RAISING BABY GREEN
The Earth-Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth and Baby Care
By Alan Greene, M.D. with Jeanette Pavini & Theresa Foy Digeronimo
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Raising Baby Green is not your typical day-by-day or month-by-month pregnancy progress book. This book is about starting your baby’s life the eco-friendly way from even before conception and onwards, by making green choices for yourself and for your children.

Dr Greene suggests that pregnancy gives the best motivation for anyone to start being more conscious about our lifestyle and the choices that we make, because all parents naturally would want to protect their children.

The book talks about the “green baby movement” - where we live with the awareness of the impact of the choices that we make every day on ourselves and on the environment and to strive to “protect and nurture our lives, our children’s lives and this increasingly fragile world that we live in”.

And what is wrong with our current environment that we need to make changes for our babies? It is not a surprise that we live in a chemical-laden world, from our food (think genetically-modified food), to what we wear (think of the name of the material that you could not even pronounce) and to the air (think of pollution, haze, etc) that we breathe in every day.

But do you know that the impact of our chemical world starts even when the baby is in the womb? According to an umbilical cord blood study in 2004, a total of 287 different industrial chemicals are found circulating through the body of a newborn.

The good news is we can reverse all that, with every greener choice that we make and this book shows us how.

The book is organised according to the different “rooms” that your baby would be living in - from the womb, labour and delivery room, nursery, kitchen, bathroom, garden and to the whole house.

In each “room”, there are recommendations and suggestions for parents to make the greener choices and to adopt a greener lifestyle.

For example, for the “womb”, the chapter talks about cutting back on processed foods and for pregnant mothers to go organic in terms of food and personal care products. It also covers the more common pregnancy questions such as safe seafood, caffeine intake, bacteria risks and harmful fumes.

The book presents a lot of facts, backed with scientific data, evidence and, of course, the experiences of a real-life paediatrician - Dr Greene.

Throughout the book, you would also find products that Dr Greene recommends, from his favourite diaper creams, personal care products for grownups and kids, diapers brands and types, laundry detergents to dishwashers. There are also tips and advice on how to “go green” in your every activities and chores.

I like the fact that the book is not “pushy”. It does not push you to be green. It presents its facts and basically, lets the reader decide whether or not they should go green. It is also easy to read, despite being filled with facts.

There are suggestions for little steps, like using baking soda for cleaning instead of your conventional cleaners and there are suggestions for bigger steps, like buying a hybrid or electric car as opposed to your gas-guzzling conventional car.

So, readers can really decide what they are comfortable with and whether to adopt as little or as much of the greener lifestyle.

This is a great book for any parent to read and to complement your existing baby books, especially when you are new to being green. This would be a great start for you to decide whether you like what you are reading. And you can then decide whether you are ready to make a change and how much of a change. This book will continue to be a great reference for your journey to be greener.

However, if you are already an established greenie, you may find this book repetitive of what you would most probably already know. It is still a good read as there are facts and data that you might not have come across before. So, even if this book is not great for you, it will definitely be a great present for any parent (existing or parents-to-be).