'I'm an open book': Meghan Trainor gets deep in TMI guide to pregnancy 'Dear Future Mama'
Meghan Trainor is a soon-to-be mama of two. The "Mother" singer, pregnant with her second child, is ready to share her insights on pregnancy with other moms-to-be in her "TMI" guidebook on the experience.
"Dear Future Mama: A TMI Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, and Motherhood From Your Bestie," co-authored by Nora McInerny (Harper Horizon, 240 pp.), is out now.
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"Honestly, I'm an open book and I just say everything," Trainor tells USA TODAY, of her literal book in which she gets very real about her personal life – we're talking "I can't believe she's sharing this" personal.
The 29-year-old Grammy winner was the first of her friends to become pregnant, she says nodding to her son Riley, born in 2021. So, when Trainor started her pregnancy journey, she wasn't sure where to turn for guidance – she felt overwhelmed.
"I didn't have a doula, I didn't have a midwife," Trainor says. "I didn't have ... a group of moms to go be with when I was pregnant because it was ... COVID time and scary."
The result? A copious amount of time spent on Google and YouTube – so much so that her husband, Daryl Sabara (yes, Juni from "Spy Kids"), threatened to throw her computer out the window.
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Now, Trainor wants to make sure no one else going through pregnancy feels the same. The "All About That Bass" singer is ready to become the "bestie" you might not have known you needed in her debut book.
Trainor opens up about everything: her mental health, trying to conceive (scheduling sex can definitely be un-sexy), gestational diabetes, her marriage, being pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic, her C-section experience, life postpartum, PTSD after her C-section – the list goes on.
The book is digestible and can be read in a day. And there are more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. Trainor's tone throughout very much elicits the feeling of sharing a conversation with a close friend.
"I want to help someone out there feel not alone and like they're normal," she says.
Trainor says that sharing so openly comes from a place of wanting to help others. Especially after others' sharing helped her on her mental health journey, while she was in the process of discovering that she was having panic attacks.
"The best thing that healed my healed my heart and my brain when I was going through my panic attacks was when Carson Daly went on the 'Today' show and did a whole segment about him having panic attacks and what it felt like," she says.
Daly's move made Trainor feel she wasn't alone. And that's what she's hoping to do for other mothers with her book.
But it doesn't just offer camaraderie alongside tales from Trainor's own experience: "Dear Future Mama" also includes guidance on nutrition, exercise and more from the experts who helped Trainor through her pregnancy.
"I'm fortunate and lucky that I get to work with these incredibly smart women," Trainor says. "And I begged to them all, I was like, 'Please, I'm writing a book about this and (it) won't be ... great unless I have you all in it giving your advice.'"
There are tips, workout ideas and recipes provided by Trainor's OB-GYN, Dr. Karyn Solky, personal trainer Rebecca Stanton and registered dietitian Kristy Morrell.
And the book also includes a chapter written by Trainor's husband, who shares a bit about how he thought he wouldn't ever have children until he met Trainor, and how he supported the pop star through pregnancy.
"Dear Future Mama" is only the beginning, she hopes. "My dream is that this is my personal journal and that I get to do, 'Dear Future Sibling' and then 'Dear Future Toddlers' and 'Dear Future Multiple Kids in the Family,'" she says.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Meghan Trainor could be your pregnancy 'bestie' thanks to her new book
