My Pregnancy Diary is Now Available as a Book!

When I started posting my pregnancy diary online, way back in week 8, I really wasn’t sure what kind of reception it was going to get. In fact, to be totally honest, I was a little bit worried about it.

The thing is, while physically I had a pretty easy pregnancy, all things considered, in my head it was anything but “easy”. Actually, it was probably the most anxious time of my life: I was so terrified, in fact, that by the time Max was born, I was basically just lying on my bed all day, counting kicks, and worrying about whether or not I was going to die in childbirth. It was THAT bad.

Most people don’t really like to admit to this kind of thing. One of the main things I learned during my pregnancy is that society loves to tell pregnant women what they should be thinking and feeling – in addition, of course, to telling them what they should be eating, drinking and wearing, and how they should be feeding and raising their babies. Which is about as much fun as it sounds, really.

society loves to tell pregnant women what they should be thinking and feeling – in addition, of course, to telling them what they should be eating, drinking and wearing, and how they should be feeding and raising their babies

In terms of what we should be thinking, however, there’s relentless pressure to “Just be positive!” at all times. It’s just not the done thing, really, to admit to being scared, or, even terrified, which means that those of us who are can easily end up feeling like … well, like freaks, basically, for not having the same, “normal” reactions everyone else apparently does.

In order to try and combat that in my own, small, way, I decided to write honestly about my pregnancy: to document my fears and anxieties, as well as the more “acceptable” aspects of pregnancy, and to hope that, by doing so, I might be able to make at least one other person feel a little bit less alone.

So, I started publishing my pregnancy diary every week, and, when I did, something amazing happened: I started to get emails and comments from women all over the world who felt exactly the same as I did: anxious, scared, and sometimes downright terrified that something was going to go wrong. Oh, and also relieved: relieved to know that they weren’t the only ones to feel that way, and that, despite the pressure to just be positive and enjoy their pregnancies, there were other women out there who understood exactly how they felt.

In the two years that have passed since I started keeping that diary, I’ve had dozens and dozens of those messages, and am still getting new ones almost every single week. It’s become increasingly obvious to me that pregnancy anxiety is much more common that many people think it is and, with that in mind, a few weeks ago I made the decision to make my diary available in ebook and paperback form:

Now, a large section of this book is made up of my original diary entries, which are still available right here on the blog, and I want to be really clear about that. The book also contains some new, previously unpublished material (I didn’t start my diary until week 8, so I’ve gone back and filled in the ‘missing’ 4 weeks, as well as adding a (fairly lengthy) introduction, giving some background info), but if you’re a blog reader, you need to be aware that this is, for the most part, the same pregnancy diary I published on the blog, rather than all-new material.

Why make it available in book format, then?

Simply because I know there are lots of people out there who still prefer to read a book than a blog, and who possibly wouldn’t even think of hitting up Google in search of this kind of content: I have friends and family members who fall into this category, and I wanted to give people like them the opportunity to read the posts, should they want to. I know a lot of people also buy my blogging tips book as a gift for aspiring bloggers, so thought this one could possibly work as a gift for, er, aspiring pregnant people who are super-anxious about it. Or something.

Anyway! Whatever your reason for reading, the book is now available on Amazon in both paperback and ebook format: click here to visit the UK site, or simply go to to appropriate Amazon site for your country, and type ‘Amber McNaught’ into the search box – it should come up. Oh, and if you do buy it and enjoy it, I’d really, really appreciate you leaving me an Amazon review: they help so much!

(If you read it and don’t like it, on the other hand… er, let’s just forget I mentioned this, OK?)