Pilates or The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy

Pilates: Achieving Your Potential for Health, Strength, Flexibility, and Stamina

Author: Joyce Gavin

Pilates is a unique and increasingly popular form of exercise that will help you to develop suppleness and strength as well as improve your posture and your general sense of health and well-being. This comprehensive guide to this effective system of exercise includes:

An analysis of posture and body type

The principles of good Pilates practice

Essential safety tips and information

Book review: Foods of Sicily and Sardinia and the Smaller Islands or Diabetes Menu Cookbook

The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy

Author: Vicki Iovin

Your doctor gives you medical advice.

Your mother buys you baby clothes.

But who can give you the real skinny when you're pregnant?

Your girlfriends, of course -- at least, the ones who've been through the exhilaration and exhaustion, the agony and ecstasy of pregnancy. Four-time delivery room veteran Vicki lovine talks to you the way that only a best friend can-in the book that will go the whole nine months for every mother-to-be. Here is straight talk about those little things that are too strange or embarrassing to ask anyone about, practical tips and hilarious takes on everything pregnant. From learning you're expecting ("Oh my god, how do I get out of this?") to the day your newborn arrives ("You mean I have to take the baby home with me?"), she gives you the lowdown on:

• WHAT REALLY HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY -- from morning sickness to eating everything in sight, what to expect when going from being a babe to having one.
• COMMON FEARS AND PARANOIA -- from turning into your mother to leaving the baby on the car roof, rest assured your anxieties are perfectly normal.
• THE MANY MOODS OF PREGNANCY -- or why you're so irritable/distracted/tired/lightheaded (or at least, more than usual).
• THE PREGNANCY YENTAS -- from your mom to his mom, they think they know everything -- and they don't hesitate to tell you what you're doing wrong. Girlfriend, take heart: if it's working for you, then you're doing just fine.
• HOW TO HAVE SEX DURING PREGNANCY, SHOULD YOU SO DESIRE -- bearing in mind you'll have no interest afterward.
• LOOKING AND FEELING YOUR BEST -- cautionary style tips from your best friend, who really wouldtell you if your perky newmom haircut makes you look like a pinheaded whale.

When you need a reassuring voice or just a few good belly laughs, turn to The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy.

Publishers Weekly

For first-time mothers-to-be, this candid, funny and very reassuring guide to pregnancy is just what the doctor ordered-or would if he/she knew about it. Iovine, who has had four babies and who seemingly has girlfriends with many more, believes that women learn the really valuable things about pregnancy from other women. Since too few women in today's mobile society have a close circle of experienced female friends to turn to, Iovine's sharing of her own and her friends' experiences and knowledge fills a genuine need for comforting, straightforward, non-euphemistic woman-talk. Without stepping on any medical toes, and in language that is neither technical nor cutesy, she tackles morning sickness, swollen breasts, exercises, stretch marks, sex during and after pregnancy, delivery and just about everything else, from maternity clothing to bladder behavior. Iovine anticipates every conceivable question, and her responses are warm, wise and witty. (Oct.)