When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had a book that claimed it would talk to my like my best friend would. It promised to make me laugh and give me the real low down on pregnancy. I wasn’t impressed, and I traded it off in the PaperBack Swap.

Ever since, I’ve been skeptical of any author that told me she was going to tell me the real truth like my girlfriends would.

A few weeks ago, Heather at Maternal Spark asked if I’d participate in her latest wwWhipUp event for a book called The Must-Have Mom Manual. I have more than twenty parenting books, but I haven’t found them all that helpful, outside of a little reinforcement:

Oh, that’s normal. Okay then.

If I’m consulting a parenting book, I don’t especially want to hear that. I want solutions. I want help.

I happily accepted Heather’s offer to participate, hoping that the book would provide insight – or at least a little levity – on a few of our current struggles.

• Taking a nap (or refusing to do so)
• Potty training (or total refusal to do so)
• Discipline (especially for frequent refusal to cooperate)
• Maintaining a marriage with the pressures of a strong-willed child
• Being too-busy parents

All of these topics are addressed in the The Must-Have Mom Manual. Sometimes I agree with Sara. Sometimes I like what Stephanie has to say. In most cases, I think I’ll be able to pull a few things from each.

Unlike the book I mentioned above, this book really does read like your girlfriends wrote it. Reading it is like being in the middle of a conversation. It’s a conversation I like being a part of.

I don’t agree with everything in The Must-Have Mom Manual. On almost every page, I found something that made me think, What?

I don’t disagree with everything in The Must-Have Mom Manual, either. On almost every page, I found something that made me think, That totally makes sense. That’s what we will do/did/want to do.

That’s precisely the point of The Must-Have Mom Manual. We parents can disagree but still be respectful. We can be learn from each other, and we can be good parents – even if we take different paths to raise our children.

I respect that.

And apparently, so does my husband. He’s picked up The Must-Have Mom Manual several times, always poring over it.

Guess what, Dear Reader! The Must-Have Mom Manual is giving a copy of The Must-Have Mom Manual to one lucky Feels like Home reader!

To enter: Take a look at the excerpts and chapter headings listed on The Must-Have Mom Manual’s website and chose the chapter you’d most like to read about. Come back here and tell us what you chose and why.

For extra entries: You can earn extra entries for the following:

1. Tweet about this giveaway and leave the URL for the Tweet in the comments. You may do this daily.
2. Write about this giveaway on your blog, including Feels like Home, Maternal Spark, and The Must-Have Mom Manual. Leave the URL in a comment.
3. Post my button on your sidebar. Report the URL for your site in a comment.
4. Subscribe to the Feels like Home Recommends and/or Feels like Home main feed and report it in a comment.
5. Fave Feels like Home on Technorati and report it in a comment, including your Technorati username.

Good luck! I’ll use Random.org to choose a winner some time after 11:59 pm on August 7, 2009.

Six bloggers are participating in this wwWhipUp, so you can get six different opinions on The Must-Have Mom Manual. Why don’t you start with Keely at UnMom?