Waking Up from a Chemical Stupor?

Every so often, the mainstream media will do a piece on environmental effects on fetal development. It is too scientific for many newspapers and doesn’t make for fuzzy morning television, so often it is a well done article tucked in the back. I always hope, when I see this news make the papers, that the general public will find it so astonishing that we let our corporations get away with crimes against us, they will wake up and make change.

Common Dreams, a wide news collective posted the LA Times article last week. It was fortifying as I return from vacation. I didn’t really stick to my diet while we were away, so I have a lot of detoxifying to do. I ate a good deal of fish this week which means my levels of mercury are probably up. I had the awful allergy attack, so I’ve got to rid my body of the junk from the inhaler. And we were without filtered water there, so I’m sure I took in some interesting stuff from the iron tasting well water. Here’s a picture from our trip.

This is not the first time we have heard these warnings. But the warnings don’t seem to be trickling down to mothers (who aren’t actively seeking this information.) What is alarming about the article, is that it is impossible for us to avoid the contaminants of which the scientists and medical doctors warn. I don’t choose the air I breathe. I can only modify the water I drink. I walked into a popular discount store the other day and was hit with a wall of plastic chemical smell that made my eyes burn. Every time a diesel truck spews it’s awful breath, I hold mine hoping not to take all that inside my lungs. Part of me would like to check into a camp somewhere far away from everything toxic so I can clean myself out and then conceive. Not exactly practical, but I have this desire to escape to a clean place. Worse though, is that there are no clean places left on the planet.

The issue is bigger than my body and my baby. Rarely anymore, does the collective weigh into our decisions. How often do you look at your purchases and recognize more than the price, to you? All the waste, the cheap labor, the energy it took to make it and then ship it are all costs to us as a community. The same holds true for the health of our kids. Eventually, those kids will grow up and be making the important decisions. How effective can they be in world leadership, innovation and productivity if they are fighting diabetes, mental illness or cancer?

This issue is really at the heart of this blog. Raising preconception health awareness is important to me. If I can’t completely avoid everything detrimental to my child and me, then I must take action to optimize the situation. So when I’m feeling like this is too daunting, I’ll come back to this article to revive my motivation.

Meanwhile, spread the word to those who don’t make it to the back of the newspaper, that scientists are recognizing that all our stuff is killing or harming our soon-to-be newborns.

Seasonal allergies during pregnancy

I’m on vacation and can’t leave the house. That’s right. We finally got away for more than two days to relax and I can’t go outside without feeling awful. We came north, which means the blooming season is just a hair behind where I live. My husband must be thrilled to have a sneezy, wheezy wife with him to enjoy our time off.

I am having the worst allergy year ever. At home, I finally have access to a private patio that offers the sounds of birds, a place to sit in the sun to write and the possibility of grilling our dinner. But, maybe enjoying all of that will have to wait until the spring bloom has completed, which of course means missing the best weather of the year.

After an hour on the deck nursing some grass fed beef burgers on the grill, I had a heavy chest, couldn’t really laugh without sounding like a tobacco aficionado, and a nose running like a faucet again. That night in bed, when I’m trying to relax and let myself breathe normally, I rolled over to ask my husband what happens if it’s the same next year and I’m 6 months pregnant. I don’t take allergy medicine. I have been using an herbal/vitamin antihistamine which if I catch it before a major attack, works very well for me. But once I’ve been out in the thick of it, the game is pretty much over. (Sadly, I went through my last dose and so I’m searching for a practitioner up here who carries it.)

It reminds me of the challenge of dealing with illness, allergies or chronic health problems while pregnant. Maybe I haven’t posted enough yet for you to perceive this, but I rarely if ever take any kind of pharmaceutical, over the counter or not. You would have to drag me kicking and screaming to a pharmacist if I was pregnant. I am adamant about not putting chemicals, labeled as medicine or not, in my system even now while I’m not the literal life blood of the immune system of my precious offspring. In case that wasn’t clear before, I am committed to using every possible natural remedy before even considering complicating things by ingesting drugs.

It is frightening to read of a study linking a significant increase in autism risk to babies born of mother’s diagnosed with allergies and asthma in the second trimester. While it does not discuss what treatment those pregnant women underwent once diagnosed with allergies and asthma, one wonders if it was the diagnosis and subsequent genetic influence on the baby or the treatment which prompted the increase risk.

So how will I get through my seasonal allergies next year if I’m pregnant? I suppose I will forego planting any flowers or taking walks in the park and going on vacation... I’ll fire up every air filter I can find and request that my loving husband not send me flowers. I’ll irrigate my sinuses (how sexy does that sound?) with my trusty netti pot and use hot showers to help move things through. I’ll continue with as much energy as I can, my exercise routine. And, I’ll be good to myself: resting when I need to and remembering to breathe (clean, filtered air…)

In the meantime, I’m heading to the health food store to see what I can find.

Choosing Motherhood After Ambivalence

The process we went through to decide on having children was enormous and often overwhelming. It made me wonder whether or not having this modern ability to plan a pregnancy (or avoid one) brings with it a burden of heavy, heady decision. I don’t take the responsibility of creating a human as anything other than monumental, which to me is all the more reason why carefully examining my life and abilities was essential to the process. I was also working from a place of ambivalence – I didn’t have the gut feeling to guide my choice. So many women have said they knew all their lives that they would be a mother. Just getting beyond being different from most other women in this area was a challenge to my sense of femininity.

My husband and I are two thirtysomething urbanites who have invested the last ten years in professional development and success. I agreed to marry him only after revealing that I made no promises in regards to future children. Fortunately, he was in the same place on the subject, at the time.

Over the course of our marriage, he went through professional school while I gave up my acting aspirations for work that was more predictable, lucrative, sane. So here I am; after years of working to raise myself, I finally arrived at place of self-assuredness. I have gained enough perspective to consider the idea of having a family of my own.

We volleyed positions on kids for some time and eventually took a “workshop” together for people who felt ambivalent on the question of whether or not to choose children. I had never come across anything like this. Our discussion had been strictly personal, in part because it is a private decision but also because it is difficult to know how to talk with child free couples without the possibility of offending or upsetting them. Reasons that could range from infertility to fear of passing on a hereditary disease are not exactly cocktail conversation. After all, most people don’t talk about the reasons they don’t have kids. It seems parents are the yappers who always feel free to tell you how great being a parent is. (Have you ever had someone tell you it’s not all it’s cracked up to be? If so, count your experience a balanced one and write to tell me about it.) So this workshop was an opportunity for guided conversation with mostly couples in the same situation we were in. Sounded refreshing.

The class was held for four hours on a raining spring Sunday afternoon. Moderated by a social worker/counselor, we met twenty-five others trying to answer the big question. This was fascinating. We were not only the youngest couple, but also the longest together. There were 3 singles there trying to decide whether or not to become single parents. [I know I don’t have a fraction of the courage I think it must take to do that.]

In listening, ambivalence seemed to grow out of a variety of issues; concerns about over-population and the ecological impact of another human, a desire to continue the lifestyle they enjoyed being child-free, economic considerations including how one affords to give a good, well educated life to a child, affect on one’s professional trajectory for both men and women, fears of safety related to crime and terrorism, stresses from caring for ailing parents, and as one might suspect, not wanting to repeat unhappy and in some cases tragic experiences of childhood. What much of it came down to for me was, do I want this enough to bear the undeniable trials every parent faces at some point. Being a motherless daughter, I not only doubted my ability to mother when I hadn’t been, but I questioned whether again, I wanted to feel that deeply about another human being.

It was a great relief to be able to have very frank conversation with strangers in a similar head space and know that we would likely never see them again. It raised concepts and practicalities that we may have overlooked or perhaps hadn’t quite gotten to yet, but more than anything, knowing we weren’t the only ones searching for some sign to point us toward the right path was empowering. Beyond the workshop, I read Maybe Baby which I would recommend to anyone sorting through their feelings of ambivalence.

So that was roughly a year ago. We have grown much closer since. Peripheral family circumstances have realigned our priorities while age has sweetened our experiences with other people’s kids. Our nieces and nephews have become little people instead of unpredictable babies and wild toddlers. It is important to know that my husband had an idyllic childhood, but he is alarmed at the increase of childhood diseases and developmental challenges. That has helped shape his view of family life, and the commitment that being a parent requires. I am profoundly moved by his deeper understanding of that and his whole hearted acceptance of that possibility as we embark on creating our family.

We decided in the fall of ’06 that we would like to have a family. Probably two kids, or maybe just one. Now we join the countless others who are planning pregnancies and “trying.” We’re two people, committed to as natural and holistic a life as possible, creating one new life from two.

For those of you who celebrate, enjoy Mother’s Day. It is a day for me to honor my mother by daring to feel deeply and remembering all she gave me. Who knows? Maybe next year, I’ll be able to celebrate my own coming motherhood.

What's it going to gestate in?

Choosing to become parents has been a long process for us. In our tenth year of marriage, we have decided individually and as a couple that we are now eager to embark on what could be, quite possibly, the riskiest, most harrowing journey of our lives – and potentially the most indescribably fulfilling. Coming to the sudden realization that I was what it would gestate in, my health, which had only been of moderate and selfish concern up to now, had become a moral imperative.

My first responsibility as a parent is to protect the very fragile beginnings of our future child. Everyday we are learning more and more about the massive impact a mother’s health and environment have on the health of her child. For me, this means much more than what most accept as sufficient (quitting smoking, alcohol and taking folic acid.) It goes far beyond what information is available through mainstream sources.

Sifting through corporate media, glossy magazines and government sponsored web sites, the information seems trite. What am I looking for? The real deal. I want the details of how to grow a healthy baby despite the chemicals and pollution that surround me everyday. I want to know how to balance my family's needs with my own and my environmental ideals. I want to be solid in my knowledge, habits and routine so that our child grows up within healthy, eco-awareness.

I don’t pretend to have the answers. For some of my questions, there may not be answers. But the questions are important. It is crucial to me that thinking women start the conversation so that our future generations are protected from our poorest choices and enriched by our highest. Getting practical information on the internet can be time consuming and cumbersome. I hope to centralize that information so it is easier to integrate eco-friendly practices into a busy lifestyle. More than anything, I hope to learn from women who are on parallel journeys or are already eco-moms themselves.

I want to give every possible advantage to my family, which requires some lifestyle changes way before conception. Born Green will be my place to explore all the possibilities and challenges of a creating my healthy family.