One of my favorite writers, Terry Pratchett, often points out that books are dangerous and that people who think otherwise are naive. In Anhk-Morpork, his fictional city, they are under a strict watch of the Librarian of the Unseen University. The most dangerous ones are locked in chains lest they should escape. These seem to have freed themselves, running straight into my unsuspecting hands:
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. This one, coupled with his Omnivore’s Dilemma, creates a new kind of food consciousness. It promotes “opting out” of the industrial food trap in favor of real food. One of the advices he gives the readers is “Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” My other favorite is “Avoid products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronouncable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup.”
Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. Planck is a former vegetarian, now advocating eating meat, albeit only grass-fed, free range, sustainably farmed kind. She points out that only in recent years sustainable meat eating got accepted as a viable part of the (modern) organic/green movement, which from its conception in the 70s was a vegetarian/vegan realm. My favorite part of her philosophy is her raw milk advocacy. This milk is from grass-fed cows from poly-cultured farms where contamination or disease are naturally contained.
Raising Baby Green: The Earth Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care by Alan Greene and others.
Sarah Lentz pointed me to this one. I had read a few others but I think this is my favorite so far. Dr Greene was aware the connection between some of his patients illnesses and environmental factors, and then he participated in a cord blood study conducted by Environmental Working Group. The findings blew his mind. There is “a total of 287 different industrial chemicals circulating through the body of newborns.” Some cause cancer in humans or animals, some are toxic to brain and nervous system, some cause birth defects and some do two or more of the above. I like this book because it’s gentle on the reader, doesn’t advocate or expect sudden and huge shifts but slow, gradual awareness that leads to permanent changes that are better for baby and the environment.
The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff is an anthropological study of lives of natives in the South American jungle, conducted in the seventies. The cover of my copy classifies this book among Child Development Classics and it’s on my midwife’s list of recommended readings. Basically, her findings are that babies need constant touch with mom or another person for the first 6 to 8 months of life. (People call this “babywearing”). This constant touch instils a sense of security in the child and stimulates his brain development. Furthermore, it allows the kid to be where the action is, close mom’s face from where he learns basic human interaction. Once crawling and walking, the children sort of move to the perifery of mother’s life to live and explore the world on their own. Mothers continue to meet the kids’ needs but they are far from brain-deadening vigilat supervision, rather, they go about their daily tasks communing with other adults.
Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene by Ingrid Bauer. This is another one from my midwife’s list of readings. I had promised Chris not to talk about this one because IT’S COMPLETELY INSANE, but I can’t resist the temptation. The idea is that if you know the signals your baby gives when he needs to eat, you can also get to know those he exhibits when he needs to pee. Moreover, you two can learn to communicate so the elimination can be initiated by either party. How about that? Now, this sorta contradicts what we know about baby development, namely, that baby’s sphincters aren’t strong enough to hold things until the age 3 or so. But Bauer doesn’t even ask we do that. The idea here is voluntary elimination and not forced retention. Babies in all kinds of non-western cultures seem to have developed sphincters age 3. The people in those cultures are probably just backwards and need to be educated by our esteemed doctors. Don’t they know they are ruining their children?