For the Week Ending August 4, 2019.
There is no one way of parenting that is “natural.” Not the one used by this or that modern hunter-gatherer tribe, or chimps, or bonobos, or humans thousands of years ago. You do you. And read more here.
This is important for you because you will probably get lots of advice about the “right” way to be a mother – but that mostly depends on what works for you.
Go Jen Go
Jen Gunter – the internet’s anti-Gwyneth – thinks facts are important, and that facts about women’s bodies are important. And scarce. She has been an OB/GYN for twenty-four years and has borne three children, so she knows what she is talking about. She has a blog, huge twitter following, column in The New York Times, a book, and a web series all designed to debunk pseudoscience and help you learn the truth. Read more here.
This is important for you because, as this profile notes, “Jen Gunter didn’t set out to be the Joan of Arc of vaginas.” But someone had to do it.
Embryos do not have microbiomes; babies do. But when that microbiome becomes established has not been entirely clear. New research reported in Nature provides further evidence supporting the idea that the placenta – the main liaison between the embryo and the world – does not have bacteria, so the baby gets seeded with intestinal flora after it is born. It had been very difficult to determine this experimentally, but this new study examined over 500 placentas, so should be rigorous. Read more here.
This is important for you because its amazing that with all that is known about pregnancy and birth there are still unknowns to discover and new things to explore.
As a guest editor for September’s British Vogue, Meghan Merkle got to interview Michelle Obama – and hear all of her advice about motherhood. Read more here.
This is important for you because “Motherhood has taught me that, most of the time, my job is to give them the space to explore and develop into the people they want to be. Not who I want them to be or who I wish I was at that age, but who they are, deep inside.”
