What to Expect When You're Reading What to Expect When You're Expecting

What to Expect When You're Expecting has been the gold standard in baby books for decades. Eager mothers-to-be can find in its pages all sorts of info about what's happening to their bodies and what to look out for as their pregnancy progresses. It's so popular, it spawned the sequel What to Expect the First Year.

My wife has read both books and found them to be invaluable. I can't say much about its progenitor but I can tell you for sure that What to Expect the First Year is crap. I have all kinds of bones to pick with this book but it boils down to two major points:

1. Comparing Babies - By it's very nature, this book seeks to measure babies against one another which, in my humble but ardent opinion, is parent poison.
2. Panic Factor - Each parenting book should come with a rating, a panic factor, designed to inform the reader how much the should expect to panic upon reading. If such a rating system were put in place, What to Expect the First Year would have the equivalent of a Triple X rating or RED on the Homeland Security Terror Alert Scale.

I think I pretty well covered the first of these two point in a previous post so let's zoom in on the second, the panic factor.

To set the mood, here's one of my favorite quotes from What to Expect the First Year:

Breath-holding spells are usually precipitated by anger, frustration or pain...In mild events, the lips turn blue. In more severe instances, the baby turns blue all over then loses consciousness. While unconscious, his body may stiffen or even twitch.

I'm sorry. I must have fainted there a second and hit my head. Did that just say my baby may stop breathing, turn blue and twitch? I'm supposed to expect this in the first year? I don't have enough to worry about, I have to fret over my baby's breathing?

Rationally, I know that less than one percent of babies will suffer one of these spells but instinctively, reading about breath-holding makes me freak out. If so few babies have this problem then why even publish it in this book? Shouldn't it be in a separate pamphlet about breathing irregularities you get from your doctor? Why is it in a book called What to Expect the First Year?

The book goes on to list some other things I should watch out for like - believe it or not - blinking. Honestly, blinking? My baby's gonna blink? Whodathunkit?

Other headings in the book include polluted indoor air, contaminants in food, and an ominous sounding section on holiday hazards. Granted, there are all sort of issues out there that parent should be concerned about like contaminated baby food. But why put them all together in a compendium that bills itself as a reasonable guide on what new parents should expect?

You know what you should expect in the first year? Your baby will cry a lot. There will be a lot of poop. They will be cute. And, like the book says, they will probably blink. If anything else comes up, go have a conversation with your pediatrician.