Expecting Better: How to Fight the Pregnancy Establishment with Facts
Expecting Better: How to Fight the Pregnancy Establishment with Facts book cover

Expecting Better: How to Fight the Pregnancy Establishment with Facts

Hardcover – August 20, 2013

by
Price
$55.00
Format
Hardcover
Pages
313
Publisher
Penguin Pr
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1594204753
Dimensions
1.25 x 1.2 x 6.25 inches
Weight
1.2 pounds

Description

About the Author 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 the also the daughter of two economists. She has one child, Penelope. 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 the also the daughter of two economists. She has one child, Penelope.

Features & Highlights

  • What to Expect When You're Expecting
  • meets
  • Freakonomics
  • : an award-winning economist disproves standard recommendations
  • about pregnancy to empower women while they're expecting
  • Pregnancyunquestionably one of the most pro­found, meaningful experiences of adulthoodcan reduce otherwise intelligent women to, well, babies. We’re told to avoid cold cuts, sushi, alcohol, and coffee, but aren’t told
  • why
  • these are forbidden. Rules for prenatal testing are hard and fastand unexplained. Are these recommendations even correct? Are all of them right for every mom-to-be? In
  • Expecting Better,
  • award-winning economist Emily Oster proves that pregnancy rules are often misguided and sometimes flat-out wrong.A mom-to-be herself, Oster debunks the myths of pregnancy using her particular mode of critical thinking: economics, the study of how we get what we want. Oster knows that the value of anythinga home, an amniocentesisis in the eyes of the informed beholder, and like any compli­cated endeavor, pregnancy is not a one-size-fits-all affair. And yet medicine often treats it as such. Are doctors working from bad data? Are well-meaning friends and family perpetuating false myths and raising unfounded concerns? Oster’s answer is yes, and often.Pregnant women face an endless stream of decisions, from the casual (Can I eat this?) to the frightening (Is it worth risking a miscarriage to test for genetic defects?).
  • Expecting Better
  • presents the hard facts and real-world advice you’ll never get at the doctor’s office or in the existing literature. Oster’s revelatory work identifies everything from the real effects of caffeine and tobacco to the surprising dangers of gardening.Any expectant mother knows that the health of her baby is paramount, but she will be less anxious and better able to enjoy a healthy pregnancy if she is informed . . . and can have the occasional glass of wine.* * *Numbers are not subject to someone else’s interpretationmath doesn’t lie. Expectant economist Emily Oster set out to inform parents-to-be about the truth of pregnancy using the most up-to-date data so that they can make the best decisions for their pregnancies. The results she found were often very surprising· It’s fine to have the occasional glass of wine even one every day in the second and third trimesters.· There is nothing to fear from sushi, but do stay away from raw milk cheese.· Sardines and herring are the fish of choice to give your child those few extra IQ points.· There is no evidence that bed rest is helpful in preventing or treating
  • any
  • complications of pregnancy.· Many unnecessary labor inductions could be avoided by simply staying hydrated.· Epidurals are great for pain relief and fine for your baby, but they do carry some risks for mom.· Limiting women to ice chips during labor is an antiquated practice; you should at least be able to sneak in some Gatorade.· You shouldn’t worry about dyeing your hair or cleaning the cat’s litter box, but gardening while pregnant can actually be risky.· Hot tubs, hot baths, hot yoga: avoid (at least during the first trimester).· You should be more worried about gaining too little weight during pregnancy than gaining too much.· Most exercise during pregnancy is fine (no rock climbing!), but there isn’t much evidence that it has benefits. Except for exercising your pelvic floor with Kegels: that you should be doing.· Your eggs do not have a 35-year-old sell-by date: plenty of women get pregnant after 35 and there is no sudden drop in fertility on your birthday.· Miscarri

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

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Most Helpful Reviews

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Unbelievable

Ms. Oster is an economist with a 2 year old daughter and she is an expert in pregnancy? Ms. Oster believes that drinking while pregnant is a wonderful thing to do and, after all, her 2 year old has turned out fine! Wow! I'd like to hear from her when her daughter is in 3rd grade (when most Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders rear their ugly heads), or the middle school years (when lack of social skills make your child an outcast) or high school (when your child struggles to keep up with her peers).

If you wouldn't put alcohol in a baby's bottle, don't put it in your body while you are pregnant. Alcohol passes to the placenta and your tiny baby drinks the same amount as you. While her brain is developing. Lovely thing to do to your infant.

Don't buy this book unless you are looking for comedy and tragedy.

If you want the real story on what drinking while pregnant does for the baby, for you, and for society, I suggest:

[[ASIN:3527329978 Prevention of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder FASD: Who is responsible (Health Care and Disease Management)]]
33 people found this helpful
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Lacks any understanding of subtle effects from alcohol exposure

This book marks the author as an irresponsible, entitled brat with an obvious agenda that has nothing to do with promoting the well-being of children who may be born to her readers. She lacks the medical and scientific knowledge to be able to interpret the studies on prenatal alcohol that she has so carefully selected to prove her point. This is not a balanced account, it's a delusional one. Many human and animal studies show that prenatal alcohol exposure changes brain structure, period. Whether this results in effects that are easily measurable, let alone "clinically significant" at the young ages usually studied, depends on the neurodevelopmental factor being assessed. Oster is apparently too thick to understand that just because a baby appears to be born healthy does not mean that the alcohol exposure will allow him or her to reach full potential in terms of behavior, learning and social skills -- together far more complex than the parameters she has chosen to look at. Oh, and talking about cocaine as if it were worse for the fetus than alcohol? What century is she living in?
23 people found this helpful
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My daughter enjoyed challenging me

Another point of view. My daughter enjoyed challenging me!

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