Healthy Child Healthy World

I finished another book. Healthy Child Healthy World was one of those "here is everything you could/should be doing to make the world a greener, safer place to live" books but without the massive guilt trips and unrealistic advice. Each chapter included a short story from celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Hanks, and Erin Brockovich about how they incorporate green-ness into their family lives.

I have never really considered myself much of an environmentalist, but after reading a few books on clean, green homes and parenting, I realize that maybe there's something to this whole idea of being a responsible earthdweller. The pregnancy hormones have kicked this up quite a bit. I am really stuck on the well-known Iroquois saying about living our lives in such a way that we consider the impact on the children who will be born seven generations from now (also the concept behind the Seventh Generation brand of cleaning products). Will the earth even exist seven generations from now!?

I know some people believe it's rather self-righteous of me to plan a homebirth and to express my interest in natural ways of living. How elitist of me, I know. The truth is, I will always believe that how we are born affects so much about how we live the rest of our lives. For someone born gently, into a loving environment, I could see how "natural" birth wouldn't be such a big deal to them. Louis and I, on the other hand, were born in ways that are about as traumatic as possible (forceps delivery and emergency cesarean followed by postpartum depression and abandonment, respectively) and to me/us, birth is a BIG DEAL.

One of the major reasons I hesitated for so long about having a child was that I'm well aware of all the crappy genes we would be passing on to the next generation. Of just our close family, we are dealing with:

Allergies
Asthma
Mental illness
Heart disease
Kidney disease
Hypertension
Diabetes
Alcoholism
Depression
Cancer
Endometriosis
Fibromyalgia
Obesity
Migraines
Stroke
Skin issues
and
Addictions

Interestingly enough, nearly all of these are influenced by environment more than by genes alone, meaning there are things we can do to minimize the risk of our child (or anyone's child) developing these diseases. Some of these things I have done on a daily basis for a long time without even thinking about it (recycling, conserving water, using green cleaning supplies, turning off unnecessary lights and appliances, etc.), while others have involved a learning process. I was raised in a home that was carpeted and everyone wore shoes inside. When Louis and I got together, I learned to take off my shoes, and when we bought our house, I came to love our hardwood floors. Now, these things are no-brainers to me. Wearing shoes inside your home is straight up filthy! All the crap (literally) that gets dragged in and spread around is gross. The list of chemicals emitted from carpeting is also quite nasty, especially when I think about letting a baby crawl around on it.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, asthma among kids increased more than 200 percent since 1980 and allergies increased more than 300 percent from the 1960s to the 1990s. What's up with that!? BTW, both can be helped tremendously by changing things in diet and around the home. I realize I'm angry that the last generation didn't do more to help protect our kids and grandkids. I also realize I have a lot more to say about this, and poor Louis has already gotten an earful from me about things we need to change around the house.

To be clear, I have no judgment about other families. I think everyone does the best they can with what they know, what they were taught, the resources they have, and how important the environment is to them. I love learning more about how we can bring our child into the safest environment possible. Some things are luxuries at the moment (a hybrid, organic bedding, and an installed water filter, for example), but others are totally do-able. Trying to minimize the risk of developing all the stuff caused by the bad genes we're passing on is really important to me.