Get Me Out

A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank, by Randi Hutter

image of get me out book cover
Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D., M.P.H. is a medical writer, adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a lecturer at Yale University.

From a witty, relentlessly inquisitive medical writer, an eye-opening history of pregnancy and birthing joys and debacles. Making and having babies—what it takes to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and deliver—has mystified women and men for the whole of human history. The birth gurus of ancient times told newlyweds that simultaneous orgasms were necessary for conception and that during pregnancy a woman should drink red wine but not too much and have sex but not too frequently. Over the last one hundred years, depending on the latest prevailing advice, women have taken morphine, practiced Lamaze, relied on ultrasound images, sampled fertility drugs, and shopped at sperm banks.

In Get Me Out, the insatiably curious Randi Hutter Epstein journeys through history, fads, and fables, and to the fringe of science, where audacious researchers have gone to extreme measures to get healthy babies out of mothers. The book has a full, good chapter on DES.

DES DiEthylStilbestrol Resources

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