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Expecting Better

3/5. Economist gets annoyed with the pregnancy-industrial complex, reads a lot of studies to figure out what is real and what is bullshit. Great principle – there is a general movement towards evidence-based birth and parenting, and I'm for it – and she does have a good eye for spotting obvious biases and studies. But I have a bad taste in my mouth about this book. Yeah, she made a pretty significant analytical error regarding data around birth timing (fixed in a later edition, I believe), but eh, that happens. And yeah, this is the book I was reading last fall when I was pregnant, and the book I stopped reading while I was becoming unpregnant over several terrible weeks of waiting and shots and side effects and blood and unanswerable questions.

Mostly, I think it's that she's taken out all the obnoxious preachiness about the right way to pregnant, and replaced it with slightly less obnoxious preachiness about doing what is right for you. I mean, she's not wrong, but JFC, give it a rest.

A useful book though. I do recommend it to pregnant friends who want to cut through a lot of the bullshit and just have someone tell them, with an actual fucking reason, what foods it's not worth the risk to eat.

Before Your Pregnancy: A 90 Day Guide for Couples on How to Prepare for a Healthy Conception by Amy Ogle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Huh. I’m glad I read this, and I’ll keep it around for the vitamins/minerals charts, but overall . . . not so much. This book pays lipservice to the notion that straight married people aren’t the only ones having babies by using the word “partner,” but then doesn’t manage to include anyone LGBT or single having a child anywhere in over 500 pages that I saw. And they want to cover a lot of ground about health and reproduction, so they can’t really dig into anything, with the unfortunate overall impression that they think diet and exercise can solve anything, which is not even really what they believe.



But mostly, anyone who gives the BMI this much credence has lost a lot of my respect. I am a living breathing example of why the BMI is bullshit as a health measurement tool. According to it, I am teetering on the very top end of normal/acceptable, just a few tenths of a point below overweight. And everyone who has met me is now laughing, because I am, in fact, a U.S. size 6, an athlete, and in glowing health.



So I wrote off the fitness chapters, and was highly suspicious of the nutrition information (the food pyramid website? seriously?). But you know. It was a decent place to start.



However, the phrase “providing womb service” is just never not going to kneejerk piss me off.





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