What to expect when you're reading about pregnancy

I've had a relapse on the bad back front, which essentially means I'm living the dream of being off work without feeling particularly ill. Only the dream doesn't really account for the fact that you can't go anywhere or do anything. For the first time in about fifteen years, I'm bored.

Sky Sports News can only hold my attention for a finite length of time. And the sports pages of the various newspaper websites have become more than sufficiently populated with my opinions on UEFA's incompetence. Even the late, great J.G. Ballard's compendium of short stories has diminishing appeal now that I'm over 500 pages in.

For these reasons, and also because my wife bought it a long time ago and has read it several times over and probably knows it off by heart and really feels that I should make some sort of effort, I read a bit of What to Expect When You're Expecting yesterday. It's the book that parents to be always read in films about parents to be. It's sold ten million copies. It's widely regarded as something of a bible on the subject. My outstanding impression - admittedly after reading only one chapter (the one about the third month of pregnancy) - is this:

It hedges its bets.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The format is very clever - the book adopts a sympathetic, I'm-your-friend-not-your-doctor tone by covering each issue in the form of frequently asked questions. So pregnant women concerned about blockages can turn to the section headed "I've been terribly constipated for the past few weeks. Is this common?" to be comforted by subsequent assurances that yes, it's perfectly normal, try eating some fibre. This is reassuring and informative.

But immediately after this comes the section headed "All my pregnant friends seem to have problems with constipation. I don't; in fact, I've remained very regular. Is my system working right?" This is of course followed by assurances that yes, it's perfectly normal. Having read both sections, I'm left wondering why the issue needs to be mentioned at all if it's no problem either way. This seems to be the standard pattern.

I don't mean to write off a book which has successfully comforted and informed ten million expectant couples. I was just surprised to find that there was more emphasis on the comforting than on the informing.

Although I suppose that's what we all need really. Maybe that's why I'm contriving to write scathing reviews of internationally bestselling books: I'm not bored; I'm nervous. If only someone would write a book to comfort nervous parents to be.