Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know

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Penguin, Aug 20, 2013 - Health & Fitness - 336 pages
“Emily Oster is the non-judgmental girlfriend holding our hand and guiding us through pregnancy and motherhood. She has done the work to get us the hard facts in a soft, understandable way.” —Amy Schumer

*Fully Revised and Updated for 2021*


What to Expect When You're Expecting meets Freakonomics: an award-winning economist and author of Cribsheet and The Family Firm disproves standard recommendations about pregnancy to empower women while they're expecting. 

Pregnancy—unquestionably one of the most pro­found, meaningful experiences of adulthood—can reduce otherwise intelligent women to, well, babies. Pregnant women are told to avoid cold cuts, sushi, alcohol, and coffee without ever being told why these are forbidden. Rules for prenatal testing are similarly unexplained. Moms-to-be desperately want a resource that empowers them to make their own right choices.

When award-winning economist Emily Oster was a mom-to-be herself, she evaluated the data behind the accepted rules of pregnancy, and discovered that most are often misguided and some are just flat-out wrong. Debunking myths and explaining everything from the real effects of caffeine to the surprising dangers of gardening, Expecting Better is the book for every pregnant woman who wants to enjoy a healthy and relaxed pregnancy—and the occasional glass of wine.

From inside the book

Contents

Prep Work
3
DataDriven Conception
11
The TwoWeek Wait
25
Caffeine Alcohol and Tobacco
51
Miscarriage Fears ཊྚ ྂ
80
Nausea and My Motherinlaw
94
Prenatal Screening and Testing
104
The Surprising Perils of Gardening
128
Premature Birth and the Dangers of Bed Rest
189
HighRisk Pregnancy
197
The Labor Numbers
213
Caesarean Section
233
To Epidural or Not to Epidural?
240
Beyond Pain Relief
252
The Aftermath
270
Progressive or Regressive?
277

Eating for Two? You Wish
143
Pink and Blue
157
Drug Safety
175
Quick Reference
291
Index
318
Copyright

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About the author (2013)

Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University and the author of Expecting Better, Cribsheet, and The Family Firm. She writes the newsletter ParentData and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg. She has two children.

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