The Garden of Fertility; Your Fertility Signals

The gold standard book for Fertility Awareness is Toni Weschler's Taking Charge of Your Fertility. I think a class on this should be taught to girls instead of that dumb "Welcome to adolescence, here's some deodorant" speech we got in my school. FA (fertility awareness) is all about knowing your body, knowing what's normal for you, and understanding what your body does, understanding how to get pregnant and how not to get pregnant, when you're healthy and when you're not. Doesn't that sound like vital information for girls? Yet I didn't hear about this, really, until after my first child was born. Thus: if you are a girl/woman, you should look into this! It's very empowering to not have your body be such a mystery anymore.

Anyway. So I read two more FA books recently; one was good, the other, not very helpful at all. The Garden of Fertility, by Katie Singer, was an excellent addition to TCOYF, with lots more about how you can use your FA to gauge your own health, and about how things like diet can affect your fertility, and what you can do about it. I loved it. Your Fertility Signals, by Merryl Winstein, struck me as more of a "fertility for dummies" book, but the problem was, it tried to be short'n'sweet and just ended up being too vague, and slightly confusing. At least to me.

So if you're going to read just one fertility awareness book, and you're daunted by the immensity of TCOYF, definitely go for The Garden of Fertility. If you just need a quick refresher or just want the absolute bare bones, you could try the other one, but it seemed much less helpful to me.

Either way, if you haven't read a book about FA, then please do!

Adventures in Tandem Nursing

I read this book, by Hilary Flower, for professional interest reasons, mostly, and I thought it was very good. In case you aren't familiar, Tandem Nursing refers to nursing more than one child at once, generally, nursing your first baby through your second pregnancy and beyond. It's not something well-known in general in America, but that's because people who are nursing outside the norm tend to stay outside the public eye, since even someone nursing well inside the norm can be highly criticized in public.

This was a great resource book for someone who wants to help support nursing moms. If I were tandem nursing, I'd probably also just want to leave it lying around for naysayers to see and pick up, so they might just stop the criticism and realize that every family is just trying to do what's best for itself, and whatever ideas we have about nursing are just opinions and are very rarely scientifically based.

For example/Here's my disclaimer, obviously I have an opinion about these things:

1. When James was 6 weeks old, I was nursing him (discreetly, though that shouldn't really matter), in a rest stop and was given the evil eye by a woman eating with her teenage daughter. Then the manager came and very nicely (?) told me I couldn't do that here, even though I wasn't even doing it anymore. They don't know the law! And she didn't even care that I nursed, she just didn't want to scare off potential customers...and those customers "tattled" on me as they were leaving! UGH!!! Just awful.

2. One of my DOCTORS once told me that I couldn't possibly get pregnant again as long as I was still nursing. This is some of the worst advice EVER. Luckily I wasn't trying to AVOID pregnancy with this advice, because I can definitely tell you some stories about women getting pregnant while nursing, but most importantly, it is WELL-KNOWN that nursing does NOT prevent pregnancy, although it may impede it somewhat, up to some extent. Oh, ignorance. I fired that doctor for his many other incompetencies as well as that one.

Think Like a Pancreas

This is a book that I somehow thought came highly recommended. It's by Gary Scheiner, and it seems to me like it's been on all the lists of Books Diabetics Should Read, but eh, it's kind of vague to me now where exactly I got that advice.

Not that this is a bad book or anything. It seems eminently useful. It's just that it's sort of cheesy and the beginning is, well, for...beginners....and, to sum it up, I only got to about p. 100.

I will probably regret this, and check it out again later. But first I do have to work through my diabetic-hangups, the biggest of which is that I feel like I've already got the sum total of information I can handle when faced with making 80 billion decisions a day and I don't really want to have to factor more stuff in. But I will get through that, because the payoff should be well worth it. I have been feeling horribly terribly awfully run over by my D lately and I am ready for a change.

So I'll suffer through the cheesy man-jokes and milk this book for all the great things I'm sure it can give me. Some other day.

In Defense of Food

This is Michael Pollan's latest. A couple of years ago he published The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has been quite popular, and was quite good, and I happen to like this one even more. In both books, he examines American eating habits and the impact and morality behind different sources of our food and ways of eating--but this book is much more about what we can do about it, how we can, as he says, "escape" from The American Way of eating, which is so bad for us and for the world.

The book's advice can really be summed up quite easily, as is proclaimed on the front cover: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. But the author really delves into how we can navigate this somewhat obscure directive, as well as why it's so difficult for us to do that in the prevalent food climate.

Here's most of his advice points, taken from the last third of the book. My additions are in parentheses and are not in italics.

Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Don't eat anything incapable of rotting.

Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high fructose corn syrup.

Avoid food products that make health claims. For a food product to make health claims on its package it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be a processed than a whole food.

Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. (He goes on to suggest farmers' markets, CSAs, and growing your own.)

You are what what you eat eats too. (Thus feedlot cattle are not nearly as healthy for you to consume as 100% grass-fed.)

Eat like an omnivore. (Biodiversity is a good thing, for quite a few reasons.)

If you have the space, buy a freezer. (You can get a lot of good quality meat at once for cheaper...You can buy in season at the farmer's market and freeze for year-round local produce...)

Eat well-grown food from healthy soils. (How we treat the earth can affect the nutritional quality of our food. Thus, organic practices ARE important for our health in ways we might not have noticed or thought of before.)

Eat wild foods when you can.

Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. (Sure, maybe someone might come along with one that might be good for you or at least not bad for you. But history is not behind that claim.)

Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet. (Don't try to isolate the omega-3 from the fish, for example.)

Pay more, eat less. (Your food dollar can work for you and for the world in this way.)

Do all your eating at a table.

Try not to eat alone.

Fast Food Nation

This is a famous book by Eric Schlosser, used often in college courses. And it's easy to see why. The writing is absorbing, the stories personal and interesting, and the subject matter that special mixture of fascination and horror that many find difficult to read but also difficult to put down.

Many people, after reading this book, vow something along the lines of "I will never eat another hamburger again." I wouldn't go in that direction. Rather, I would say, "Yep, that's why I don't ever want to eat hamburgers at [name of fast food restaurant]. We need healthier food choices."

A great read.

How Weaning Happens

I would really have loved it if Diane Bengson's book had some answers that I hadn't thought of or heard of yet. It didn't, but I credit that to the fact that I have already searched out this kind of information far and wide, and I've been around nursing and weaning moms my whole life, and none of this is a mystery to me.

It's no surprise, either, that this book didn't contain a specific answer to my specific questions. But it's still a very reassuring book and is very calming about any questions and concerns moms may have. Definitely recommended not only for moms who are curious or need help with these issues, but also for any family and/or friends who don't understand why someone hasn't weaned yet, or who don't understand the process, or who are worried about any of it.

I did feel like they left out some clarifying details, and they REALLY need to include hormonal feelings about nursing in this book, but in general, it's a great book.

Little Sugar Addicts

I picked up this book by Kathleen DesMaisons at the library because the title was interesting to me. I had no idea what it was really about or anything, but once I started reading it, I realized that the author has a series of books for adults as well (Potatoes Not Prozac, The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program, and Your Last Diet), one of which I think my friend Becky recommended to me. And I think this book has a lot of good things to say about how much an unhealthy diet can affect our children's behaviors and abilities and how little we sometimes notice this, or how little we think we can change it.

Unfortunately, there were also a lot of things in this book that I did NOT like. First of all, I don't want to be recommended a bunch of sugar-free substitutes that are still sweet. I am not a fan of diet sodas or really any kind of artificial sweeteners. I think you should go whole hog for NATURAL sweets like fruits if you're going to be focusing on a healthy diet and cutting out things that may be adversely affecting your children.

Also, the author mentions over and over again how everything that's wrong with your child is not your fault, how diet is the answer. Well. I definitely think that cutting the vast majority of empty sugars out of your child's diet will have a positive impact on his or her behavior. But I got tired of her assuring me that there's no way my parenting skills might play into the problem, or that there's nothing else in my life I can improve to also help my children.

For me, the worst was reading about Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Do you know about this? It's a new psychological disorder diagnosis defined as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are present: 1. often loses temper 2. often argues with adults 3. often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults' requests or rules 4. often deliberately annoys people 5. often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior 6. is often touchy or easily annoyed by others 7. is often angry and resentful 8. is often spiteful or vindictive."

This is highly disturbing to me. As an anthropologist, I feel that the diagnoses found in a psychology manual are often more reflective of a society's values and issues than of an empirical medical diagnosis, and it really really bothers me that people can't see that perhaps this type of behavior is a) normal for a child (hello, teenagers?), b) caused by inflexible or unsure parenting, c) caused by unrealistic expectations, d) caused by a complete lack of respect for children's autonomy and emotions, or e) all of the above, and potentially other causes too, like lack of education about and experience of how to eat healthily and get enough exercise.

Just think about it. How many people have a boss who exhibits those exact symptoms? How many times do you think a child might act out to be reassured that you love him or her? How many times are your requests or demands of your children unreasonable? How many times do YOU exhibit any of the symptoms IN FRONT OF YOUR CHILDREN WHO ARE ALWAYS COPYING WHAT YOU DO?

Anyway. So that part was total and complete crap and really bothered me, obviously, but I'm going to try to get past that and explain what I thought was really GREAT about this book. The author isn't trying to get you to put your child on a diet. She knows that won't work, that for the rest of your child's life he or she will have to make many, many decisions without you and will have many sugary temptations (and others as well) and will have to learn to make smart decisions alone. And this book describes a way to teach your children how sugar affects their bodies, to show them why they might not want to eat that ice cream at Grandma's or their friend's extra candy bar. And that is a priceless lesson. That is what children need to know. That is, in fact, a good metaphor for what I think parenting should be: teaching your children, showing them, letting them experiment and find out for themselves how things work and how to live life when you're not around.

So, I recommend this book, but with reservations. And I will try some of her recipes, but not the ones that include tons of pork product. =)

Sleepless in America

This book, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, is a valuable tool for any parent who has ANY sort of trouble with the sleep issue, whether your child has trouble going to sleep at night, has trouble with naps, wakes up in the night, is cranky and tantrumy, or all of the above. It is very gentle and kind and ALSO full of practical advice. I highly recommend it.

I don't really have much more of a review than that for now, because I'm way behind in reviewing, but I will say that this book really helps us out every time we hit a bump in the road to a good night's sleep. We sort of already had the broad things figured out but it has so many little tips that really help us fine-tune our routine and the things we're trying out in search of sleep.

Excellent book!

Cheating Destiny

This book, by James Hirsch, is a book about diabetes. It's partly a history of the disease and its key players and discoveries, and also partly a personal memoir, since Mr. Hirsh, and his brother, and his son, are all Type I diabetics.

It was fascinating, but also disturbing. In the end, I'm glad I read it but I had a hard time not finding it extremely pessimistic. There is a lot of darkness in this book, people, just be prepared for that.

And just for one example that I find disheartening: he has a chapter about learning from survivors, from those diabetics who've had long healthy lives, and he concludes that you should take credit for the good days and blame the disease for the bad days and just keep on truckin'. Then, after only a few more pages, he tells a story about a time his son had low blood sugar and about how it was all his (the author's) fault. HELLO!

Lots of stuff about how all diabetics have high blood pressure, all diabetics have heart disease, all diabetics yada yada yada. Excuse me? Not this diabetic. (And yes, I know he means eventually. Still, it's just not true. And it seems very pessimistic and not right to me.)

So it bothered me in that way. But it was very well-written, stylistically, and gripping, and interesting, and contained a lot of information about this disease. For example, did you know that diabetic fathers are much more likely to have diabetic children than diabetic mothers are?

Me either.

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth

If you are ever thinking of having a child, or having another child, or you're going to be with someone who is going to have a child, or any other similar situation, you should read this book by Henci Goer. READ IT!!!!

It is especially good for sciency-minded people who like lots of research and evidence and a straightforward, logical format. If you want a touchy-feely birth book you should read Birthing From Within, which is also very good. But even if you do that? Read this book! It is hands-down the clearest and most well-informed book on all the major important decisions about birth. I forgot how much I like it until I decided to review it, 2 years after my own child's birth. Fantastic!

Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense

Seems like everyone I know who has read this book, by Ellyn Satter, just loves it. I've heard lots of rave reviews, which is why I was so surprised when it turned out I didn't really like it that much.

Don't get me wrong. It's not complete trash. It's just that Ms. Satter is very judgmental and quick to make snap judgments and use her position of authority as a nutritionist to make sweeping statements that I don't believe she has the right to make for me and my family.

But first let's review the good pieces of this book, because I think it really does have some great and valuable lessons, especially for parents who are prone to worry about "making" their children eat well. This book explains a very important principle, the division of responsibility in feeding. This basically means that you the parent are responsible for what foods you will offer your child and when and where to offer them. Your CHILD should be responsible for how much of that food he or she eats, even if that means no eating at all. This is SO important for parents who think that somehow they have to make their children eat or eat a certain amount. They need to hear it! Excellent.

Let me share with you a few other good tips from the book. First, you shouldn't ever have a "no thank you" bite. There should be NO pressure to eat anything the child does not want to eat. But if you want them to eat a lot of vegetables, the secret is to expose them to a lot of vegetables and to EAT THEM YOURSELF. Second, we are obsessed with eating a low-fat diet, but this is bad for kids! They need fats to grow well, so don't ever limit the amount of fats they want included with their food, although of course you are the one to choose whether that fat will be in the form of nuts, meats, butter, oil, or all of the above. And don't serve dessert last. Serve it with the meal so your children don't get the impression that dessert is somehow better than other foods, or they will always ask you for more of it and not more of the veggies, instead of listening to their palates and appetites and asking for the foods they need, which is what they will normally do. And don't say things like, "Why aren't you eating your cheese? You LOVE cheese!" because this could give the child the impression that there are only a few things they like to eat and that can actually induce picky eating.

I could go on. Suffice it to say, there are quite a few good tips and things to consider when helping your children to establish a healthy relationship with food.

However. Now let's talk about some of the things I didn't like. As mentioned above, my main problem with this book is the way the author continually passes judgment on things that are outside her scope, or at lesat things that individual families have to decide for themselves, rather than a One-Answer-Right-For-Everyone formula. (Here's my tip: when you see the formulaic parenting advice that doesn't take your own personal situation into account...run away!)

For example: she randomly throws in that you shouldn't cosleep, it's dangerous. Really? How would you know, Ms. Dietician? Was that covered in your training? Didn't think so. And explain to me again how it's MORE dangerous than crib-sleeping? Aha, you can't. Thought so.

Or the presented "fact" that there's no reason to be vegetarian unless you morally object to killing cows. Really? Because I have my reasons for being mostly vegan, and they don't include cow considerations, and I resent the fact that you pass such easy judgment on me with no clue as to what my reasons might be.*

Or how about when she says eating organic is no big deal because, while modern agricultural practices *might* be hard on the earth, the pesticides just wash off in the sink. Uh....what? No matter what you personally think and feel about eating organic or not, you have to admit that the pesticides don't always wash off. Again, not her area of expertise! And something that I think parents probably need to examine for themselves to discover what their personal best choices will be.

So, all in all, this is an okay book. It has good tips, but I'm afraid it will shove impressionable parents into opinions that are not their own, and that might not be the best for their families, simply because the information is all presented as "expert." I hate the idea of "experts" anyway, but that's a topic for an entirely different post.

* If you're interested in some other reasons why one might want to follow a vegetarian diet, how about this book about the health benefits? Or this article introducing some of the ways it's ecologically friendly?

Fit and Fabulous in 15 Minutes

This exercise book, by Teresa Tapp, is one that I never ever would have picked up on my own. But Moxie of Ask Moxie, one of my online heroes and someone I have exchanged emails with who therefore is a real, live person--she says it has worked wonders for her.

And then I found out that a million other people who read Ask Moxie also LOVED this "T-Tapp workout." And one of the big reasons I went ahead and got it was because it promises things like: "...effective against conditions such as arthritis, fibromyalgia, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome...With T-Tapp you're building a better body--inside and out." And although I don't care much about weight loss and such aside from its benefits for my health, I went ahead and got this because it sounds like it has the potential to really benefit my health and make me feel good.

So it was obviously a very quick read, since I almost forgot to post it up here! It's mostly an outline of how she developed the exercises and then a detailed-instructions list of how to do them. I liked it, but I think my ruling on this one has to wait a couple of months. I'll let you know if it's really worth the read once I've been doing it for awhile!

Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I picked this book up. It's been far too long since I've read diabetes-related books, and I know that knowledge is power, and I've been wanting to read some d-advice books for awhile now, but I've held off because I was worried that they'd end up telling me to go on the Atkins diet or something similar, and that has never seemed like an option for me, especially since dairy makes me ill.

I therefore checked this book out with some trepidation, hoping that at least I could find some helpful nugget even if the major portion turned out to be something I couldn't do....and I was heartily and happily surprised to discover that this guy suggests that diabetics do quite well on vegan diets!

I had certainly never made a strong connection between the two before, or heard of any other diabetic on the planet who followed a vegan diet, although I know I really felt my best when I was avoiding meat and dairy for that year and a half or so before I got pregnant with James. And I had already begun to re-eliminate dairy from my plate before I picked this up, so it came at the perfect time, helping me to understand why I should really go more cold turkey than I had been (or, I should say, less cold turkey, since meats are supposed to be out).

So, I really enjoyed this book, and the recipes in the back that I have tried so far have all been good. My only major criticism is that Dr. Barnard talks a LOT about meat substitutes like Morningstar Farms "meats" and such, and his recipes include a lot of that, and that really turns me off. Veggie bacon and veggie hot dogs--uck! However, I know that some people crave meats and those products will help them feel like they've gotten a full meal without having real meat. But for me, gimme veggies and grains and delicious fruits and leave all that weird processed junk out!

Anyway. The "program" consists of three guidelines (p.40):

1. Set aside animal products.

2. Keep vegetable oils to a minimum

3. Favor foods with a low glycemic index.

This will supposedly help you have better blood sugar control, lose weight, keep cholesterol down, and so on and so forth. The theory behind animal product avoidance is basically that animal products have a different kind of fat that not only raises bad cholesterol levels and makes you store fat, it also increases your insulin resistance over time. Also, the protein from animal products is more difficult for your kidneys to process, so since diabetics should be very gentle with their kidneys, it makes sense to stay away from steaks, or at the very least, not have them for dinner every night. This guideline includes all dairy products as well as meats and eggs.

I had not heard this argument before but I can't really find too much fault in it. It makes sense that our bodies wouldn't really be made to support the amount of meat and dairy that we eat today. If you think about human history, you can see that we eat a diet that is drastically different from that which our bodies was probably made for. That being said...our bodies probably were made to have meat VERY OCCASIONALLY...you know, less than once a month or so...so if I could keep it down to that, I'd be happy. I don't know about keeping away from cheese, though...

Which brings me to another excellent point made in the book. Dr. Barnard talks about how certain foods actually cause chemical reactions in our brains that are similar to the reactions caused by drugs and alcohol. It's more complicated than that, but his argument basically boils down to this: We all know it's easier for an recovering alcohol to simply abstain than to have a casual drink or two with dinner...so we should treat meat and dairy products in the same way--stay completely away from them and you won't be so tempted to gorge on them.

The book says to keep vegetable oils to a minimum simply because this will help you lose more weight, which will of course help with blood sugars and your general health. Dr. Barnard is right to point out that we think of things like olive oil as "healthy," but that doesn't mean we should use them quite so often! We do use veg oils quite a lot and it can easily add a significant amount of calories to a day's worth of food. That being said, I'm not really that worried about this part.

The low glycemic index part is what I really want to learn ALL about. I know a lot, but I need to figure out ALL the foods I eat and take that into account on a regular basis. For that, I need a different book, because this just had a very short outline or, from p. 54, "glycemic index at a glance." He says: beans, green leafy veggies, fruits except for watermelon and pineapple, pasta, barley, bulgur, parboiled rice, pumpernickel and rye breads, sweet potatoes, and oatmeal and bran cereals are the lower-GI foods that I should be aiming for.

So, yeah, I'll be checking out a book all about glycemic index at some point in the near future. Actually, just remembered that the book recommends the website www.glycemicindex.com. Sweet! (Or...not...)

Another valuable point I'd like to remember from this book is the idea of the New Four Food Groups. Instead of having a meat, a grain, and maybe some veggies on your plate with a roll, you should aim for half your plate to be filled with veggies, 1/4 with whole grains, 1/4 with legumes, and then any fruit for dessert. Wait, actually, I can't find the plate-fraction idea in the book, but I'm pretty sure that's where it came from. Definitely the veggies/grains/legumes/fruit is in here, though. Also, if you want to lose weight, stay high fiber.

The rest of the book after the weight-loss chapter basically discusses things that I already understand, such as how you ARE in fact getting complete nutrition if you follow this diet, and all about healthy A1C levels and checking your eyes, feet, etc. etc. So, good info, but not something new to me.

And that's that! The first diabetes book I've gone for this year was definitely a winner.