What to Expect when you're Expecting - Arlene Eisenberg, Heidi E Murkoff, Sandee E Hathaway

First time round this book was invaluable. I read it most days and it was a good source of reference. I didnt have the internet back then and hadnt found mumsnet.

Second time round, four years later, I brought another copy and I lent my original copy out and it wasnt returned. I havent used it as much as first time at all and think the information can be easy obtained elsewhere.

This should really only be considered a reference book if you think you can't get the answers from anywhere else.

It is super serious, really dull and lists everything that could happen to you. I found it really depressing and it is currently hidden away in a bottom drawer somewhere.

I tried reading it when I first got pregnant but soon threw it down and just got on with being pregnant myself!

I thought this was a brilliant book, really detailed and answered a lot of the questions that really worried you in the middle of the night. My husband read the 'what to expect when your wife is expecting' and that was great too - very funny aswell.

You can actually win this book at the moment on http://www.simplymaternity.co.uk/offers/like-our-facebook-page-and-win/. Great idea for a fab book.

I didn't find this invaluable, I found it either infuriating or anxiety-increasing.

The Q&A layout is stylistically a problem for me as I found the tone patronising, think agony aunt page and the 'replies' are correspondingly superficial. Common knowledge, or talking to friends about their experiences meant no new information was available, although finding that out was a struggle, as there not to my mind a satisfactory structure.

The idiot Q&A are arranged loosely week by week with digressions added apparently at random. A sprawl of information to trawl through that could have been better dealt with by theme.

The only new information to me was a few terrible things that can go wrong, that frankly, you're better off not knowing about. After waking my husband twice in the night in tears because nothing I'd read had reassured me in the least, we sold this on Amazon.

If you've no idea at all, then this might give you some basic pointers but not more than talking to friends and family did. My advice is to find a lovely book with lots of good pictures and POSITIVE information - geeky things about development to get you excited about the process work for me. Don't feel you need to be too informed about all the things that can go wrong. Go with the flow as much as you can. If the book doesn't make you feel positive, don't read it and find one that does!

I must say as a first timer I found this invaluable. It's set out neatly in a Q&A fashion so it's easy to skip the bits that are irrelevant for you.

Invaluable - highly recommend it :)