Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Old Wives Tales Vs. Science

Expect Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong, and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster

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After much wondering if it was even possible, hubby and I are expecting. And while I’d done quite a bit of research on the process and probability of conception, I’d done virtually no research on what to do after you managed to succeed (mostly because I didn’t think we would). Days after my second positive test, I stared at the coffee pot, vaguely remembering my pregnant friends abstaining from caffeine, fish, deli meats and a hoard of other things. I stood in a first-trimester fatigue […]

How to make more informed parenting choices (but probably still feel like you’re doing it wrong)

Cribsheet: A data driven guide to better, more relaxed parenting, from birth to preschool by Emily Oster

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Bingo Square: Science (I’m hoping this can fall in this category since it says ‘economics is the science of decision-making’ and this book is full of data from studies backing up what she says.) Having already written a bestseller about debunking pregnancy myths (Expecting Better, I missed that one while pregnant) Oster now tackles all the advice and information thrown at new parents. What can you take on board and what can you ignore? Are you really going to screw up your child based on […]

Better get used to those bar graphs, kid

Cribsheet by Emily Oster

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Apparently it’s economist week at Octothorp’s cannonball read. Emily Oster’s Expecting Better was one of those shibboleths of motherhood that I didn’t even realize existed until I had the octolet, and I fell for it hard. (I felt like I stumbled on a Stonecutters meeting when I was about to give birth. Old friends came out of the woodwork to welcome me to the club, and parents of toddlers were like vampires at the prospect of a) new parent friends and b) someone who was […]

Lots of useful advice when gestating a tiny human

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Since not all the readers of my blog are necessarily also readers here on the group blog or my friends on Facebook, you may not know that I am currently in the process of growing a tiny human inside me. This comes after more than seven years of trying to get pregnant and nearly two emotionally taxing and occasionally very depressing years where every few months I went through time consuming, expensive and at times really rather painful IVF treatments. So I worked HARD for […]

Expecting Better than “What to Expect…”

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Well, I just got back from my first real ultrasound and now the internet/world knows that we’re expecting a little Fiat.Luxury Jr. in 6 months!  So naturally, I’ve been reading–and hate-reading–a lot of pregnancy books. There are a lot of pregnancy books out there, you guys. And a lot of them are condescending, fear-mongering, and almost useless.   I won’t be reviewing all of them because I have other, better books that I want to review, but anyone who’s ever picked up a pregnancy book will be […]



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