I bought this book when I was about 4 weeks pregnant, so a lot of the information in the first chapter (all about how to prepare your body to conceive) wasn't needed and I skipped a lot of it and went straight to the month by month 'what to expect". I have to say that a lot of the information about scans and tests freaked me out a little bit, so I skipped a lot of that too; I figured I would go back to it when I was about to have those tests and only read the ones that were relevant. I found all of the month by month detail really fascinating though and really useful to find out that a lot of the stuff going on in my body, things I didn't realise were related to the pregnancy, were all inter-linked.
Unfortunately I miscarried a month later, but while it was happening (it took 3 days of waiting to see whether I actually was miscarrying) the book had all of the information I needed and which I'd been searching for on the internet without much luck; I knew what to look out for (i.e. pregnancy symptoms that had suddenly stopped), and it helped me to gradually come to terms with the fact that I was losing my baby. The book also has a chapter on how to cope with the loss of a pregnancy, which really helped me to realise that I wasn't alone, it wasn't my fault and it won't necessarily happen next time we try, it's just one of those things that just happens sometimes. It also helped me to get everything straight in my head so I felt ready to talk it through with my partner, because it was all happening to him as well.
We're planning to try again now and so I'll be reading through all of the first chapter about how best to prepare my body for this miracle of creating a life, and I'll be doing everything I can (including following the menu planner) to grow that little bundle of cells into a healthy baby.
I think this is a brilliant book, it's matter of fact without being too complicated, it's fun and friendly without coming across as patronising, and it's full of all of the information you need, which you can read right through or jump around between the chapters that you feel are relevant to yourself and your pregnancy. I fully recommend it.