Your Baby, Your Way
Taking Charge of your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Parenting Decisions for a Happier, Healthier Family
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Publisher Description
A finalist for a Books for a Better Life Award, this eye-opening, must-read book arms parents with the information they need to make informed decisions about their own health and the health of their babies.
In Your Baby, Your Way award-winning journalist Jennifer Margulis explores our current cultural practices during pregnancy, childbirth, and the first year of a baby’s life, challenges advice given to new mothers, and encourages parents to question what they’re told about prenatal and infant care. Margulis explains how financial interests often skew the treatment we give to mothers and infants, investigating topics such as:
· How the diaper industry perpetuates delays in potty training
· Why cesareans are increasingly prevalent
· Why more women don’t breastfeed
Based on meticulous research and in-depth interviews with parents, doctors, midwives, nurses, health care administrators, and scientists, Margulis’s impassioned and eloquent critique is shocking, groundbreaking, empowering, and revelatory. Going beyond the advice in the What to Expect books, Your Baby, Your Way inspires and empowers, helping couples have a happier, healthier pregnancy and childbirth, and “motivates women to ask ‘why?’ before blindly agreeing to everything their doctor orders” (Booklist).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Award-winning investigative journalist/mother of four Margulis comes to some startling conclusions in this comprehensively researched examination of the business of giving birth in America. Beginning with pregnancy and ending at baby's first birthday, the text follows in rough chronological order the issues that parents face, from prenatal care, labor and delivery, to potty training and well-baby pediatrician visits. Margulis raises the question of why the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized country. She interviews doctors, midwives, parents, scientists and others, hunting down the corporate profits and private interests that "trump mom and baby," relentlessly searching for evidence of why unnecessary and sometimes harmful medical interventions are practiced in American hospitals. In her search for answers, Margulis comes to some stunning realizations about practices that most parents believe to be safe, ranging from ultrasounds and C-sections to the baby's first possibly "toxic" bath in the hospital nursery (researchers, for instance, are studying a link between ultrasounds and autism; C-sections have become a dangerous "trend"). Many decisions, the author concludes, are not based upon "best evidence or best practices," but rather on medical industry profits and fear of litigation. Inspiring readers to follow her lead by trusting their instincts and questioning the status quo, Margulis delivers a compelling and thought-provoking work for every parent and parent-to-be.
Customer Reviews
This is the must read baby book
I’ve read the others. This is the one to read. I read this book after having my baby and I wish I had read it sooner. I hope every expecting parent finds this book.