Oster takes an amazingly helpful approach of not tell you what to do. She looks through all the studies and tells you what the evidence says. This resulting book was our bible when trying to get, and whilst being pregnant and having all the evidence crunched for you gave us real reassurance and confidence in the decisions that we made. Highly recommended

This book is incredible and reading it is the first piece of advice I give to pregnant friends. I went from being anxious about what the rules are and all the conflicting advice from NHS, parents, friends - to having confidence I was doing the right thing by my child. Oster doesn’t tell you what to do (refreshingly) she tells you what the evidence says and let’s you make your own choices.

This book is fantastic! All the useful information is in there with the facts that I wanted and needed to know with none of the slogging through the stuff that just doesn't matter. It's also very amusingly written and not at all boring. If you're someone like me who just wants to know how much food/exercise/coffee/etc you can have or need, what the actual side effects are without vague guesses,and what health issues are the most important this is the book for you.

If you want to read a book that helps justify drinking alcohol throughout pregnancy (daily in the second and third trimester apparently) and other things that are known to be bad for you and baby, then this is the book for you. The book ignores basic common sense in pregnancy such as choices around drinking alcohol, caffeine, medications, safe foods to eat - all in contrast with the advice of midwives and GPs. It focuses entirely on data through studies of pregnant women and their outcomes, with some dubious conclusions made. The main theme is, on the basis of available data, and if you read it how you’d like to, risks are low for everything, so just do what you like. Irresponsible and lacking basic common sense.