I am proud and excited to announce that the highly lauded new edition When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads will be formally released at the upcoming 37th Annual Meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, January 25-27th, 2017 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. This will be the 4th edition of When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads (WYETTQ) published by HarperCollins. Previous editions were published in 1999, 2004, and 2011. WYETTQ received the Outstanding Book of the Year Award in 2000 from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

The new edition is co-authored by award-winning medical writer and mother of twins, Tamara Eberlein, and two nationally recognized experts in high risk obstetrics and the care of women pregnant with multiples, Barbara Luke, ScD and Roger B. Newman, MD. WYETTQ brings a patient-centered focus to the discussion of common and uncommon problems and complications associated with the antepartum care, delivery and newborn transition faced by women with a multiple pregnancy.

Dr. Barbara Luke is one of world’s foremost authorities on perinatal nutrition and the relationship between maternal nutrition, weight gain and multi-fetal pregnancy outcomes. Her work on optimal BMI-specific weight gain recommendations for twin pregnancies provided the analytic basis for the 2009 Institute of Medicine guidelines for multiples. Dr. Roger B. Newman is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist and former President of the SMFM and has spent most of his career studying best practices for multiples.

Both Dr. Luke and Dr. Newman have personally cared for thousands of women with twin, triplet or quadruplet pregnancies through their leadership of the very successful Multiples Clinic at the University of Michigan and the Twins Clinic at the Medical University of South Carolina. Those women gave to us the knowledge the knowledge that we now hope to share with others.

The new 640 page fourth edition provides completely new and updated information including practical guidelines on all aspects of multiple pregnancy care, extensive nutritional recommendations, menus, dietary suggestions (including vegetarian options) and 75 delicious recipes. We provide graphics such as footprints to show mothers how big their babies are throughout pregnancy, guidelines on safe exercise, how to recognize signs and symptoms of potential complications, how to cope with emotional ups and downs, what to expect during labor, a guide to the NICU, breastfeeding and bottle-feeding, surviving the first several months at home after birth and how to get back into shape after delivery.

In addition, the 4th edition adds a new chapter devoted to the special challenges of monozygotic (identical) twins by Dr. Newman. A new Doctor to Doctor Appendix addresses specific clinical situations during pregnancy and delivery unique to multiple gestations and reviews current options and recommendations for the best outcomes possible. The new edition provides current birth weight references for twins and triples and an expanded bibliography of critical recent literature appropriate to the obstetrical and pediatric care of multiple gestations.

Dr. Barbara Luke and Dr. Roger B. Newman will be available during all exhibit hours at the annual SMFM meeting at Booth 911. We look forward to meeting you and answering any questions that you may have about the care of multiples or our new book. We will be happy to sign copies of our new book for you and we will be offering raffles for book stacks including all our published work. Mostly, we would like you to consider making a heavily discounted bulk purchase of WYETTQ for your practice. Providing all your multiple pregnancy patients with a copy of our book will both enhance your patient’s prenatal care (especially in regards to the nutritional support of her babies) as well as generate tremendously positive public relations for your practice or hospital.

Hope you are able to come by our book release party at SMFM. We could not think of a better place to release When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads. Please come by and say hello and talk about multiples with us at Booth 911 on Wednesday evening, Thursday all day and Friday morning. If, instead, you happen to be at the craps table and have just watched a stack of chips disappear with a swipe of a curved cane, step back and think about where else you could go to make your hard earned money disappear. At Booth 911, you’ll get something of real value in return.

Looking forward to seeing you in Vegas. Been a long time since the SMFM has been there. Have to go with the right attitude. What attitude you ask? Bruce explains it in “Roll of the Dice” from his Lucky Town album. “I’m a thief in the house of love and I can’t be trusted.”