Nourished Mother

Real Food for Mother and Baby

From Amber

Tomorrow Nina Planck's new book comes out! I have blogged about her here before, and think that her previous book Real Food; What To Eat and Why should be the first book anyone interested in nutrition should read. 

And since I also think that every mother should be interested in nutrition, I was thrilled when I first found out she was writing this book:

After reading her first book I sent Nina a fan mail sort of email, telling her the story of how my mostly vegan diet had caused my postpartum breastfeeding body to become depleted and exhausted, and how we had found traditional whole foods to be the perfect antidote to my huge new-mama nose dive into ill health.

I also mentioned how it just made sense to us that if we were going to give birth naturally, breastfeed, and hold and sleep with our daughter the way humans have done for millennia, that we would also eat the real, nourishing foods our ancestors had eaten for millennia.

Well, she wrote back and asked if she could tell our story in the new book she was working on! I haven't seen the book yet (though Nina did graciously offer to send us a copy), but I am so excited to read our story in print in a book by one of my favorite authors, and to read the rest of the excellent information the book contains.

What a perfect baby shower gift!

Here it is on Amazon. And here's what the publisher has to say:

Nina Planck, one of the great food activists, changed the way we view old-fashioned foods like butter with her groundbreaking Real Food. T hen she got pregnant. Never one to accept conventional wisdom blindly, Nina found the usual advice about pregnancy and baby food riddled with myths and misunderstandings. In Real Food for Mother and Baby, Nina explains why many modern ideas about pregnancy and infant nutrition are wrongheaded and why traditional foods are best. While Nina can be controversial—her op-ed in the New York Times on vegan diets for infants was one of the paper’s most e-mailed articles— she’s no contrarian. Readers applaud her candor; they also trust her research and welcome her advice.

Nina’s basic premise hasn’t changed—whole foods are best—but some of the details are surprising. Pregnant women need meat and salt, not iron supplements. Nursing will be easier if you act like the mammal you are. Delaying the introduction of certain solid foods doesn’t prevent allergies. Cereals are not the best foods for tiny eaters; meat and egg yolks are better. From conception to two years, the body’s overwhelming needs are for quality fat and protein, not for carrots and low-fat dairy. Even as she casts a skeptical eye on the conventional wisdom, Nina is reassuring. She shows you how to keep your baby healthy on good, simple food. Real Food for Mother and Baby will be the new classic on eating for two.

Earthworm Friend

from Anna

I started diggin' in the dirt today... planting lettuces, herbs, spinach. This year Stella is able to help with scooping and spreading compost, scattering seeds-- what a joy it was to work with her! I captured a really delightful moment that I wanted to share-- I think this pic is really one worth a thousand words.

Good Food in the News

from Anna

I just want to share a couple of links to recent news stories about food-- they're both good articles that challenge mainstream assumptions:

Eating Food That's Better For You, Organic or Not

In Praise of Fat

Eat on!

Nursing Natives at the Zoo

from Anna

I keep wanting to share this and forgetting, but today while visiting the our local zoo with the babe I remembered to snap a pic... This beautiful mama and baby sit in the corner of the African-themed cafe in the Okavango Delta exhibit section:

Empire of Scrounge

from Anna

I love other people's trash. I get huge gratification from knowing that most of our clothes and furniture, and many of our household items are second-hand finds. While I've never actually been Dumpster diving, I definitely comb the thrift stores, rescue things from the curb, and take stuff off the hands of people who don't want it, whether through Freecycle or just friends. I like knowing that "junk" is being reused, and that we as a family are helping to reduce the tons and tons of trash that go into the landfills. I am not a pack-rat, mind you... the pack-rat would be my nemesis... I don't take things we can't use and it seems I'm still constantly giving things away in an effort to simplify and declutter. We are also avid recyclers and composters, and my husband does store up a bit of scrap in the basement that he cashes in on from time to time. Trash is a passion for us... it's practical and political, and it really is a spiritual pursuit, a religious one  in the true sense of the word. Now enter this book... 

Empire of Scrounge is a totally engrossing, philosophically powerful account of folks living on the margins of our hyperconsumeristic culture, scrounging out both a practical living and an existential meaning from scavenging, scrapping, Dumpster diving, and all various forms of reuse & recycling wherein people looking to survive become sometimes accidental environmentalists and subversives. The author chronicles an 8 month stretch after quitting his university position when he decided to do the field research required for this book-- but having no job, no immediate prospects, etc. he "becomes the phenomenon" and equipped with a bicycle & tools (themselves scrounged items) takes on the experiment to see how much he can depend on the urban ecology of disposability & reclamation for his own survival. The people he writes about run the gamut of socioeconomic class and race, and range from found artists, bottle-collecting homeless guys, persecuted old scrap metal collectors, Food Not Bombs & Bikes Not Bombs activists, drunken Texas ladies enthused by a score of discarded fancy cosmetics, subversive homebuilders-- the list goes on... This guy is someone you would totally want to befriend, he writes brilliantly, and the book is pure genius.

Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves

from Anna

You can go ahead and place Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves at the tippity-top of the list of my favorite parenting books. I've had a difficult time even sitting down and writing a review for this one, because I feel I can't adequately describe how powerful and amazing it truly is.

A friend of mine, a single father, recently wrote to me regarding a difficult day he had with his son... the boy accidentally locked them both out of the house, and my friend lost his cool. He described the scene-- he was less than kind, his son sat on the steps and cried. He later apologized to the boy. I assured him that the apology was so important, something many of us never got from our own parents who lived by the credo whereby The Grown-Up is Always Right. We discussed this a little, how vital it is to have to work through our own less-than-perfect upbringings, our own childhood traumas that resurface when we are at the hardest moments with our kids. What really made the biggest impression on me in this conversation though, was a simple image that has been haunting me as the most perfect metaphor for parenting-- my friend mentioned that he had been out in the yard pulling up the roots of oleander bushes. Isn't that the most grueling and most spiritual work of raising children, tearing up the roots of the poisionous plants that flourish in our own minds?

This is the core of Naomi Aldort's outstanding book. It is absolutely vital, in order to love our children as real human beings, respect them as individuals, and interact authentically with them, to do the hard work of pulling up those toxic roots that are so entrenched in our own hearts. Aldort's book is beautifully written and her insights are amazing. I usually sneer at any parenting book that offers an acronymic formula-- but her "S.A.L.V.E." technique for what to remember and consider before reacting to our children when we are angry or frustrated is the exception. Stopping to consider our own past hurts and cultural inculcations about what motherhood/fatherhood is, and realizing that our motivations often don't match up with what we truly want to express to our kids can make a huge difference in the messages they receive from us about who they are, who we are, and what our relationships are and can be (both between parent & child and more generally between any human beings).

For mothers and fathers who truly wish to grow as people, be more compassionate parents, and raise children who are confident, autonomous, and base their decisions not on fear but on love, this book is it. While virtually every parenting guide out there is promising to school you on ways to produce a happy (and of course obedient) child through various permutations of force, threat, or manipulation, and giving you handy tricks for asserting your will over your child's, this book gives you the honest truth: you can't change another person into what you want him to be, but all things change when we change ourselves.   

Childhood is not Preparation for Life

from Anna

Just a great quote I want to share...

"When we adults think of children there is a simple truth that we ignore: childhood is not preparation for life; childhood is life.
A child isn't getting ready to live; a child is living. No child will miss the zest and joy of living unless these are denied by adults who have convinced themselves that childhood is a period of preparation.
How much heartache we would save ourselves if we would recognize children as partners with adults in the process of living, rather than always viewing them as apprentices. How much we could teach each other; we have the experience and they have the freshness. How full both our lives could be."

John A. Taylor

The Mamas and The Papas

from Anna

Mothering and Fathering is an interesting exploration of how gender differences affect parenting style... and also how that plays out in terms of the dominant philosophies in our culture, where most "experts" in child development and care are male doctors and authors. Bypassing the popular unisex theories of the 1980's that proposed there was little to the traditional ideas of gender differences, Thevenin believes that there are varying strengths and weaknesses inherent to male and female approaches to life, and therefore to child rearing, and hypothesizes that there is much understanding to be gleaned by accepting these differences as just that-- differences, not right tendencies versus wrong ones. Thevenin explains the clashes that commonly occur in households and in our larger society when the maternal instinct for relationship building and close nurturing is often at odds with the paternal emphasis on independence as a highly prized value. She acknowledges that she is working with generalities and that many women and men have proclivities that would categorize them as being more oriented toward the opposite gender, but I think her take on gender disparities is a pretty fair one. Thevenin, author of the classic The Family Bed, is obviously an advocate of intensive mothering in the high-touch style, but she takes care not to dismiss what she portrays as the father's instinctive orientation towards independence, competition, and establishing hierarchy through acheivement as negative per se... instead she explores how mothers and fathers balance each other and contribute to the well-being of a child through evolutionarily proven differences in inclination. She proposes that the intense bond of the mother/baby relationship is totally ideal for the youngest years of a child's life and that as a toddler moves toward greater independence and exploration the bond with the father becomes key for development, as the paternal orientation is to be an "encourager" more than a "nurturer". This was an enjoyable read... it gave me a lot to talk about with my husband, and definitely gave me cause to appreciate his willingness to accept my mothering style and recognize both my maternal needs and the genuine needs of our child... and helped me to understand the focus that our daughter's development will take as she moves further into those "weaning years" in which she will grow in attachment to her papa and need more of the "male" incitement toward individuation.