Expecting Better

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

By: Emily Oster

Narrated by: Emily Oster, Jonathan Todd Ross

“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

What to Expect When You're Expecting meets Freakonomics: an award-winning economist and author of Cribsheet, The Family Firm, and The Unexpected 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.

* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDf of charts, graphs and an Appendix from the book.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Emily Oster (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"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. And it makes for valuable homework before those harried ob-gyn appointments, even for lucky patients whose doctors are able to talk about the rationale behind their advice." (New York Times)

"A book...that pregnant women won't want to miss." (Parents Magazine)

"Oster's advice cuts through the emotion, myth, fear of malpractice litigation and looks at the numbers. A mother herself, Oster's interest isn't just curiosity, it's the same thing that motivates every new mom...and Oster's ability to break down the data into informed analysis is a refreshing break from the hysterical hearsay that often dominates the conversation." (Babyzone)

"It took someone as smart as Emily Oster to make it all this simple. She cuts through the thicket of anxiety and received wisdom, and gives us the facts. Expecting Better is both enlightening and calming. It almost makes me want to get pregnant." (Pamela Druckerman, New York Times best-selling author of Bringing Up Bébé)

Lo ame!!

Entre a mi embarazo con miedo… después de vivir una perdida… este libro me ayudó a quitarme muchos miedos y a aprender a cuestionarme las “reglas” que te dan mientra estás embarazada. Soy una mujer que ha comido sushi ocacionalmente, me tomo una cerveza cuando se me antoja y fuera de los achaques eh tenido un embarazo muy feliz.

Great content, best listened to at ~1.2x speed

Excellent work and the author is doing a good job for a non-professional narrator, but for me it was quite slow and playing it at 1.2x speed in the Audible app helped magnificently.

14 yrs in the making

My wife is pregnant and of course a kaleidoscope of questions flooded our minds.
Parents dumping their opinions on what you can and can’t do. Everyone giving their input with no facts. All I can say is Thank you.

Data to Pregnancy

Great guide with data driven explanations. It guides you throughout pregnancy stages and explains it in a way you can understand and feel a bit better walking into your first appointments.

Finally some facts!!

Loved the approach to this book! It’s about time someone critically reviewed the literature on pregnancy advice and restrictions rather than relying on word of mouth and Facebook.

Unbiased information

If you only read one book about pregnancy, this is the one to read. Informative and unbiased.

Numbers

I'm a big numbers person, it was nice to have a book give you numbers and let you decide what to do vs tell you what to do based on "that's just the way it's done"

Useful updated relevant information and data.

Very intuitive as well. Useful updated relevant information and data. Also with it being performed by the author it gives it a down to earth feeling.

Put a first time mom at ease

Emily Oster is a wealth of knowledge for anyone thatexpecting, especially first time moms you who are wading through the overwhelming abundance of conflicting pregnancy recommendations. Her book gave me peace of mind about the most important considerations and the evidence that supported them.

Helpful albeit somewhat overconfident (she’s not an MD)

Helpful coverage of a lot of concerns surrounding pregnancy that can ease concerns and explain the evidence as the author understands it. But the author is not a medical doctor. I did like the approach she took and trusted the earnest way she went about gathering her evidence, as an economist. However, physicians have other ways of gathering evidence too. Anyway, I only hesitate because I’m an anesthesiologist and she casted doubt about the recommendation to not eat after coming to the hospital for delivery. Please do your favor and do NOT eat once you are in the hospital. She cites low mortality as evidence that the recommendation is silly. In economics, mortality is the major outcome. In medicine, we value BOTH morbidity and mortality. Mortality numbers do not tell you the women who ended up in the ICU because they snuck some McMeals in and went in with a no-epidural birth plan only to need a c-section where they had to intubate them.
Other than that poo-poo-ing of a major complication of anesthesia and the talk of the birth plan (fine, sure, just canary up false expectations), I actually liked this book.