Whenever I browse most pregnancy guides, sometimes I wonder how I got through those nine months without daily full-blown panic attacks.

Have you seen some of those bold-faced chapter subheadings, addressing the various disasters that no doubt wait around every corner? It’s like a survival guide for nuclear winter.

My preferred pregnancy books—the ones that celebrate aspects of pregnancy in a realistic way, and address fear and pain without magnifying it—are not new. “Birthing From Within” was first published in 1998; “Spiritual Midwifery,” in 1976 (and retains its original groovy language to prove it).

A recent trip to the bookstore confirmed that most current pregnancy books tend to be heavily alarming (or self-consciously cranky, in a hipster sort of way).

But wait—what’s this on the shelf? Just inches away from the titles “Pregnancy Sucks” and “Pregnancy Sucks For Men,” there it is: a book that’s called “The Joy of Pregnancy” published in 2008. Do my eyes deceive?

No, and neither did yours, if you were one of the handful of people to catch the recent Lindsay Lohan television movie “Labor Pains,” in which the book was featured prominently.

The author of “The Joy of Pregnancy” (The Harvard Common Press, 2008) is Tori Kropp, a registered nurse, and childbirth educator. Her tone is warm and friendly—more chatty than clinical. You feel like you really know her as she briefly mentions her personal experiences: her own struggle to get pregnant, her morning sickness, her cesarean performed due to preeclampsia. She uses both first and second person, and casually refers to her husband and certain friends by their first names (for example, we learn that her friend Julie’s sense of smell changed when she was pregnant).

I’m not pregnant, but my friend Carrie Bishop, an instructional multimedia project manager at the University of Georgia, is pregnant for the first time. So, I asked her what she thought of the book.

How was the tone of the book? Did it make you feel more or less anxious about things?
“Okay, this is the very first thing that I noticed and really liked about this book—the tone is very relaxed and reassuring…I’m generally pretty anxious about things going wrong, and this book was actually a comfort to read—lots of info, but presented in a not scary way. I don’t know what’s different—maybe the tone is more conversational? I’ve also read a few ‘hip mama’ kinds of pregnancy books, and I feel like they tend to dumb things down a bit or gloss over details. This book has lots of good details in an accessible way.”

What did you think about the book’s design?
“Good design. I like the organization by month—it totally makes sense and I was able to jump to where I am. That seems fairly common in pregnancy books, I guess. I also liked the little ‘dad’s corner’ parts—I’ve seen this in several books but this book seemed to have more useful info than ‘buy her flowers and don’t tell her she’s fat.’ The illustrations are clear—especially examples of labor positions, and what’s going to happen during birth.”

What did you think about the book’s information about breastfeeding? If you weren’t already considering breastfeeding, would it convince you to try it out?
“There was solid info about breastfeeding. It definitely presented it as a healthy choice, but in a low-pressure way. I think if I’d already made up my mind not to or was on the fence, this book wouldn’t necessarily change my mind.”

How does the book address the subject of birth itself? Did it make you feel strongly about how you want your birth experience to be?
“The labor section was totally the part of the book that really stood out for me and made me think of this as a good reference guide. The books I’ve read so far talk a lot about being pregnant and surviving that, and then they get to the birth part, gloss over, and then go to surviving after birth. Um, hello? The labor is the part I want to know all about! So I was so excited to see illustrations for different labor positions and really detailed discussion about the phases of labor. For example, I’ve heard people talk about transition before but I’d never really read about it, and this was super detailed…The dad’s corner section in the labor part is awesome—like, ‘What can I do during labor?’ Tons of suggestions.”

Did the book have anything in it that makes it stand out from other pregnancy books?
“I think the details about birth were what really made me like this book and want to keep it around. I want Jacob to read the labor section too, because I think it’s a non-scary introduction to lots of things we’ll be talking about and learning about when we get closer to my due date. I feel like it reinforced the pros of a natural childbirth, but not in a preachy or pressure-y way.”