I Heart Sandra Steingraber

It's hard to weave a beautiful tale of a first pregnancy with the hard science of toxicology, but Sandra Steingraber did it so very well in her 2001 chronicle of her own pregnancy, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood.  Why I dared read it while pregnant I'll never know, but I'll never forget it.  I was moved by her ability to capture so many of the tremendous emotions I felt, and because she was so very informed about the many fears I had around the potential for environmental harm to reach my unborn child (and by the end of the book, everyone else's unborn children, too).  Heavy stuff, all of it.  The booksellers description hits the nail on the head - especially when they call it both a lyrical celebration and passionate call to arms:

Sandra Steingraber, brilliant writer, first-time mother, and respected biologist, explores the intimate ecology of motherhood. Full of beauty and mystery, this month-by-month story of her own pregnancy and childbirth weaves into its telling new discoveries about genetics, the intimate unfolding of embryonic organs, the architecture of the fetal brain, and the astonishing transformation of the mother’s body as it prepares to nourish and protect the new life. At the same time, Steingraber reveals the alarming extent to which environmental hazards—from industrial poisons found in amniotic fluid to the toxic contamination of breast milk—now threaten each crucial stage of infant development.

In the eyes of an ecologist, the mother’s body is the first environment, the mediator between the chemicals—both nourishing and dangerous—in our food, water, and air and her unborn child. Never before has the metamorphosis of a few cells into a baby seemed so astonishingly vivid, and never before have the environmental dangers to conception, pregnancy, and to the continuation of healthy human generations been described with such clarity and urgency. In Having Faith, poetry and science combine in both a lyrical celebration and a passionate call to arms.

So why am I telling you this?  Since my youngest is two and the book has long been passed along to another mama-to-be?  Because she's coming to town!   That's right, P-town!  Are you free on May 22nd, mamas, because here's a woman worth getting kid coverage for.  Thanks to the Oregon Environmental Council for bringing Ms. Steingraber into our midst as part of its Healthy Environment Forum.  She'll be sharing her recent findings about the falling age of puberty in girls in the U.S. and policy actions needed to address it.  Get yer tickets now - she'll be at the DoubleTree Lloyd Center from 6 to 8 PM.

Comments

[nancy]

Wow. Major flashbacks reading this post. I read Having Faith while I was nursing and literally had sleepless nights. That image of the human baby at the top of the food chain is incredibly powerful and terrifying.

When we think of nursing we tend to think of the right to do it (at Freddies, or at work). We don't tend to think of the possibility that we're poisoning our child.

Unsolicited advice: if you go to see Sandra speak, as I hope to, go with a buddy because you'll want to debrief.