Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood by Sandra Steingraber

Publishers Weekly Review

Steingraber (the author of Living Downstream) offers the commonest of stories how she got pregnant, gave birth and fed her baby in a most uncommon way. A cross between the quirkily thorough detail of Natalie Angier's science-writing and the passionate environmental advocacy of Rachel Carson, Steingraber's style would have been insufferably heroic if the pregnancy had been smooth, mind-over-matter. Instead, it's one long tale of everywoman's worst moments from the urge-to-pee problem to the terrible nausea of morning sickness followed by "round ligament pain" (these are "the bungee cords that anchor the uterus in place"), Braxton-Hicks contractions (which "rehearse the body for labor") and the general nuttiness of each trimester of pregnancy.

Readers can identify with being ideologically opposed to, say, episiotomies, but then agreeing to one under the duress of childbirth. The climax, however, is not her daughter Faith's birth, but the dilemma over the safety of breastfeeding. The medical benefits of breast milk are compelling: it provides excellent nutrition and important immunities. But with rising environmental pollution, biomagnification implies that deadly toxins like DDT and dioxin will concentrate in human milk, the top of the food chain. The only answer: fight this pollution and make the world safer for nursing babies.

With humor Steingraber compares childbirth to rocking a car out of a snowdrift or angling big furniture through a small doorway to leaven the scientific forays, this is a positively riveting narrative. Parents-to-be or anyone concerned with environmental pollution will want to read and discuss this and act.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Booklist Review

Steingraber, an ecologist who became pregnant at age 38, describes her experience as becoming a habitat: "My uterus was an inland ocean with a population of one." From the time she recalls taking an at-home pregnancy test in the faculty bathroom of the university where she is teaching (and delightfully digresses to the history of pregnancy tests and age-old accounts of nausea during pregnancy) Steingraber grips the reader with her beautifully descriptive, highly informative narrative.

This inward, scientific exploration of pregnancy is divided into two sections: the first part explores fetal development and issues for the expectant mother, including choices for treatment and delivery; the second part focuses on the biological bond between mother and child that is formed during breastfeeding.

Steingraber contrasts her own scientific knowledge with the advice offered in popular books on pregnancy, going back and forth when hard knowledge or encouragement is required. Using her own dogged personal investigations, she reveals new information on pregnancy and childbirth, including environmental hazards to mothers and babies. A fabulous book that imparts much more than what is offered in standard pregnancy tomes.
by Vanessa Bush, Copyright American Library Association

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