When I agreed to this bok tour, I really expected to find something different within the pages of this book. I thought it would be simple. I thought it would be very focused on the career driven powerhouse women I see strutting the streets of San Francisco sporting black heels and blackberries. I thought wrong.
The Working Woman’s Pregnancy Book by Marjorie Greenfieldis a remarkable resource for all pregnant women. Now, I am an information junkie. I research the fun right out of nearly every endeavor, and pregnancy was no different for me. I thought I knew what I was getting in to when I got knocked up with #1, and then discovered that all I knew about was typical. I am atypical. Very few of the usual rules applied to me, and being told what to expect was more like, “Ha, ha wouldn’t that have been nice! Welcome to the brutal reality!”
I have been pregnant three times. Twice I had debilitating hyperemesis, twice I had preterm labor, twice I had preemies, once I ran out of amniotic fluid, once I lost the baby. I have been educated on this rollercoaster, and I always found books on the topic to be lacking, or overly simplified, or directed so exclusively at one demographic that I felt it didn’t apply. This book manages to have it all, hit every demographic, and it is written from the perspective of an obstetrician. What’s more, it is written from the perspective of a woman.
I loved the part on eating during a pregnancy. My first time around I bought a book that told me exactly how many of every thing I needed to eat and how often. Then came about six months where the only thing that stayed down was being pumped directly into my veins. What to eat when you’re expecting? Anything that will stay down!
I know there are women who have stellar pregnancies. They were born to breed and sail through the trimesters like prize-fighters, while I languish by my toilet bowl and in my hospital bed as I fight to hold on to my babies. This book is good enough for both of us, and that is really something.
Posted by Lou on May 16, 2008 @ 11:16 am | 0 Comments
I was recently asked to review a fun new cd/dvd set called, “That Baby”. It is a collection of toned down popular favorites that translate well into the gentle early childhood vibe. I have found that there are two main schools of thought when it comes to kid music: one is hate and one is toleration. Very few people want to listen to Row Row Row Your Boat and Do You Know the Muffin Man ad nauseum, as small children may prefer.
This is where this cd comes in. Artist Stephanie Schneiderman has done covers of many favorite songs such as:
Happiness Runs/Circle Game
Pony Boy
Get Together
Garden Song
Anything is Possible
Songbird
I Will
Both parent and child could easily enjoy this music, so for a parent who is a little stuck on finding songs that work well for everyone, this cd could be a great tool. I have always put together my own playlists for my kids that are a combination of folk, children’s, rock, and other genres, careful to select music that is uplifting to all listeners. My kids love the “That Baby” cd and were very excited to see something come into the house just for them. However, my son still prefers his favorite song Cecelia by Simon and Garfunkle. Old habits die hard.
If you are interested in That Baby, you can Enter the coupon code “MotherTalk” when purchasing and save 20% on your entire order! From now until May 18th, all orders using the coupon code “MotherTalk” will be entered in a drawing to win a new iPod nano.
Posted by Lou on May 6, 2008 @ 12:12 pm | 0 Comments
I recently read Road Map to Holland, by Jennifer Graf Groneberg. It is a wonderfully honest, poignant and insightful memoir about a mother’s experience raising an infant with Down syndrome. Groneberg shares her story about her son Avery with such clarity and depth. The book is a humbling yet empowering ride through the terrors of the NICU, the grief of the diagnosis and the amazing, beautiful paradigm shift that allows the reader to see Avery as a wonderful little person filled with his own possibility and promise for the future.
I loved how the book took the reader through the entire experience. There is no glossing over anything. It is real. The hurt, the frustration, and the wonder is all as real as the joy and the love that is also expressed, and neither set of emotions are doctored up to sound trite or simplistic. I think that far too often we hear only of unwarranted embarrassment or put these parents up on some kind of pedestal, one that does nothing to support, but that only alienates and de-humanizes the people involved. Road Map to Holland is a beautiful look into the reality. It is a book that can pave the way for a lot of understanding and bring much hope.
Posted by Lou on April 2, 2008 @ 2:37 pm | 1 Comment
I have the pleasure of reviewing the book Healthy Child, Healthy World, a book put out by the non profit company of the same name. May I just say: What a resource! I would rarely advise someone I didn’t know to run out and buy a book, but this one really applies to us all: parents, yuppies, hippies, swingers, religious, non religious and those deep thinking people who wonder why new carpet smells so bad. This book is for you. It is about quality of life.
When most of the world considers going green or being environmentally aware, I think the first thoughts that usually come to mind are how we are using our natural resources. Did we plant a tree this year? Did that last soda can get filed in the garbage bin or was it recycled? Will we be buying a hybrid or a gas guzzler in the future? All valid, important questions and concerns, but without really asking the scary question, “What kinds of pesticides, chemicals and other toxins am I routinely subjecting my body to in the name of progress?”
This book answers all of these questions and more. Now, living in our modern, disposable society, where we’ve given up quality for the sake of mass production and the lure of the low price tag, I’m sure there are moments where we all wonder what we’ve gained. It is eye opening to really take a look at what we’ve settled for.
My eyes were opened when my daughter’s skin cracked, bistered and bled in disposable diapers.
My eyes were opened farther when my son’s behavior was radically altered when he ingested red dye, a common food additive.
My eyes opened when I made the chemical connection between a scented candle and my migraine headache.
Now, disposable diapers, attractive food and pretty smelling candles are all lovely things at first glance, but what do we have really? Have we stopped to ask why we’re putting chemicals banned in the 80s from women’s tampons onto the bums of our babies? Have we considered that everything we take into our bodies, by ingestion, breathing, or absorption will affect us, and will affect our children at even greater rates because they are smaller?
I was not a very green person until I became a parent. As I slowly noticed different environmental choices affecting my children, a light went on and I started making changes to see if I could do better. I love the Earth, but I admit my first goal is not to preserve her, it is to preserve my children and to have a happy, healthy family.
Going green can be pretty overwhelming, and I admit that on the scale of greens, I’m still a pretty light green. I am slowly making changes that make us just a little greener and cleaner every day. This is what it is all about. A little education paired with a few small goals can lead to some huge changes and improvements in your quality of life. Choose an area that you feel the most strongly about, be it buying organic food, replacing carpet with a healthier floor, or even simple changes like buying a houseplant to improve indoor air quality or changing to compact florescent light bulbs to reduce energy consumption. It is in these small triumphs that we find huge success.
I loved this book; its practical, pragmatic approach to gradual changes for the better really hit home, because that is what we have been making at my house for the past few years. It takes a little more time, a little more effort, but my kids are worth it.
Posted by Lou on March 27, 2008 @ 7:24 pm | 2 Comments
If you or a loved one has or has had breast cancer, I Am Not My Breast Cancer is an invaluable tool. The book is written off of message board posts from an internet online support group, so you get the ebb and flow of conversation as women from all different walks of life weigh in on how this disease has and is affecting them. With over 800 contributing voices, the book has much to say. It covers topics from the obvious fear of the diagnosis to the less obvious discomforts and challenges that many women with breast cancer face alone.
It is a very personal crash course in medical procedure, patient emotions, and resoundingly lets the reader know that there is a very real, resilient, tired, loving human being underneath that scary diagnosis. The book does not presume that everyone will share similar emotions, but lets the voices of the many tell their stories, that those who read them might find a common voice, support and validation. I would hope that this book would be in the collection of anyone who works with women who have experienced this disease first hand or through a loved one. It is a wealth of knowledge.
I have had friends who have both passed away from and beaten breast cancer, and there are parts of their stories that I have never known. This book was a real education to the total upheaval that breast cancer causes. It increased my fear of the diagnosis, but also reassured my heart that we, as women, as mothers, daughters and friends are tough enough to survive.
Posted by Lou on February 4, 2008 @ 1:53 pm | 0 Comments
I just read The Natural Superwoman by Dr. Uzzi Reiss. The book is based on finding natural ways to deal with many of the common complaints from women such as depression, weight, energy levels, libido, etc. He offers very good, sensible advice on how to eat, focusing mainly on cutting down on calories while still eating a meal that is satisfying. He also spend much of the book focused on bioidentical hormones, which unlike the Premarin and Provera that has been headlining in the news of late as cancer causing, are actually hormones identical to those which the body naturally produces, which make them not only safer but much more effective.
Reiss walked down the list of symptoms that a woman might experience when she has a lack of estrogen, progesterone or testosterone. Many of the complaints on these lists were quite familiar to me, especially in the estrogen arena. However, I am not sold on this.
Do you want to know why? It is because I have spent years going to doctors and telling them that I’m tired, I’m feeling anxiety and emotionally flat, my periods have gone from normal to near hemorrhaging every month, I have headaches and I’m just plain irritable (especially in the two weeks prior to my period when my estrogen is naturally diminishing) and they have labeled me a number of different things, given me the drugs and admonished me to exercise or not, eat such and such, or not, and told me that I WILL FEEL BETTER. And then I don’t. Or they do the blood test and come back with, “Nope, guess that wasn’t it, how about some more tests that do nothing except display your remarkable ability to bruise.”
In the past year I have been told that I have depression. It looks like a cortisol deficiency. It is all in your head. It’s all in your diet. Must be your thyroid. It’s PMS. I have Fibromyalgia. I believe the fibromyalgia- do you know why? Because it is just a label for a group of crappy symptoms with no real treatment and no discernable cause. The basic advice is “you can try all of this stuff, but it probably won’t work. We can give you painkillers and other drugs to mask the symptoms, but it won’t make them go away. Basically, you should just slow down, get some sleep and resign yourself to functioning way below par. Forever.”
So, forgive me, if when I see a huge list of symptoms that are ever so familiar along side a really easy solution (Reiss’s estrogen cream, applied lightly on estrogen heavy days of my cycle and heavily on days when my estrogen is depleted), I am totally skeptical. Oh, I want to believe. I want Reiss to personally work me up and really fix me. Everything he says sounds good. Very logical, cause and effect, and well thought out, and I will 100% agree with him when he said in the book that he is pretty sure that no one is suffering from a Prozac deficiency. I know I’m not.
After years of tracking my cycle and my overall state of being, what he wrote makes more sense than anything else I’ve read, and so I will make an appointment with my doctor and discuss it. Now, the chances that the military medical people will agree to trying out bioidentical hormones- not good. But still, it is worth a shot.
The one thing the book never mentioned was how all of these hormones applied during pregnancy. Many case studies discussed were of women of childbearing age, so I would have hoped to have seen that discussed a bit.
All in all, it was a thought provoking book, and I recommend it.
Posted by Lou on January 29, 2008 @ 9:26 pm | 4 Comments
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