Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

The Complete Organic Pregnancy

4 Comments

by Kimberly Jordan Allen · 10/03/06

I just finished reading newly released The Complete Organic Pregnancy (Harper Collins) by Deirdre Dolan and Alexander Zissu and loved it. Since I am currently nineteen weeks pregnant, I have been soaking up a lot of information lately on all things revolving around pregnancy, babies, and organics. There are plenty of baby and pregnancy books that give laundry lists of what could go wrong, what could be wrong, what to do when it goes wrong, etc. It is great to find something straight forward that avoids being alarmist. Also, there are not a lot of books out there that cater to the individual who is looking to live as holistically as possible without getting mired down by doom and gloom or stymied by Western medicine. It’s funny to me that sometimes when we talk about being proactive when it comes to eating whole foods, avoiding toxins, and living mindfully, others claim this approach “negative.” I guess it’s that classic body snatcher thing, wherein the heathen or she who goes against ‘the norm’ must be chastised.

This book does a fantastic job of being informative, well researched, and fun. Sometimes the pregnant, nesting mama can get a bit overwhelmed with the plethora of information out there and these authors do a fantastic job of creating a concise, convenient tome that is easy to read and peruse anytime. It covers everything from those ubiquitous, often toxic beauty products to how to reduce back pain in the third trimester. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking about conceiving, already pregnant, or who has kids. Thanks to Alexandra and Deirdre for taking the time to compile this caring and thoughtful work.

Amazon, babies, Baby, Beauty, beauty products, book, books, car, eating, farm, Food, kids, Organic, Pregnancy, reduce, Toxins

As Green As Green Can Be?

4 Comments

by Starre Vartan · 03/18/06

There has been debate here lately about whether we, as “Greenies” should buy anything at all. This is a long-standing issue in the environmental community: Should we shun all consumer products and grow our own food, make our own clothes and educate our own kids (the time that takes tends to limit your ability to do much else, I’ve found)?

Or should we engage in society as “regular” folks and try to change the system by supporting environmentally-friendly companies, products and services? I would guess that most Greenies do both, to varying degrees (since I live in the Northeast, I can only garden for part of the year anyway, for example). 

I’ve always had trouble with the ‘back to the land’ approach as I see many (certainly not all!) communities that are set up that way as having traditional gender roles. I have little interest in cooking and even less in having babies, sewing my own clothes or spending all day canning food.  I love the fact that I get paid for using my brain all day, writing, thinking, researching, asking questions, and interacting with all the other nerds that like that kind of work. At the same time, I realize my existence is predicated on people much poorer than myself doing all that hard (boring!) labor I don’t want to do. OR that some fossil-fueled machine has to do the work. So I try to buy Fair Trade and organic, and I clean my house myself, and I go to farmer’s markets and I grow my own summer veggies and I compost and I adopt rescued animals, and I try not to drive too much, and I recycle and reuse like crazy.  How are we supposed to come up with solutions if we are laboring all day? I need time to think, dammit! 

What about you? What do you do? What tradeoffs do you make, and why?

Animals, babies, clothes, community, Eco-Chick, Fair Trade, farm, Food, garden, kids, labor, Organic, recycle, reuse, skin, solutions, spa, style, summer