The Complete Book of Pregnancy & Childbirth
By Sheila Kitzinger

  In the fullness of time, book no. 2 led to book no. 3. In my 30s, lying in bed with my husband, I listened to a New Age tape of whooshing amniotic fluid and practiced Kitzinger's recommended positions for labor, just as a decade earlier I'd practiced Comfort's recommended positions for sex. Kitzinger made birth sound difficult but exciting, as indeed it turned out to be. I remember reading, on the last page of my edition, under the heading "Week 40," the sentence "You will soon hold your child in your arms." Did Dickens or Tolstoy ever write nine more affecting words?