Taking Back your pregnancy!

I read a pretty  article in The WSJ. Mike and I spent Sunday evening catching up on our newspaper reading.

Anyways, this article really stood out to me. Emily Oster does such a good job of creating her own rules for pregnancy. I admire those that don't just listen to the rules, but explore their own paths. It was super empowering to read this article while I navigate motherhood and all the rules that are associated with it.

A quick disclaimer, though, while reading The NYT, I did stumble across an article that is a crucial follow- up to the article below. Definitely worth a read, but long story short, the author lost a baby due to listeria - which in turn is the result of what you eat (think: soft cheeses).

It's in the Style section, it's called: ‘Take Back’ Your Pregnancy? With Caution.By KJ DELL'ANTONIA

Take Back Your Pregnancy

Modern pregnancy comes with a long list of strict rules, but does it have to? An economist examines the data and finds room for choice amid the familiar limits.

By EMILY OSTER

F. Martin Ramin/The Wall Street Journal

 

 

Modern pregnancy comes with many rules.

 

When I got pregnant three years ago, I knew that I'd face lots of decisions—whether to have coffee or a glass of wine, what kind of prenatal testing to do, whether to use an epidural. I figured that I'd study the pros and cons and then make my own informed choices, as I normally did (with guidance and information from my doctor, of course).

This isn't what it was like at all.

In reality, medical care during pregnancy seemed to be one long list of rules. Being pregnant was a good deal like being a child again. There was always someone telling me what to do, but the recommendations from books and medical associations were vague and sometimes contradictory. It started right away. "You can only have two cups of coffee a day." I wondered why. What did the numbers say about how risky one, two or three cups were? This wasn't discussed anywhere.

The key to good decision making is evaluating the available information—the data—and combining it with your own estimates of pluses and minuses. As an economist, I do this every day. It turns out, however, that this kind of training isn't really done much in medical schools. Medical school tends to focus much more, appropriately, on the mechanics of being a doctor.

When I asked my doctor about drinking wine, she said that one or two glasses a week was "probably fine." But "probably fine" isn't a number. In search of real answers, I combed through hundreds of studies—the ones that the recommendations were based on—to get to the good data. This is where another part of my training as an economist came in: I knew enough to read the numbers correctly. What I found was surprising.

Read the rest here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323514404578652091268307904.html