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How exactly did this become a "classic" anyway? I agree with most of the negative reviews here--this book is extremely annoying and filled with many pieces of advice (such as the diet stuff) that are just plain nonsense from absolutely any viewpoint. I appreciated the month-by-month summaries at the head of each chapter, but that was about it. The tone is judgmental, sexist, paranoid and patronizing. In many cases the assumption is made that all women have a rather peculiar perspective on some issue (which I suppose is the authors' perspective). Then this same peculiar perspective drives ALL of the questions on an issue, to the exclusion of the fact that they are probably speaking to the actual experiences of very few women. For example, my baby was in a somewhat transverse lie with a large head and I (after 20 hrs of labor and 4 of pushing) eventually had a needed and much appreciated C-section: I was pleased as punch to have the baby out, both of us healthy and him immediately able to nurse. I now have two very lovely kids to show for my pregnancies. But the authors of this book assume that I automatically must be feeling like a failure as a woman for not having a vaginal birth, or that I will resent the baby or fail to bond with it because of which hole it came out. How bizarre and absurd. As many other people have noted, I received this book as a gift about the time I told folks my pregnancy test came up positive. I did actually read this whole book (I had to be off of my feet for part of pregnancy, so had some time on my hands after all) I have to say that, after the 7 or 8 references I found to knitting in place of all of the destructive things I MUST be wanting to do with my body, it started to seem like a big joke. And at about that point the insurance company sent the Mayo Clinic's Complete Book of Pregnancy--just the basics but still not as annoying as THIS book! Women, can we make a rule here and just stop giving this #$%! book to other people when they become pregnant?