CONVERSATIONS WITH MY DAUGHTER: HOW TO HAVE A HEALTHY BABY

I wanted to start at the very beginning of the lifecycle and creating a healthy baby seemed the perfect place to commence. Preconception and antenatal care are the ultimate form of preventative medicine. In order to achieve the best health outcomes for the next and future generations, I wanted to empower prospective parents by helping them understand the many factors that influence fertility and the health of their baby. 

Men frequently underestimate the importance of their sperm and how this affects not only conception but also formation of the placenta which is essential to prevent early miscarriage.  I begin the book with the very important role men play in making a baby. This information is relevant whether conceiving naturally, with IVF or if you are a sperm-donor.

The three Sections of the book - Preparation, Conception and Birth - focus heavily on the woman’s role in conceiving and carrying a baby to full term.

Anyone who thinks they may want to have a child should read this book. I’ve witnessed the heartache of miscarriage and the joy of a new healthy baby. I’ve also witnessed babies, toddlers and infants with chronic health conditions some so extreme that they require constant care. I’ve witnessed the breakdown of families because the stresses of having a sick child can be too much to bear. That is why I wrote this book. 

This book has been many years in the making. When my eldest daughter moved back home in her late 20s, we were able to spend more time together. All too often while chatting over breakfast she asked why I didn’t write a book to share my knowledge. I had never considered myself an author, so I dismissed this suggestion. However, as the years passed, and I witnessed with great sadness the ever-growing incidence of poor health – particularly in children – the seed began to sprout.

It is heart-wrenching to witness a baby, toddler or child suffering due to ill-health. During the past twenty years in clinic, I have witnessed far too many young children suffering with pain or inability to do things their friends can do. 

While the format of the book is not a "conversation", it was borne out of the conversations my daughter and I shared so many years ago. I hope you will find the content empowering with the knowledge that will help you understand all the complexities we face in our modern lives and how these affect the health of our children. The only way to break the sickness continuum is right at the beginning: ensuring that our babies are born healthy. The foundations for a healthy life are laid well before conception and, as every parent wants the best for their child, this book will both educate and inspire you to take a few easy steps toward this goal. By making a few simple shifts in your lifestyle and diet, you can positively influence the health of your child/children. Far too many children are growing up to experience avoidable illnesses – obesity, diabetes, behavioural issues, allergies, heart disease – just to name a few. 

The book will focus on and discuss the different stages in the process of having a baby. Section 1 outlines and explains modern-day challenges which include environmental toxins and nutritional deficiencies. You will learn how genes and epigenetics play a role, followed by simple things you can do to ensure the best outcome for you and your baby. Conception is a truly amazing phenomenon which you will appreciate even more in the chapter explaining what actually happens once fertilisation occurs. This will help you understand the utmost importance of preparation and ensuring that both parents are as healthy as they can possibly be. 

After learning more about the role of natural medicine, diet and lifestyle in ensuring that your baby gets the best start to life, you’ll be ready to make your healthy baby. Section 2 focuses on gestation and how your, and your baby’s, needs change throughout the forty weeks. Once again, natural medicine offers some easy solutions to common concerns such as morning sickness and baby brain. Then we’ll enter the first few months with your new baby and the challenges it presents to all in the family, as well as evidence-based advice regarding your and your baby’s nutrition. 

I hope you have fun along the way while learning about this very serious topic. Every child is precious and deserves the very best start in life. After twenty years in clinical practice, it is high time that I share some easy-to-follow tools to give you peace of mind and confidence that your child will have the best opportunity of a long and healthy life. So, let’s begin the conversation and start working towards having a healthy baby.

Raising healthy children is the most important job in the world. No other act has a more permanent, lasting impact on the world around us than does the raising of children. In the natural sciences, we judge the health of animal populations by the productivity and success of the parents in raising healthy offspring. It is easy to understand, and simple to observe, that a species that struggles to successfully breed and produce offspring is a species under threat. This is something grade school children the world over learn about our natural world. And yet it’s an idea we take for granted and one that too often goes unexamined. For some reason, we tend to think that producing healthy offspring in animals is somehow different than the conceiving, birthing, and raising of children. But is it really that different? 

As humans, we sit atop creation with an unmatched set of problem- solving tools, language, art, and cognitive ability. Yet, on the biological and cellular level, we are still very much an animal. So, when we look at the challenges facing our species—the human family—in the same way we look at a species of frog or bird of prey, we can see some very concerning warning signs. We are experiencing rapid increases in the rates of infertility in women, while the levels of testosterone and sperm, markers of biological male fitness, are in a state of rapid decline. Children are struggling with chronic diseases and challenging diagnoses that were unheard of just a generation prior. Kids are experiencing stroke, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, sensory processing disorders, and allergies at levels beyond anything we have ever seen before. 

The answer to this epidemic of sick children and frustrated and broken-hearted parents is to get healthy before you get pregnant. The way to do that in today’s stressful, toxic world is to optimise the terrain inside your own body. You don’t have to get a PhD in nutrition, genetics, or biochemistry, but you do have to relearn some things and unlearn some others. The methylation pathway, and the MTHFR gene, is probably the most important pathway for moms-to-be (and dads-to-be) to optimise before they start a family. Luckily, you will learn about this and many other related ideas in the pages to come.

This book is an important guide for moms and dads to make the important, long-lasting changes necessary to promote an optimum pregnancy. We all want to have healthy children, but that healthy child first starts with a healthy pregnancy. This epidemic of infertility and childhood illness share a common cause of stress, toxicity, and malnutrition. And if this common cause is addressed by responsible parents-to-be before starting a family, massive positive changes can be made to alleviate the risks of these frustrating health problems.

Lastly, if it was easy, everyone would do it! How many people do you know who began to detoxify their bodies and improve their nutrition, reduce their stress, optimise their sleep and exercise, and do a dozen other healthy habits every day … six months before they even started trying to have a family? Probably not very many. We need parents to put the work in early, before conception, throughout the pregnancy and into the early years. If you follow the information in this book, we can create a world full of healthy children, moms, and dads. And that is a world worth working towards.

Dr Andrew Rostenberg, DC, DIBAK

The book is available from on-line bookstores including Amazon U.S. and Amazon Australia 

From https://truemedicine.com.au/product/how-to-have-a-healthy-baby/.

In store at I am Healing Gifts, 1/7 De Barnett Street, Coomera

Borrow from  Gold Coast City Libraries, Queensland State Library, or Bond University Library.