The Business of Baby

The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Line, by Jennifer Margulis.

I will give this book to every newly pregnant woman I meet for the rest of my life. I believe in it so much I will champion it to anyone who will listen. I will go into book stores and I will move it to a prominent place of display, (in front of What to Expect), every chance I get. If you have children, no matter what the age, buy this book. Tell everyone you know. This is a VERY IMPORTANT book. 

I wish this book had been out when I was a new mommy. Oh…how much easier I would have breathed about so many things. If I’d read this book, maybe I would have trusted my own judgement more about my babies, rather than handing over my power. I would have enjoyed them more and worried less. I wouldn’t have felt so scared and alone when facing off with physicians I didn’t agree with.

You know that old parable about the roast with the ends cut off? And it goes on that way for generations until one day a woman asks her great grandmother, why do we cut off the ends off the roast? She thinks there is some important culinary reason behind it. The great grandmother says her mother didn’t have a pan big enough to fit it in.

So much of what we do as parents is just following along, not questioning. Doing what has always been done. In this book Margulis uses her critical thinking skills, her undercover investigational skills, and tons of scientific research to question things we commonly subject our babies to without even thinking about it. But unlike corporate America whose job it is to scare us into buying more products, this book is empowering. So empowering! You will worry less after reading it. You will trust yourself more. You will be a better parent. A thinking parent.

The Business of Baby is full of information. And a book with so much info could be dry, but not this book. It reads like a novel. Or a conversation with a friend. It is so interesting and engaging. It is full of personal stories. Margulis tackles the subjects of breast feeding, diapering practices, circumcision, vaccines, the corporate grip on our physicians, our ridiculously high infant death rate in the U.S., the overuse of ultrasounds, and overall fear mongering that gets us to buy products and agree to practices that are not in the best interest of our children.

She talks to physicians about what it’s really like to run a pediatric practice business. She talks to an outspoken vaccine proponent, who privately tells her he admires Jenny McCarthy and those who are questioning the over-vaccination of children in our country.

This book needed to be written. Margulis, a devoted mother of four and a beautiful writer stepped up to the plate and did a very thorough job. I am so happy for the generations of children that will benefit from it.

Jennifer Margulis dedicates The Business of Baby to her mother, the late Lynn Margulis. Lynn Margulis was a prominent scientist whose work “helped transform the study of evolution.” She bravely challenged the ideas of many other prominent scientists and since then, her theories have become “accepted evolutionary doctrine” according to The New York Times.

Jennifer Margulis is the perfect combination of someone who truly values science, having been steeped in it, and who is also entirely devoted to mothering. Like her mom, she is “sticking her neck out,” challenging ideas that have been widely and unquestioningly accepted. The Business of Baby will be an important part of the evolution of parenting as we currently know it, as reader by reader we begin to think, begin to question, begin to wake up.

Her mom would be so proud.

BUY THIS BOOK! Read this book. Give it as a baby shower gift. Tell your friends. Be part of the change.

Amen.

* For more on author Jennifer Margulis, click here.

* Like the Facebook page for The Business of Baby here.