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

Description

A groundbreaking guide to pregnancy: empowers women with the facts and allows them to make their own decisions. FREAKANOMICS meets WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING. Award-winning Emily Oster debunks myths about pregnancy to empower women while they're expecting. Pregnant women are often treated as if they were children, given long lists of items to avoid - alcohol, caffeine, sushi - without any real explanation from their doctors about why. They hear frightening and contradictory myths about everything from weight gain to sleeping on your back to bed rest from friends and pregnancy books. In EXPECTING BETTER, Oster shows that the information given to pregnant women is sometimes wrong and almost always oversimplified. EXPECTING BETTER overturns standard recommendations for alcohol, caffeine, sushi, bed rest and induction, while putting in context the blanket guidelines for fetal testing, weight gain, risks of pregnancy over the age of 35, and nausea, among others. Oster offers the real-world advice one would never get at the doctor's office. Knowing that the health of your baby is paramount, readers can know more and worry less. Having the numbers is a tremendous relief - and so is the occasional glass of wine.

Emily Oster is an associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She was a speaker at the 2007 TED conference and her work has been featured in The NEW YORK TIMES The WALL STREET JOURNAL, FORBES, and ESQUIRE. Oster is married to economist Jesse Shapiro and is also the daughter of two economists. She has one child, Penelope. https://twitter.com/emily__oster Ted Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/emily_oster_flips_our_thinking_on_aids_in_africa

EXPECTING BETTER will be a revelation for curious mothers-to-be whose doctors fail to lay out the pros and cons of that morning latte, let alone discuss real science - NEW YORK TIMES Emily Oster struck a blow for common sense and freedom when she published her ground breaking book EXPECTING BETTER. In it she demolishes the nonsensical shibboleths and politically correct nostrums that have dogged pregnant women for so long ... her book should be required reading for pregnant women everywhere - DAILY EXPRESS Emily Oster's] book has done something important...indubitably important for pregnant women, but vital, too, for everyone else - GUARDIAN