The Fertility Journal by Editors of Conceive Magazine
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
The Fertility Journal / 978-0-8118-6245-5
It's funny how book titles influence what a reader expects from a book. If this had been titled "The Fertility Journal: A Day-by-Day Notebook to Write in While Waiting To Get Pregnant", then I probably wouldn't have bought it, but if I *had* bought it, I wouldn't be rating it so harshly. But the title here is "The Fertility Journal: A Day-by-Day Guide to GETTING Pregnant", and that information just isn't here.
Or perhaps that isn't fair. There's a very tiny amount of information on getting pregnant here, but what very little there is here could be found by navigating to Google, typing in "basal", and hitting the random search results button. If you have put even the least amount of thought into getting pregnant, then you already have all the information that this notebook contains.
So what is this notebook good for? Well, it can function as a day planner - if you don't have one already - while you're waiting to conceive. And there's quite a few "when you DO get pregnant, you need to be aware of..." information sidebars scattered through the pages - not enough to write home about, and certainly nothing containing information you probably haven't already read elsewhere, but enough to make me wonder why they didn't title the book "looking ahead to pregnancy" instead of "guide to getting pregnant", but I should stop beating that dead horse, I suppose.
Most of the medical advice is questionable, at best. I had to hoot at the section that advised you to ignore "your friend's doctor" and only listen to your doctor in case of conflicting advice, because *your* doctor knows what s/he's doing. Apparently "get a second opinion" is considered controversial advice nowadays.
Really, if you're trying to get pregnant, this notebook may do you more harm than good - the sheer dearth of information on how to get pregnant "faster" may be discouraging to women who were hoping for a little more helpful information on how to game the odds other than the old "every other day, and check your basal temperature" information that every website contains. If you just really need a pregnancy-themed day-planner, then go ahead and buy this, but at $15 bucks a pop, you'd be better off with a plain notebook, in my opinion, and you wouldn't have to deal with three whole chapters on dieting with such helpful tips as "write down every diet you've ever followed and if it worked". (Because starting a new diet is SO low-stress and so good for your self-esteem and sex drive when you're trying to conceive.)
~ Ana Mardoll
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