5.0 out of 5 stars
A friendly companion to pregnancy, June 13, 2010
This review is from: Pregnancy Diary: A Christian Mother's Reflections (Paperback)
This is a week by week pregnancy diary by a Catholic mother, aged 42 at time of this her fourth pregnancy. It feels very much like thumbing through a diary. It's divided into trimesters, then subdivided into weeks with most entries given specific dates (like Monday, February 28). There isn't an entry for every day. Some weeks have only one entry. Some have two or three or four or five.
It also felt like reading a blog, in a way. It was intimate, personal, often humorous. I liked the week by week format that often started with updates on the baby, included commentary on how she is feeling, what is going on with her family, and then moves to some reflection on a larger issue such as IVF or home births.
There is plenty of nitty-gritty about her blood tests, various aches and pains, changing bra sizes, maternity clothes shopping and, at the end, cervical dilation and details of labor. But there is also plenty of looking at the bigger picture: reflections on the Psalms, the ethics of genetic testing, morning sickness, parenting, c-sections, faith.
For example, I love the way in week 36 she jumped from talking about breech babies and whether her OB will do an external version to describing her children playing with a cardboard box that had contained a piece of furniture delivered to a neighbor.
Arnold is from New Zealand and her father is an OB and she has strong opinions about obstetric practice in the US seen from the point of view of an outsider. She decries unnecessary c-sections; but also strongly opposes home births. She has a strong Catholic faith and affirms Church teachings on the sanctity of life. However, I think you could disagree with her on many of those points and still enjoy this book.
There just aren't that many books out there about pregnancy from a specifically Catholic perspective, which is a shame. I'd recommend this to any of my Catholic or Christian friends whether they are facing a first pregnancy or a tenth.
I've noticed that I feel especially close to those of my friends who have been pregnant at the same time as I have. There is a deep bond that comes about when you share that experience. I always remember those babies with especial fondness, feeling a certain degree of kinship, as if they were cousins to the child I was carrying at the time. I already feel a similar kinship with Mary Arnold and I'm not even pregnant right now. I imagine if I read this book while expecting it would really touch me.
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