They were not what he expected.Drawing on a wealth of perspectives—scientific, historical, cross-cultural, personal—Baby Meets World is organized around the mundane activities that dominate the life of an infant: sucking, smiling, touching, toddling. From these everyday activities, Day weaves together an account that is anything but ordinary: a fresh, surprising story, both weird and wondrous, about our first experience of the world.Part hidden history of parenthood, part secret lives of babies, Baby Meets World steps back from the moment-to-moment chaos of babydom. It allows readers to see infancy anew in all its strangeness and splendor.

    What’s more, every mother wants clear, straightforward information delivered in a calm, empowering voice from someone who knows the facts. Enter Dr. Aviva Jill Romm, an expert in natural childbirth with more than twenty years of experience in both alternative and allopathic medicine. In this newly revised third edition, Dr. Romm takes a holistic approach, emphasizing natural remedies wherever possible and providing up-to-date advice on herbs that promote wellness during pregnancy, and alleviate such familiar concerns as anxiety, fatigue, morning sickness, and stretch marks. With tips for a nutritious diet, exercise and posture, and information on the emotional and physical changes that childbearing brings, The Natural Pregnancy Book is your comprehensive guide to a safe, healthy pregnancy, as nature intended it.

    She searches the apparently fertile world around her--the emergence of thirteen-year cicadas, the birth of eaglets near her rural home, and an unusual gorilla pregnancy at a local zoo--for signs that she is not alone. Boggs also explores other aspects of fertility and infertility: the way longing for a child plays out in the classic Coen brothers film Raising Arizona; the depiction of childlessness in literature, from Macbeth to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; the financial and legal complications that accompany alternative means of family making; the private and public expressions of iconic writers grappling with motherhood and fertility. She reports, with great empathy, complex stories of couples who adopted domestically and from overseas, LGBT couples considering assisted reproduction and surrogacy, and women and men reflecting on childless or child-free lives.In The Art of Waiting, Boggs deftly distills her time of waiting into an expansive contemplation of fertility, choice, and the many possible roads to making a life and making a family.

    Poor egg quality is emerging as the single most important cause of age-related infertility, recurrent miscarriage, and failed IVF cycles. It is also a major contributor to infertility in PCOS. Based on a comprehensive investigation of a vast array of scientific research, It Starts with the Egg reveals a groundbreaking new approach for improving egg quality and fertility. With a concrete strategy that includes minimizing exposure to toxins such as BPA and phthalates, choosing the right vitamins and supplements to safeguard developing eggs, and harnessing nutritional advice shown to boost IVF success rates, this book offers practical solutions that will help you get pregnant faster and deliver a healthy baby. “This timely synthesis of scientific literature is essential reading for both women and men wanting practical, evidence-based recommendations to enhance their fertility.” -- Dr. Loretta McKinnon, Epidemiologist, Princess Alexandra Hospital. “A thoroughly-researched and eye-opening account of how small, simple lifestyle changes can have powerful, positive effects on your health and fertility. A must-read for women wanting the best chance of conceiving a healthy baby.” -- Beth Greer, bestselling author of Super Natural Home"Was jede Frau und jedes Paar wissen sollte und selbst tun kann, wenn es mit dem Babywunsch nicht klappt" wissenschaftlich fundiert und untermauert mit aktuellen Studien zu Umweltgiften und Ernährung" Tipps für Nahrungsergänzungsmittel zur Verbesserung der Eizellqualität"Ich konnte dieses Buch nicht weglegen, so sehr war ich mit den einfachen Erklärungen dieser komplexen wissenschaftlichen Thematik beschäftigt. Das macht alles viel mehr Sinn, wenn man weiß, dass Ernährung zwar wichtig ist, Unfruchtbarkeit jedoch viel mehr ist als Diät."- Carolyn Martinez, The Compulsive Reader

    Yet the biggest and most transformative adventure of her life might be one she never anticipated: at 31, she moves into a tiny 19th-century cabin on her family's Ohio farm, and begins the journey into motherhood.In eight vivid and boldly questioning essays, Menkedick explores the luminous, disorienting time just before and after becoming a mother. As she reacquaints herself with the subtle landscapes of the Midwest, and adjusts to the often surprising physicality of pregnancy, she ruminates on what this new stage of life means for her long-held concepts of self, settling, and creative fulfillment. In "Millie, Mildred, Grandma Menkedick," she considers the nature of story through the life of her tough German grandmother, who raised two boys as a single mother in the 1950s and then spent her seventies traveling the world with her best friend Marge; in "Motherland," on a trip back to Oaxaca, Mexico to visit her husband's family, she finally embraces her Midwestern roots; in "The Milk Cave," she discovers in breastfeeding a new appreciation for the spiritual and artistic potential of boredom; and in "The Lake," she revisits her childhood with her father, whose relentless optimism and mystical streak she sees anew once she has a child of her own.A story of a traveler come home to the farm; of becoming a mother in spite of reservations and doubt; and of learning to appreciate the power and beauty of the quotidian, Homing Instincts speaks to the deepest concerns and hopes of a generation.

    But this isn’t your typical serious memoir about struggling with infertility; it’s an entertaining, witty read that perfectly balances humor with its more poignant moments. Breeding in Captivity is about a quirky, lovable couple that you root for through their fertility struggles and adoption adventures. It's about the hundreds of Internet message boards where annoyingly perky women from Kappa Alpha Fruitcake refer to sex as "babydancing" and sprinkle virtual "baby dust" on each other. It’s about meeting birthmothers and deciding on open adoptions. It’s about being chosen and then having a birthmother change her mind. But ultimately, it’s about hope, how life can surprise you, and laughing through the insanity.

    The rapid changes in your body, your lifestyle, and your very identity call for a certain mental agility. Mindfulness can help you meet the challenge and approach every experience with your new baby with open eyes and an open heart.Easy ten-minute meditation exercises and yoga poses throughout this book will help you cultivate greater flexibility and mindful awareness during pregnancy, childbirth, and your baby's first year. Whenever you have a moment to spare, open Mindful Motherhood and discover a skill that will help you find balance and fulfillment during those times when you feel most overwhelmed.Co-published with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS).Mindful Motherhood contains what so many other parenting books omit:: the consoling information that each mother has the ability to know, deep within, how to care for her child. Mindful Motherhood is a gem.-Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women's Bodies, Women's WisdomWise, soothing, and helpful-this is really good stuff for new mothers.-Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart

    Written to be read during the mind-bogglingly short breaks parents get during their busy days, these pieces will help moms find solace in a wide range of viewpoints and issues not often discussed in mainstream magazines and other parenting books. From dealing with rage to negotiating sleeping arrangements to the frustration and joy of parenting a special needs child, this is the perfect read for the hip but harried mother that says "you are still you."

    Aren’t there days when you wish you could sit down with an expert on parenting—somebody who really understands what you’re going through and knows just what advice and counsel to give you? Good news: The parenting wisdom you need is here—in one complete volume! In The Dr. James Dobson Parenting Collection, you’ll find three bestselling books ( The New Dare to Discipline , The New Strong-Willed Child , and Parenting Isn’t for Cowards ) containing the straightforward, practical, biblical truths you need—from Dr. James Dobson, the world’s foremost authority on parenting.

    But our fears are misplaced, according to Yale early childhood expert Erika Christakis. Children are powerful and inventive; and the tools to reimagine their learning environment are right in front of our eyes.           Children are hardwired to learn in any setting, but they don’t get the support they need when “learning” is defined by strict lessons and dodgy metrics that devalue children’s intelligence while placing unfit requirements on their developing brains. We have confused schooling with learning, and we have altered the very habitat young children occupy. The race for successful outcomes has blinded us to how young children actually process the world, acquire skills, and grow, says Christakis, who powerfully defends the preschool years as a life stage of inherent value and not merely as preparation for a demanding or uncertain future.           In her pathbreaking book, Christakis explores what it’s like to be a young child in America today, in a world designed by and for adults. With school-testing mandates run amok, playfulness squeezed, and young children increasingly pathologized for old-fashioned behaviors like daydreaming and clumsiness, it’s easy to miss what’s important about the crucial years of three to six, and the kind of guidance preschoolers really need. Christakis provides a forensic and far-reaching analysis of today’s whole system of early learning, exploring pedagogy, history, science, policy, and politics. She also offers a wealth of proven strategies about what to do to reimagine the learning environment to suit the child’s real, but often invisible, needs. The ideas range from accommodating children’s sense of time, to decluttering classrooms, to learning how to better observe and listen as children express themselves in pictures and words.           With her strong foundation in the study of child development and early education and her own in-the-trenches classroom experience, Christakis peels back the mystery of early childhood, revealing a place that’s rich with possibility. Her message is energizing and reassuring: Parents have more power (and more knowledge) than they think they do, and young children are inherently creative and will flourish, if we can learn new ways to support them and restore their vital learning habitat.

    Others are sure it's the environment we experience in childhood. But could it be that many of our individual characteristics—our health, our intelligence, our temperaments—are influenced by the conditions we encountered before birth? That's the claim of an exciting and provocative field known as fetal origins. Over the past twenty years, scientists have been developing a radically new understanding of our very earliest experiences and how they exert lasting effects on us from infancy well into adulthood. Their research offers a bold new view of pregnancy as a crucial staging ground for our health, ability, and well-being throughout life.Author and journalist Annie Murphy Paul ventures into the laboratories of fetal researchers, interviews experts from around the world, and delves into the rich history of ideas about how we're shaped before birth. She discovers dramatic stories: how individuals gestated during the Nazi siege of Holland in World War II are still feeling its consequences decades later; how pregnant women who experienced the 9/11 attacks passed their trauma on to their offspring in the womb; how a lab accident led to the discovery of a common household chemical that can harm the developing fetus; how the study of a century-old flu pandemic reveals the high personal and societal costs of poor prenatal experience. Origins also brings to light astonishing scientific findings: how a single exposure to an environmental toxin may produce damage that is passed on to multiple generations; how conditions as varied as diabetes, heart disease, and mental illness may get their start in utero; why the womb is medicine's latest target for the promotion of lifelong health, from preventing cancer to reducing obesity. The fetus is not an inert being, but an active and dynamic creature, responding and adapting as it readies itself for life in the particular world it will enter. The pregnant woman is not merely a source of potential harm to her fetus, as she is so often reminded, but a source of influence on her future child that is far more powerful and positive than we ever knew. And pregnancy is not a nine-month wait for the big event of birth, but a momentous period unto itself, a cradle of individual strength and wellness and a crucible of public health and social equality.With the intimacy of a personal memoir and the sweep of a scientific revolution, Origins presents a stunning new vision of our beginnings that will change the way you think about yourself, your children, and human nature itself.

    Laura Schlessinger's mission. A devoted mother to her son, Deryk, she identifies herself as "her kid's mom" because that's her most important job.Never one to shy away from tough truths, Dr. Laura marshalls compelling evidence for the widespread neglect of America's children and convincingly condemns the numerous rationalizations to excuse it. Parents, special interest groups, and professionals in education and psychology all contribute to a dangerous trend that places adult fulfillment above obligation to children. Parenthood by Proxy addresses the serious causes and effects of this national crisis, among them the high rate of divorce, serial marriages, single parenting, the premature sexualization of children, dual-career families, disdain for religion, the redefinition of immoral behavior as lifestyle choices, and societal intolerance for the concept of judgment.In Parenthood by Proxy, Dr. Laura exhorts parents to make their own children their top priority and, if necessary, to change their lives to do so. In her inimitable, straight-shooting style, Dr. Laura entreats parents to involve themselves in their children's hearts, minds, and souls, to cherish and protect them, and to commit to the essential task of teaching them right from wrong. She acknowledges that parents no longer get much support from neighbors or public and private institutions, but she urges mothers and fathers to work even harder to counteract the prevailing culture of selfishness and irresponsibility.Parenthood by Proxy covers all aspects of parenting, from childbearing to discipline, from multiple families to being role models. Dr. Laura also tackles such cultural and societal concerns as abortion, modern sexuality, drug and alcohol use, violence, discipline, and a child's right to privacy.Parenthood by Proxy is a passionate and provocative summation of the perils of parenting and a road map to safety for America's families.

    Giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity and allowed him to project a more masculine self. And yet, when his partner Anna adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as “the natural mother of the child.”By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of “motherhood” don’t fully align with Belc’s own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. The Natural Mother of the Child is a visual memoir-in-lyric-essays, an archive of Belc’s queerness. By engaging directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one’s life—childhood photos, birth certificates—Belc creates a new kind of life record, one that addresses his own ambivalence about the “before” and “after” so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own.The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.

    Some answer specific questions; others muse about the identity shift a woman encounters when she enters Mommyland. This book invites all mothers to join the grand circle of giving and receiving advice about children.

    Who says that babies don't come with instructions? They do now! Everything that modern parents need to know about caring for babies in the first six months, including: • Step by step guidelines for getting babies on a routine • Hour by hour schedules at a glance • Feeding instructions for breast, bottle or both! • What symptoms warrant a trip to the emergency room • How to get your baby to sleep all night so you can too! Plus, much more! Advice from two pediatric nurse moms with eight children between them has moms all over the globe hailing this as, "The absolute best baby book ever."