Pregnancy Sucks for Men: What to do when your miracle makes you BOTH miserable, by Jeff Kimes

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I can officially say that I am a good husband. Yes, I can stand in line with the great ones. What’s more is that I didn’t have to risk my life to earn this prestigious and rare title. There were no heroic efforts or feats of derring-do. You see, I did exactly what I supposed to do; I read a book about my wife’s pregnancy while she was pregnant.

The book I read was Pregnancy Sucks: For Men. It was a great read and I loved it. Here’s why:

It was no easy to task to find a pregnancy book I could relate to. There are literally bookshelves, libraries even, filled with pages and pages of text written about birth and delivery. There are sections in bookstores containing mountains of books about pregnancy and for every one hundred of the books intended for girls only, there is one book marketed for guys. Most of them are terribly-written and offer little practical information. In fact, at this point in time most are out-of-date.

Pregnancy Sucks: For Men is not like this at all.

I found it in Barnes and Noble one day after deciding I was going to be a good and faithful husband by reading a book about pregnancy. Or, I probably realized that I was about to walk into a hornet’s nest of a situation and wanted evidence to remind Jacki of what a great husband I was as the due date inched closer and the hormones quickly spun out of control. I picked up the book and started reading. In place of the cold, dry information found in most of the books, there is a distinct and discernible voice behind the letters and words. When reading this book, it almost feels like my dad or best friend is telling me things I need to know and things for which I need to be prepared.

I read a few pages, closed the book so I wouldn’t ruin it, walked over the cash register and purchased it.

As I started to read, I noticed the book is conversational and isn’t afraid to say things it probably shouldn’t at times. In fact, I wonder how many times the author found himself in the doghouse after his wife realized he revealed more than he was supposed to reveal about her pregnancy. The stories were entertaining and, most of the time, I was able to empathize with what the author went through.

That seems to be the single biggest reason why I loved this book. Everything about it  seemed to echo my own experiences thus far as the husband of a pregnant woman. There is a sense of being coached by a friend who’s been through it before. I loved that.

The book itself is broken up smartly into different chapters that reflect each stage of the baby-making process: conception, months 1-9 and one chapter dedicated to after the baby is born. The chapters lined up PERFECTLY with what was happening in my life and my wife’s pregnancy. I read a chapter every month and used the book as a guidebook/preparation manual for the craziness that was about to unfold. I probably could have read it all in one afternoon, but I figured I’d forget most of it if I didn’t spread out the reading over time.

There is great advice on cooking (which I’m terrible at), cleaning, and other “womanly” chores that I normally feel somewhat less than motivated to help Jacki with. The author breaks down, in easy-to-understand terms, what’s going on in your wife’s body and what you can do to help avoid a DEFCON 1 situation. It’s a fresh relief after being so clueless in the beginning of this pregnancy. Now, I feel like an expert!

Of course, for all the good things I loved about the book, there were a couple of things I didn’t like. They were mostly pet peeves. The author, at times, fell back on stereotypical sports metaphors. Also, because of the length, some things are only glossed over. This is both a blessing (doesn’t take long to read) and a curse (you don’t get the full information sometimes). And, there is surprisingly little out-of-date information, despite a 2004 publish date, but at times talk about video tapes and pay phones reminds you that the book is older than it seems.

Despite these nitpicks, I’d heartily recommend the book to anyone who asks. It’s funny, short and a great substitute for a friend who has gone through it all before.

To wrap it up, I think this book is, ultimately, for guys who don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into. And, If you’ve got a pregnant wife, you should already know this means you.

**Note from Jacki: Awhile back, I reviewed Pregnancy Sucks, which was written by Joanne Kimes, Jeff’s wife.

The Book: The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through my Childhood, by Bill Bryson

The Story: Although he is known for his travel memoirs, Bill Bryson decided to take us on a trip through his childhood in this one.

Bill Bryson grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s in the midwest.  He is nostalgic and sweet about little things: comic books, color tv, escalators, the onset of prepackaged food, lincoln logs, stuff like that, and about big things: the space race, the evolution of the suburbs, education, baseball*.

He combines his personal memories with data and facts about what was going on through this period to give a good solid look at 20 years of America’s past.

What I Thought: I’ve had a thing for Bill Bryson for a long time.  I was so excited when my mom passed this on to me after reading it that I’m pretty sure I actually squealed.  So frigging good.

I cannot even tell you how many times I was laying on the couch reading and laughing loud enough that Shaun would make me read the part to him.  I really couldn’t help it. I had to set it down a few times because I was laughing so hard.  Usually this happened when people got hurt or embarrassed.  You’ll be happy to know that both of these things happen a lot.

I think the thing that sets this apart and makes it really good is not the humor even though it was really funny. It’s the charm.  I’m young and still get a little nostalgic when I look back on my childhood.  Reading a good writer flesh this out is charming and sweet.  The innocence of his childhood and his love for that time in his life and his family and friends just comes through the pages and for me it was really touching.

There are quite a few racist and sexist bits mixed in, but generally he admitted right off that he was about to be a little bit racist or sexist.  Not sure if that makes it better, but it didn’t detract from the book for me. I just felt like that was how he was raised and if the rest of the book can be filtered through a lens of “childhood,” these bits probably should be too.

Conclusion: I’m not sure how many baby boomers I have reading my blog, but if you’re one of them: get this book right now.  So good.  Even if you aren’t a baby  boomer, there is really good stuff here. You’ll love it. Go get it. This probably isn’t his best work, but I think it’s worth the read, without a doubt.

*This is the worst constructed sentence I’ve ever written. Maybe it is the worst constructed sentence I’ve ever seen.  After I wrote it, I reread and realized how truly awful it was, but just wanted you to be able to enjoy it like I did.  You’re welcome.

I was shocked at how similar his story is to the Whiskey Robber story that I just reviewed yesterday.

Sometimes it seems like after I read about something, I notice it everywhere, but this is just uncanny.

Here’s the story: Barefoot Bandit: Folk Hero or Crook.

Wild.

The Book: Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts, by Julian Rubinstein

The Story: This is the story of Attila Ambrus a guy who snuck into Hungary in the 1990’s and kind of stumbled into a job as a professional ice hockey player.  Because he was not great at hockey, he ended up just being the janitor at times and not having enough money to get by.  He decided, on a whim, to take up another profession:  robbing banks and post offices.  At first he is just kinda running in, demanding money and hoping for the best.  Eventually he gets pretty good and becomes kind of this icon of prosperity and people love him.  Somewhere in there, he also manages to have some girlfriends and smuggle pelts from Transylvania.  I’m not even kidding.

Did I mention that this is non-fiction?

What I Thought: The first hundred or so pages of this were really hard for me.  It even made me get whiney because I really did want it to be good.  I couldn’t really get a good feel for the characters and I was kind of bored with the plot.

Or maybe I was just in a cranky mood, because once this picked up for me, I fell totally in love.  I got into Attila’s antics and even though he was robbing banks, I really really wanted him to keep doing well.  I cracked up as he got totally hammered and went in to rob banks and I was rooting for him with these crazy women that he kept dating.  That connection to Attila was, for me, the highlight of the book.  I’m not sure if the author got to do a lot of interviews with Attila or what, but he really managed to capture a real person and it made this book so enjoyable.

I had to remind myself half a million times that this is a true story.  I don’t want to give anything away, but some of the things that happen seriously made my jaw drop.   The level of police corruption and incompetence that allowed Attila to continue his robbing as long as he could became hilarious at a point and was almost more unbelievable than the stunts that Attila was pulling.

Conclusion: A fun non-fiction book that reads more like a novel.  Kind of a “man book” in how it is written, but really does keep your attention. A fun read that you can pass off to your husband knowing that he’ll like it too.

The Book: Same Kind of Different As Me: A modern-day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together, by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

The Story: Denver Moore and Ron Hall really could not have led lives that were more opposite than the ones that they were leading:  Denver was a former share-cropper (pretty much a slave) who was living in a shelter and Ron was a super-rich art dealer.

Ron’s wife Deborah had a real heart for the homeless and started working at the shelter where Denver was living.  He was the meanest, toughest, most hard-to-reach man there, but for whatever reason, Deborah felt really drawn to him and encouraged Ron to start a friendship with him.  At first, Ron really did just pursue Denver because his wife wanted him to, but over time it turned into a true friendship.

In alternating chapters, Ron and Denver both talk a lot about how they felt about this new friendship.  Ron was blown away that he could love someone so different than himself.  Denver was touched and truly changed by the fact that Ron saw value in him and trusted him.

Faced with a horrible circumstance,  Ron and Denver’s friendship continues to grow deeper as they learn to lean on each other.

What I Thought: No where on the book jacket did it say that this was a straight-up religious non-fiction book.  I had no idea.  I am a Christian and “get” that part of the story so it didn’t annoy me, but I just want to warn you right off that if that kind of thing gets under your skin, you’ll just want to skip this.  Faith and Jesus and church and Heaven come up over and over and over.

That being said, I was sort of blown away by this book.

Initially I was just amazed at Denver’s life up to this point.  I had heard of share-cropping but wasn’t entirely sure what that meant and surely didn’t know that it went on as recently as the 60’s and 70’s.  I was amazed when he said that he had no idea that WWII, Korea or the Vietnam War had ever happened- he was totally separated from the rest of the world- but just living in Louisiana.  Totally wild.  I am not sure if he is literate now or if he just did his part of the book orally and had someone transcribe it, but his “accent” comes through clearly in his chapters and I really did feel like I could hear his voice by the end.

Ron’s past was less interesting and to be perfectly honest, I never really liked him.  I was touched by his relationship with his wife, but as far as him as a person… eh.  I felt like his devotion to Christianity was a little bit… off.  He admitted that when he was younger he really did the “religion thing” to appease his wife, but from the book, I felt like he was like that straight to the end.  I don’t want to be quick to judge, but he just never seemed real to me like Denver did.

Their friendship and their story together was kind of wonderful.  At one point, Ron’s daughter needs help moving some stuff and he can’t do it.  Denver offers to do it with his newly acquired driver’s license.  He said he was even kind of joking- it was something like an 800 mile trip and he didn’t even have a car.  Ron handed him a few hundred dollars and the keys to his truck.  This was a big turning point not only in their friendship but in Denver’s life.  Never had anyone just trusted him with their money and their stuff and their family.  It gave him worth and he started believing in himself.  Kind of beautiful.

The part that just about destroyed me though was Deborah getting sicker and sicker.  I think I need to stop reading books about spouses dying.  I’ve been hovering over Shaun for weeks and checking on him all the time and trying to force him to go to the doctor for no reason.  I also make him hug me about every 10 seconds. I need to read a happy book or two.  Seriously.  Anyway, Deborah getting sick was awful.  Reading it from Ron’s point of view was just about more than I could take.  I ugly-cried.

The quote that the book title comes from is kind of beautiful. I dog-eared the page so I could share: “I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn’t ever gon’ have no kind a’ future. But I found out everybody’s different – the same kind of different as me. We’re all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us. The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain’t no final restin place. So in a way, we is all homeless – just workin our way toward home.”

Conclusion: Seriously a beautiful, gut-wrenching story.  Know going into it that there’s going to be a lot of religion presented and just be ready for it.  I don’t think it’s presented in a shove-it-down-your-throat kind of way, but it is there.  Also, if you see your significant other reading this, expect that they’ll hover for a few days and need lots of hugs.

The Book: Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, by Norman Ollestad

The Story: Yet another survival story.  That’s kind of been my “thing” for the last month or so, no idea why.  I don’t have any more in my pile, so this may be my last one for awhile, but I’ve probably read 5 or so recently. Weird.

Anyway, in this one, the narrator (who was 11 at the time), his father, and his father’s girlfriend are all on a small airplane when the pilot slams them into the side of a mountain.  There is a pretty bad storm going on and Norman is pretty much left on his own to get out of this thing.  His survival and his journey down this mountain make up about half of this book.

The other half is the story of Norman’s life up to that point.  He grew up in this spontaneous, crazy surf culture in Malibu and his father pushed him into surfing and skiing from a very young age.  His parents divorced when he was younger but he maintained a decent relationship with both his mom and his dad.  The relationship with is dad is focused on a lot and the lessons that his dad taught him come to his mind over and over as he gets down this horrible, snowy mountain.

While this is a story of survival, that kind of takes a back seat to the story of  Norman’s life and the relationship that he had with his father.

What I Thought: Ok, so I know that the father-son relationship was an important part of the story, but it is bad for me to say that I just really didn’t care? I thought that his dad put him in pretty scary situations from the time that he was very young just so that he could live vicariously though his son.  To be honest, his dad’s “drive” is what got them smashed into the side of a mountain in the first place- flying all over for skiing and surfing that Norman, at that point, wasn’t even super enthusiastic about.  Meh. It made me not really like his dad, so those father-son parts just kind of irritated me.

The other thing that kind of made this a harder read for me was all the skiing and surfing terms that were seriously everywhere.  I am not at all familiar with either sport and I had a hard time picturing what was happening about 90% of the time.  Even when he was coming down the mountain, there were tons of skiing terms and I never did really develop a picture in my mind of the area that he was trekking through.

These two little issues aside, I did enjoy this book.  I thought that the survival story was completely crazy and even though I knew going into it that it was survival story, I kept crossing my fingers that Norman would live.  I thought that he did a good job of keeping the story short and concise and not adding a ton of filler for the sake of making a longer book.  I kind of have a thing for honest, bare-bones writing and Noman Ollestad pulled it off oh so well.

Conclusion: A decent survival story, but not the best.  You will probably get more out of it if you are at least vaguely familiar with surfing and skiing, which I am not. If you want some serious mountain survival, I’m going to have to point you to Into Thin Air.

The Book: The Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and The Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, by Marcus Luttrell

The Story: A team of four U.S. Navy SEALS was sent out to an area near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border to check out this village where an al Qaeda leader was rumored to be staying and building up a Taliban army.  For these guys, the mission actually seemed fairly cut-and-dry, the kind of thing that they did pretty frequently.  They were all good friends and were comfortable going into a potentially dangerous situation together.  Just a few hours into the mission, something goes terribly wrong and they are soon in the middle of this firefight with over 100 members of the Taliban.  They fight hard and do well, but after 4 or 5 hours, Marcus is the only member of his team that has survived.  He has no real way of communication and he’s wounded pretty bad.

What follows is Marcus’ story of survival.  He crawled miles and made it to a village where  the people nursed him back to help, kept him safe, and fought for him.  The Taliban fights hard and even manages to crash the rescue helicopter that comes to save Marcus.  Back home his family is starting to mourn his death, but Marcus uses his wits, not to mention quite a bit of luck, to get out of this thing alive.

What I Thought: Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first: Marcus is totally full of himself. It is clear throughout the book that he genuinely thinks that he and other Navy SEALS are the end all be all of the whole world.  To be fair, I think that that is probably part of their training. Had he not thought that he was tough and that he could survive anything and that he was the smartest person in the country and on and on, he may not have survived this situation. I found myself, several times, kind of rolling my eyes at him talking about how strong he was, how smart, how great… but after awhile I just figured that most SEALS are probably like that and let it go.

The other thing that got on my nerves were the intermittent rants about the “liberal media.”  The first time I just kind of grinned and thought, “Well, I guess we know which way he leans,” but after paragraphs and paragraphs about how the liberal media criminalizes soldiers for doing what they were trained to do and yadda yadda, it really did become distracting for me.  I don’t really know what his goal was with all the ranting, but for me it just served to make me like him a little less. Not for having these views, mind you, but for feeling like he had to bring them up every chapter. So you know, I totally disagree with him.  He talked a lot about how the troops were made out to be bad guys and that the liberal media’s sympathies seem to lie with Afghanis and Iraqi people. Huh? I would say that any criticism is usually directed at military higher-ups or on crazy atrocities like Abu Ghraib (which Marcus said was justified and said that they deserved much worse than what they got…).  So.  That’s my rant on his rants. The end.

Other than those two little things though, I really did think that this was a great book.  I tend to shy away from books about the military just because I’m not familiar with their terminology, ranks, and have a hard time picturing combat.  This book was written in kind of a “user friendly” way that made me feel totally comfortable.  I liked how he kind of chronicled his journey from Texas, through SEALS training and into combat-zones.  The SEALS training had me reading with my jaw hanging open.

When he got to the actual mission and how everything went down, I thought that he presented everything in this really clear way and was great about putting his guts into it. Instead of the “this guy shot this guy and this guy took position and yadda yadda,” I really felt like he told how he was feeling, how everything was playing out and kind of just how he was taking everything in.  I am sure that to write such a detailed description of these hours was just horribly painful, but he did a great job and those chapters were the best written in the whole book.

The chapters, however, that got to me the most were the ones of Marcus’ family back home just waiting to hear news on him.  His twin brother said all along that he had a connection to Marcus and that he was still alive.  Their mom was totally beside herself with hope and grief, and watching their family, their town, friends and members of the military just gather around her and the rest of Marcus’ family was just gut-wrenching.  When they got the call that Marcus survived, I cried real, actual tears.

Conclusion: If you can just get used to the cockiness and ignore the political rants, read this.  It seems like more of a guy book (what with no kissing or anything), but it really isn’t.  It is bloody and the guns have nicknames, but there is also real heart here.

The Book: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Student Who Took Vegas for Millions, by Ben Mezrich

The Story: In the late 80’s, early 90’s, a group of geeks from M.I.T. learned some serious card counting and headed to Vegas to make tons of money.  The group goes through leadership changes and eventually has to change their strategy as the casinos catch on, but the basic story here is about pulling one over on the casinos.

The story centers around a kid named Kevin and his experience with this team.  The M.I.T. blackjack teams have been around for a long time and have apparently been making trips to Vegas for just as long, however during the time that the book takes place, the whole experience really exploded.  Several of the members had dropped out of M.I.T. and several others had passed up high paying jobs because no job they could get would pay as much as they were making playing blackjack. Pretty wild.

The author also talks a lot about Vegas and how casinos view card counters.  As technology made huge leaps during this time, the casinos used it to get far more inventive with how they can catch cheaters and counters.  During this time, casinos across the country also developed the ability to share info out of one large database.  That meant that as the M.I.T. teams’ reputations got destroyed in Vegas, casinos in New Orleans and Chicago and… well, everywhere… were also sent pictures of them, and eventually this led to some serious changes in how the team did business.

What I Thought: I had seen the History Channel documentary that was made about this same team.  I thought it was just incredible and I was excited when I saw this book because I thought it would dig even deeper.

Nope, not so much.

Don’t get me wrong. I read this book super fast and it really does have a bit of intrigue, but as far as really going further than the documentary…. it just doesn’t.  By trying to make this a non-fiction book that reads like a novel, the author kind of screwed up I think.  The information he provided was weak, and from some reviews I read online, sometimes totally untrue. The Wikipedia article sites a whole list of events that apparently never happened. Huh?

This didn’t bug me  half as much as the writing.  I saw in the front of these books that he has 5 or 6 other books published.  This totally blows my mind.  The writing as a whole was sloppy and full of cliches and horrible adverbs. At a certain point, it almost became comical… but what I really couldn’t deal with was the dialogue. So effing bad. I mean, seriously, seriously bad.

I could go on trashing this book for a few more paragraphs, but what’s the point? You get it. It’s not good.

Conclusion: A compelling read, for sure, but not really worth your time or energy.  I’d say check out the History Channel documentary and call it a day.  I know that there’s a movie based on this too, called 21, but I’ve never seen in so I can’t tell you if it is good or not.  It’s probably better done than this book, so give it a go.

The Book: Kaleidoscope: Seeing God’s Wit and Wisdom in a Whole New Light, by Patsy Clairmont

The Story: The idea here is that kaleidoscopes are kind of whimsical and just offer up random little pictures and yadda yadda.  In this book, Patsy Clairmont does a similar deal only out of the book of Proverbs.  She just takes random verses here and there and illustrates them and what they have meant in her life and the lives of her friends and family.

The chapters are each like short, concise little sermons and each one is followed up by questions (”Bits and Pieces”) to make you think about the verse and story that was presented.

What I Thought: I have two confessions: First, I got this book from the publisher.  I’m not sure if they contacted me or if I contacted them, or really how I ended up with this book.  I should write things down.  Second, I have had the book for probably two months. Maybe longer. I actually have no idea. I lost it and forgot all about it.  Recently, it floated to the top of the pile of stuff in the back of my car and I didn’t even recognize it.  I’m a mess and Shaun says that the baby has stolen every single one of my brain cells. So there are my confessions. If you are the one who sent me this book, I apologize a thousand times.

I thought that this book was just kind of… sweet.  Patsy Clairmont is kind of one of those hip older people who realizes that she’s getting old and just kind of goes with it.  She has a little witty sense of humor and is pretty self deprecating, which I love. She also has a Kindle and she’s like 60-something. I love that even more.  All that to say: I want her to be my grandma or my aunt or something.  Parts of it were kind of cheesy and some of her stories were a little over-done, but it wasn’t distracting or anything. In fact, it kind of made me like her more.

The chapters were short but really got to the point. Some of the little stories didn’t really seem to tie into what the verse was saying, but somehow she kind of made it work.  While this was a book about the book of Proverbs, it really wasn’t very “meaty.” It was just kind of light and inspirational.

I read this by myself and actually didn’t do the questions at the end or really slow down enough to think many of the points through.  The whole time I was thinking that this would be a really great book to go through slowly and think through each question, either alone or with a small group.

Conclusion: A fun, sweet little book by a great woman.  I would recommend this to any woman, although older women may enjoy it even more.

The Book: Operating Instructions: A Journal of my Son’s First Year, by Anne Lamott

The Story: If you’ve ever read Anne Lamott before you know that she has quite the history (drug addict, alcoholic, yadda yadda) and quite the circle of friends.  She converted to Christianity later in her life and is still figuring out all the ins and outs.  In the meantime, she gets knocked up by some guy who doesn’t want a kid and begins the journey into parenthood. Alone.

She decided to keep a journal during that first year and then later to publish it.  This book covers all the nitty gritty: the birth, the late night feedings, the total drug-out, can’t-thing exhaustion, along with all of the beautiful stuff: loving Sam and watching him grow and become his own little guy.

Because Sam’s dad left her when he found out she was pregnant, she is technically a single parent, but her friends just really gather around her and help her.  They cook when she’s too tired and play with Sam while she takes naps.  In the course of the book, one of her best friends finds out that she has a pretty serious form of cancer and Anne records her struggle through that as well.

In this book, Anne Lamott makes it ok to get mad at your baby and ok to think that he’s the greatest thing on earth.  She says all of the stuff that most parents would never fess up to, like how shocked she is that babies cry so much, and how she thought it’d be more like getting a new cat.  She really covers a broad spectrum of emotion and, in one journal entry, can provoke about 90 different emotions.

What I Thought: I’m going to go ahead and admit right off the bat that I’m madly in love with Anne Lamott and have been for years.  I read her novels first and then all her non-fiction and she always makes it to my list of authors/people that I’d love to sit down for dinner with.  I love her. So this review is not unbiased.  I went in knowing I would love this book and was not at all let down.

For me, the appeal of Anne Lamott’s books are this honesty that almost never comes out.  Hearing that someone else struggles with the same things and delights in the same things as  me somehow makes it ok.  The fact that she can talk about these things in a poetic, gritty, wonderful way is just icing on the cake.

This is one of her only books that I hadn’t read yet, and I’d been saving it for when I was about to have a little one of my own.  Give me a couple of months and I’ll be blogging with puke running down my shoulder (except for with babies, it’s called “spit-up”… how cute, right?) so I thought that the time was right.

In the first couple of entries, she talks about her fears about becoming a mother and doing this thing right.  She also talks about how beautiful it is and how excited she is about having her son and loving him so much.  Because we’re still waiting on my little guy, this is the part that I related to the most.  Since I’ve been pregnant, I’ve talked to so many other mothers and so many pregnant women and usually it’s either “oh God, I can’t do this” or “I can’t wait! Baby, baby, baby!”  How I feel is somewhere in between, and I just felt like she captured that feeling perfectly.

I could go on and on. I just loved this. I’m going to give copies to my pregnant friends. This is part of my new shower gift pack.  I need to stop, because I can tell that I’m gushing.

Conclusion: Pregnant women, mothers, grandmothers: Read this.