helps the reader meditate and focus on something to help you through this period.

Having reviewed several different books on the subjects of fertility, conception, pregnancy and labour, I find it hard to recommend this book.

It comes up short on all areas by trying to cover everything in one small book. It would have been better if the authors had chosen one particular area to cover comprehensively.

By trying to do it all, the book fails to give enough information and in that sense cannot be an essential pregnancy companion.

The over-emphasis on meditation might appeal to some but most pregnant women will probably not find it comforting.

However, if you are into meditation and yoga, you will find that that is one thing this book offers that many others don't as you go through conception, pregnancy and labour.

I think your money would be better spent buying 3-4 books that focus on the different areas you are looking at rather than one that glosses over everything and tries to jam it all in one book.