About this item
Pregnant women encounter advice from many directions about how to have a healthy pregnancy - not only from health care providers, but from relatives, friends, and the Internet. Some of these pieces of advice (on topics that range from inducing labor to telling the baby's gender to improving breastfeeding) have been handed down from woman to woman for generations, and don't appear in any medical textbooks. Dr. Jonathan Schaffir explores the origins of these old wives' tales, and examines the medical evidence that proves which ones may be useful and which ones are just entertaining. On topics ranging from getting pregnant to the best way to recover from childbirth, the book settles the questions of what a woman should believe when she hears such advice.
About the Author
Jonathan Schaffir, MD, is a practicing obstetrician with more than twenty-five years of experience in caring for pregnant women and delivering babies. He is also a medical educator and teacher on the faculty of the Ohio State University College of Medicine. He is a former president of the North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology, an interdisciplinary society that brings together various professionals who have interests in socio-cultural and psychological aspects of obstetrics and women's health. He has extensive experience researching and writing in the field of obstetrical folklore and has been quoted in outlets such as Parents, American Baby, Self and Child magazines.
