How The Nine Months Before Birth Shapes The Rest Of Your Life
I just read and reviewed Annie Murphy Paul’s new book Origins: How The Nine Months Before Birth Shapes The Rest of Our Lives. It’s a really important book about how what a mother does when she’s pregnant can have life-long consequences for her children. This is a touchy subject, poorly handled by most and dealt with here in a completely reliable, grounded and even enthusiastic way.
Paul gets into all the stuff we worry about: How will fetal development be affected by the a mother’s diet, mood, environment, stress levels, exercise and medications?
The book is not necessarily optimistic–Paul is no Pollyanna. But it does keep coming back around to the connection between mother and baby which I think is so important and sadly unusual when the topic of an expecting mother’s responsibility comes up. I find that too often pregnant women are treated with suspicion.
This book can help you figure out how to right by your baby without getting a finger wagging in the process.
You can read my full review here. It’s also excerpted in TIME this week and will be excerpted here on Babble next week.
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