---
product_id: 8345647
title: "Expecting Better"
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---

# Expecting Better

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Fully revised and updated for 2025, from the bestselling author of Cribsheet, The Family Firm, and The Unexpected “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.” — The New York Times “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 The award-winning economist named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people 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. Parents-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.

Review: Informative, entertaining - This approachable, entertaining, well-researched book provides clear and useful summaries of medical studies on a wide range of important pregnancy-related topics: the pros and cons of various pre-natal tests, epidurals, induction, doulas, and home birth; foods that are best to be avoided, and those that are less dangerous than conventional wisdom might have us presume. It is an excellent resource-- it's like a friendly encyclopedia of pregnancy- and childbirth- related medical research! The author emphasizes the fact that medical recommendations come from studies, not from thin air-- and that with a little guidance (which Oster provides), women and their partners can understand those studies, and how to interpret the results in the context of their own lives. Oster shares her own choices (with much self-deprecating humor), but makes it clear that this book is about providing information, not prescriptions. I greatly appreciated her discussions of the origins and evolution of different recommendations (eg. pre-natal testing after 35, bed rest, fetal heart monitoring during labor, episiotomies); it's really informative to see how best practices change from one generation to the next, and how sometimes practices lag behind research. The introduction is available online at the Huffington post; I'd suggest checking that out to get a feel for the book. It's a lot less controversial than many of the reviews below would have you believe. Edit: All the hoopla around the "pregnancy vices" chapter is overshadowing some of the other important contributions of this book. In the interest of helping you decide if the rest of the book is something you might find valuable: One of the main themes of this book is that if you want to act in the best interest of your child, you need to figure out what "best" is. Your doctor can guide you, but you can and should have responsibility and agency in these matters. To a lot of pregnant women, choices about alcohol, coffee, and food are easy-- err on the side of utmost caution. Yet one thing Oster highlights is that most pregnancy-related choices aren't so easily dealt with-- in part because the costs and benefits aren't always clear, and in part because even when they are, the alternatives *all* have costs and benefits worth weighing. Expectant parents have to make choices, choices that involve real tradeoffs for both baby and mother. Non-invasive prenatal screening, amnio, or CVS? Schedule the induction, or not? Epidural, or not? Home, or hospital? This book does fantastic job of presenting the most credible, up-to-date estimates of the costs and benefits associated with each of these choices, and pinpoints particular things about your situation that that might make you weigh the costs and benefits differently than your friend, your OB, or Emily herself. I think this is where the book excels, and really fills a void: chapters about topics that are less inherently buzz-worthy than booze, but perhaps even more difficult to navigate in a sea of murky data and misinformation. The prenatal testing chapter is particularly good.
Review: Very helpful if you want to know more than black and white do's and don'ts - This was exactly the kind of book I needed. I have a biology degree, so I hate it when doctors talk to me like I don't know anything about how science or the human body works. Some doctors are better about that than others. Unfortunately my obgyn is one of the usual kinds that just gave me a list of drugs I'm allowed to take and foods I'm not allowed to eat with no explanation. My husband and I immediately started wondering how they arrived at this list. Are these drugs that have been proven to be safe, or ones that haven't been proven to not be safe? Are these foods especially dangerous during pregnancy, or just foods they think are unhealthy in general (my do-not-eat list even included pasta, refined sugar, fast food, etc.). So this book gives you the actual evidence for all these recommendations. I found the section on drugs especially interesting, because they're actually put into several categories based on how much evidence they have for their safety. Class A and B have evidence showing they are safe, Class C don't have much evidence one way or the other, Class D have evidence they are unsafe, but they treat a serious condition that is also unsafe for your pregnancy so it might be worth taking them if you have that condition, and Class X are drugs that are unsafe and not worth taking under any circumstances. And it turns out that some of the "forbidden foods" aren't any more dangerous to eat when you are pregnant than when you are not pregnant, while some of them really are more dangerous when pregnant. Maybe my doctor doesn't think that's an important distinction, but I do. The book didn't even mention pasta, but when I had morning sickness, starchy foods like pasta and bread were some of the few things I could easily eat, so I think my doctor just had pasta (and sweets, and fast food) on the list because eating too much might make me gain too much weight. I can't find anywhere else that says that pasta is especially dangerous to eat when you are pregnant, and then this book even goes on to say that gaining a little too much weight isn't that bad, so I'm still eating pasta. I am avoiding the foods that are on the list because they are more likely to contain bacteria that can make you sick, even though the book says Salmonella isn't any worse for you when you are pregnant than when you aren't (but Listeria and toxoplasmosis are). Salmonella poisoning is no fun, and I don't need that extra stress on top of being pregnant, so I'm avoiding those foods even though the book says I'd probably be OK if I ate them anyway. I also gave up alcohol completely, even though the book said an occasional drink is probably OK, but I just couldn't give up coffee, so I just cut back. As others have said, this book is great if you want to make your own informed decisions, instead of being treated like you are stupid and incapable of understanding nuance and uncertainty. It's also reassuring to know that if you drank that one class of wine, ate a little blue cheese, took a Class C drug, or gained 5 pounds above the recommended amount, you probably haven't done serious harm to your fetus. Being pregnant is stressful enough already without having to add any unnecessary worry on top of that. After reading this book, I'm definitely ordering Cribsheet next, before the baby arrives.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #1,316 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #5 in Pregnancy & Childbirth (Books) #6 in General Women's Health #11 in Motherhood (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 12,032 Reviews |

## Images

![Expecting Better - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81xswVS+oWL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Informative, entertaining
*by E***A on August 21, 2013*

This approachable, entertaining, well-researched book provides clear and useful summaries of medical studies on a wide range of important pregnancy-related topics: the pros and cons of various pre-natal tests, epidurals, induction, doulas, and home birth; foods that are best to be avoided, and those that are less dangerous than conventional wisdom might have us presume. It is an excellent resource-- it's like a friendly encyclopedia of pregnancy- and childbirth- related medical research! The author emphasizes the fact that medical recommendations come from studies, not from thin air-- and that with a little guidance (which Oster provides), women and their partners can understand those studies, and how to interpret the results in the context of their own lives. Oster shares her own choices (with much self-deprecating humor), but makes it clear that this book is about providing information, not prescriptions. I greatly appreciated her discussions of the origins and evolution of different recommendations (eg. pre-natal testing after 35, bed rest, fetal heart monitoring during labor, episiotomies); it's really informative to see how best practices change from one generation to the next, and how sometimes practices lag behind research. The introduction is available online at the Huffington post; I'd suggest checking that out to get a feel for the book. It's a lot less controversial than many of the reviews below would have you believe. Edit: All the hoopla around the "pregnancy vices" chapter is overshadowing some of the other important contributions of this book. In the interest of helping you decide if the rest of the book is something you might find valuable: One of the main themes of this book is that if you want to act in the best interest of your child, you need to figure out what "best" is. Your doctor can guide you, but you can and should have responsibility and agency in these matters. To a lot of pregnant women, choices about alcohol, coffee, and food are easy-- err on the side of utmost caution. Yet one thing Oster highlights is that most pregnancy-related choices aren't so easily dealt with-- in part because the costs and benefits aren't always clear, and in part because even when they are, the alternatives *all* have costs and benefits worth weighing. Expectant parents have to make choices, choices that involve real tradeoffs for both baby and mother. Non-invasive prenatal screening, amnio, or CVS? Schedule the induction, or not? Epidural, or not? Home, or hospital? This book does fantastic job of presenting the most credible, up-to-date estimates of the costs and benefits associated with each of these choices, and pinpoints particular things about your situation that that might make you weigh the costs and benefits differently than your friend, your OB, or Emily herself. I think this is where the book excels, and really fills a void: chapters about topics that are less inherently buzz-worthy than booze, but perhaps even more difficult to navigate in a sea of murky data and misinformation. The prenatal testing chapter is particularly good.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very helpful if you want to know more than black and white do's and don'ts
*by A***L on May 29, 2019*

This was exactly the kind of book I needed. I have a biology degree, so I hate it when doctors talk to me like I don't know anything about how science or the human body works. Some doctors are better about that than others. Unfortunately my obgyn is one of the usual kinds that just gave me a list of drugs I'm allowed to take and foods I'm not allowed to eat with no explanation. My husband and I immediately started wondering how they arrived at this list. Are these drugs that have been proven to be safe, or ones that haven't been proven to not be safe? Are these foods especially dangerous during pregnancy, or just foods they think are unhealthy in general (my do-not-eat list even included pasta, refined sugar, fast food, etc.). So this book gives you the actual evidence for all these recommendations. I found the section on drugs especially interesting, because they're actually put into several categories based on how much evidence they have for their safety. Class A and B have evidence showing they are safe, Class C don't have much evidence one way or the other, Class D have evidence they are unsafe, but they treat a serious condition that is also unsafe for your pregnancy so it might be worth taking them if you have that condition, and Class X are drugs that are unsafe and not worth taking under any circumstances. And it turns out that some of the "forbidden foods" aren't any more dangerous to eat when you are pregnant than when you are not pregnant, while some of them really are more dangerous when pregnant. Maybe my doctor doesn't think that's an important distinction, but I do. The book didn't even mention pasta, but when I had morning sickness, starchy foods like pasta and bread were some of the few things I could easily eat, so I think my doctor just had pasta (and sweets, and fast food) on the list because eating too much might make me gain too much weight. I can't find anywhere else that says that pasta is especially dangerous to eat when you are pregnant, and then this book even goes on to say that gaining a little too much weight isn't that bad, so I'm still eating pasta. I am avoiding the foods that are on the list because they are more likely to contain bacteria that can make you sick, even though the book says Salmonella isn't any worse for you when you are pregnant than when you aren't (but Listeria and toxoplasmosis are). Salmonella poisoning is no fun, and I don't need that extra stress on top of being pregnant, so I'm avoiding those foods even though the book says I'd probably be OK if I ate them anyway. I also gave up alcohol completely, even though the book said an occasional drink is probably OK, but I just couldn't give up coffee, so I just cut back. As others have said, this book is great if you want to make your own informed decisions, instead of being treated like you are stupid and incapable of understanding nuance and uncertainty. It's also reassuring to know that if you drank that one class of wine, ate a little blue cheese, took a Class C drug, or gained 5 pounds above the recommended amount, you probably haven't done serious harm to your fetus. Being pregnant is stressful enough already without having to add any unnecessary worry on top of that. After reading this book, I'm definitely ordering Cribsheet next, before the baby arrives.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fact-based book for empowered pregnancy choices
*by C***L on August 21, 2013*

If you asked me a couple of weeks ago if I was interested in reading Yet Another Pregnancy Book, I would have laughed. Hardly! I read a couple early on, then turned to the almighty Google when I had questions or curiosities. Then about a week ago, my mom clipped an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal called "Take Back Your Pregnancy." Well, I took the bait. Emily Oster's article intrigued me. Definitely one for any subsequent pregnancy, I thought! Then the furor struck on the Interwebs. Because Oster draws the conclusion from a variety of studies and data that it's fine to indulge in the occasional alcoholic beverage during pregnancy, she has been excoriated in a variety of articles and in the responding comments. Current Amazon.com reviews are skewed by those who take issue with an economist (not a medical doctor) who will, in their minds, increase the number of children born with FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder). Several comments made nasty remarks about the author's 2-year-old daughter, Penelope, implying that it was only a matter of time before she would begin to fail IQ tests and demonstrate signs of FASD herself. Was Oster truly that horrible and conniving? Did she write her book to cause birth defects and emotional trauma? I had to know the truth, and while 40 weeks and two days pregnant, I picked up Expecting Better and read it carefully. Spoiler alert: it's really not that bad. I love authors who examine evidence, explain scientific studies and methodology, and draw logical conclusions about the data. Oster isn't an ob/gyn, but she's a well-trained economist whose job is interpreting data. Her analysis is thorough even as she keeps her writing accessible, humorous, and sympathetic. As she points out in the introduction, advice about pregnancy tends to be either black and white--don't have any drinks, ever--or vague--drink coffee in moderation. Instead of relying on the hearsay, she reviews the actual data and comes to her own conclusions. Oster doesn't demand that women drink during pregnancy despite their own reservations. Not at all! She just presents the evidence that light drinking has been shown to be not harmful, and lets the reader make her own choice. The knee-jerk reactions to the book and Oster's approach are misguided because they don't realize that telling women what to do during pregnancy is exactly the opposite of Oster's intentions. Rather, she wants all the data laid out so women can make informed decisions during pregnancy based on their own assessment and comfort levels with varying amounts of risk. That is far more empowering and practical than a notarized list of what to do and not do. She gives examples in the text, citing instances where her review of the data prompted her to chose one path and a friend reviewing the same data to chose another path. That is fine. The goal is seeking knowledge to inform personal decisions. Pregnancy in the U.S. is fraught with judgment from family, friends, and total strangers that add extra stress in an already anxious time. Expecting Better steps back from the hysteria and offers women up-to-date, relevant information about the choices they will need to make during pregnancy. I'll definitely be recommending this one to pregnant friends in the future.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know (The ParentData Series)
- Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series)
- Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

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*Last updated: 2026-05-15*