Conversations with My Daughter: How to Have a Healthy Baby

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK - author's insights

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.

The "Conversations"

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 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. Section 2 focuses on gestation and how your, and your baby’s, needs change throughout the forty weeks. I hope you have fun along the way while learning about this very serious topic.

FOREWORD

Written by Dr Andrew Rostenberg, DC, DIBAK

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.

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.

This book is an important guide for moms and dads to make the important, long-lasting changes necessary to promote an optimum pregnancy. 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.