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Expecting Trouble: What Expectant Parents Should Know About Prenatal Care in America
A controversial volume dispelling current misconceptions about prenatal care
In this controversial volume, Dr. Strong dispels widespread misconceptions about the effectiveness of prenatal care in its current form and explains how mothers themselves may influence the course and outcome of their pregnancies to a greater degree than do their obstetricians. He provides specific questions that parents should be asking their health care providers to ensure that they and their babies receive the best care possible.
In this controversial volume, Dr. Strong dispels widespread misconceptions about the effectiveness of prenatal care in its current form and explains how mothers themselves may influence the course and outcome of their pregnancies to a greater degree than do their obstetricians. He provides specific questions that parents should be asking their health care providers to ensure that they and their babies receive the best care possible.
- GenresNonfictionParenting
258 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
39 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 23, 2008
This is an important book, but it's targeted to a scholarly audience. I got the point of the thesis pretty early and was impressed with the very careful scholarship. It's a book for policy-makers though, and not necessarily for expectant moms.
I read academic writing as a part of my job, and so have a slightly higher tolerance than most, but I wasn't compelled to finish this one. Unless you're terrifically interested in the topic, you might skip it.
I read academic writing as a part of my job, and so have a slightly higher tolerance than most, but I wasn't compelled to finish this one. Unless you're terrifically interested in the topic, you might skip it.
August 12, 2019
Annnnnd I think I'm done with pregnancy activist books. :D
This book took a different slant than others. First, this is an OB-GYN writing. So you can't pull the midwife bias here. But I was blindsided by the force of his argument-- which is basically that prenatal care does very little good for either the mother or the baby and, in order to fix the problem we need to either stop wasting money on every other week visits and testing that has no valid scientific studies to back it up, or we need to improve our studies, our science, and our research to make prenatal care worth the time and money that people and insurance companies pay.
Secondly, and this was music to my medical activist soul, he went through the problems of malpractice, insurance, and government involvement in medical care. Take that, and apply it to almost any field of medicine, and you have what is wrong with our system today. His studies of Medicare and Medicaid programs were particularly chilling... and worth reviewing before you vote next year.
His view of women and women in scientific studies was telling. "A woman," he says, "is basically medically invisible unless she is pregnant," which is why all our struggles, as a society, with infertility and pre-conception care are basically guesswork and rarely covered by insurance (after all, any logical reason you can give to refuse care and save thousands of dollars is valid and I totally see that point as someone who has spent way too much time in business).
Granted, he published this about 10 years ago so there are probably more studies available now. But not the 40+ years worth of research that backs up others.* He provides a fairly neutral view, though. He provides rebuttals, counterpoints, etc. It's worth reading slowly.
His final conclusion, apart from the points I mentioned about improving our care and research, is that most pregnant women...
wait for it...
would be better with a midwife.
Go figure.
*I was on a forum and found a heartbreaking note from someone who who (according to her) was given Cytotec to speed up contractions. From all the recent research there is, shouldn't she have been warned before giving birth that they can cause birth defects? Made me sad. Yet, judging by the tone and the content of the note, it totally backs up his point about bias in medical care.
This book took a different slant than others. First, this is an OB-GYN writing. So you can't pull the midwife bias here. But I was blindsided by the force of his argument-- which is basically that prenatal care does very little good for either the mother or the baby and, in order to fix the problem we need to either stop wasting money on every other week visits and testing that has no valid scientific studies to back it up, or we need to improve our studies, our science, and our research to make prenatal care worth the time and money that people and insurance companies pay.
Secondly, and this was music to my medical activist soul, he went through the problems of malpractice, insurance, and government involvement in medical care. Take that, and apply it to almost any field of medicine, and you have what is wrong with our system today. His studies of Medicare and Medicaid programs were particularly chilling... and worth reviewing before you vote next year.
His view of women and women in scientific studies was telling. "A woman," he says, "is basically medically invisible unless she is pregnant," which is why all our struggles, as a society, with infertility and pre-conception care are basically guesswork and rarely covered by insurance (after all, any logical reason you can give to refuse care and save thousands of dollars is valid and I totally see that point as someone who has spent way too much time in business).
Granted, he published this about 10 years ago so there are probably more studies available now. But not the 40+ years worth of research that backs up others.* He provides a fairly neutral view, though. He provides rebuttals, counterpoints, etc. It's worth reading slowly.
His final conclusion, apart from the points I mentioned about improving our care and research, is that most pregnant women...
wait for it...
would be better with a midwife.
Go figure.
*I was on a forum and found a heartbreaking note from someone who who (according to her) was given Cytotec to speed up contractions. From all the recent research there is, shouldn't she have been warned before giving birth that they can cause birth defects? Made me sad. Yet, judging by the tone and the content of the note, it totally backs up his point about bias in medical care.
October 2, 2019
By "finished" I mean I gave up. I picked this up in hopes of learning how to advocate for good care for myself. The longest chapter in the book is basically a tirade against torts and managed care, which is a much broader topic than prenatal/obstetric care. Even the more direct points at the beginning of the book were more "FYI" than any concrete suggestions about what you can do to be more effective in the system that we have.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews