You'll Lose the Baby Weight

(And Other Lies about Pregnancy and Childbirth)

You’ll Lose the Baby Weight is a humorous look at pregnancy and childbirth. The author shares the parts about pregnancy that your doctor doesn’t tell you--like how many times you are asked to pee whether you want to or not, from figuring out if you're pregnant by peeing on a pee stick to every time you go in for your doctor visit. And then there is the time when you are not allowed to pee but are bursting to when you’re five months pregnant and have to drink thirty-two ounces of water for your ultrasound--and it feels like you've drank fifty-five gallons. As she shares stories from her own six pregnancies and births and those of her friends, Dawn cues readers into the important things they need to know, like how they should order their epidural as soon as they see a pink line on the pregnancy test, the unexpected changes your body goes through, and the fact that they will never again sleep through the night uninterrupted. This book even offers advice for fathers-to-be, including a list of things not to do in the delivery room if they don’t want a bedpan thrown at their heads.

With such chapters as "I’m Not a Doctor; I Just Play One on TV" and "Morning Sickness: It Isn’t Just for Breakfast Anymore," each chapter opens with a list of tips--some serious and some not--including things not to be suckered into buying for your baby and the essentials that you really do need. This hilarious book takes readers through nine months of pregnancy and all the accompanying symptoms to labor and delivery and the weeks postpartum. It will have readers doubled over in laughter, as it walks them through pregnancy with sympathetic honesty. While acknowledging that pregnancy is not always easy, the end result of that sweet-smelling, soft baby somehow make it all worth while.