Scan barcode
A review by iteechesinglish
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Once you tell people you are expecting, you cross a threshold into a world where you are subjected to everyone's opinions on pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. Everyone is an expert! They know exactly what choices you should be making if you want to have a happy, healthy child and also if you don't make those choices you will ruin your baby's life and be the world's worst parent. Which is why Emily Oster's balanced and data-driven take on healthy choices in pregnancy is welcome and reassuring.
I was a little nervous about using this as a resource because Oster is an economist, and not a health professional. However I was reassured with the certified midwife at my hospital referenced the book and asked if I had read it. Clearly, not everyone is going to be on the same page about managing pregnancy, but Oster does her best to arm the reader with data that will allow you to make your own decisions. Since I tend to be on the more risk averse side of the spectrum, I'm still choosing to be rather careful about things like caffeine intake, but it is helpful to know that one mistake probably isn't going to be the end of the world.
One of the limitations with these kinds of books is that for ethical reasons we just don't have a lot of randomized controlled trials on pregnant people, so most of our data is based on correlation by necessity. This makes it hard to say definitively that x causes y. So we simply have to do the best we can with the data that we have. As a first-time, expectant mother I appreciated this perspective and it has helped me understand the different choices related to my pregnancy better.
I was a little nervous about using this as a resource because Oster is an economist, and not a health professional. However I was reassured with the certified midwife at my hospital referenced the book and asked if I had read it. Clearly, not everyone is going to be on the same page about managing pregnancy, but Oster does her best to arm the reader with data that will allow you to make your own decisions. Since I tend to be on the more risk averse side of the spectrum, I'm still choosing to be rather careful about things like caffeine intake, but it is helpful to know that one mistake probably isn't going to be the end of the world.
One of the limitations with these kinds of books is that for ethical reasons we just don't have a lot of randomized controlled trials on pregnant people, so most of our data is based on correlation by necessity. This makes it hard to say definitively that x causes y. So we simply have to do the best we can with the data that we have. As a first-time, expectant mother I appreciated this perspective and it has helped me understand the different choices related to my pregnancy better.