If I could choose one event in my life that, more than any other, furthered my awareness of product ingredients and how they affect the human body, it would have been my pregnancy in 2007. Most newly pregnant women are pummelled with the basic information on what to avoid during pregnancy, and in most cases, these things were no surprise: raw/undercooked meat, smoking, illicit drugs, unpasteurized cheese, cat litter……….but aside from the pamphlet list that you get from the doctor, there are actually very many more products and drugs and airborne things to know about; something that I learned slowly over the course of the nine months before the Little One’s birth.
Just this morning, MSNBC ran a bit about the rise in autism rates; it was 1 in 150 during my last pregnancy. Now, just 2 1/2 years later, it is 1 in 91. Although no one can or wants to say definitively what is causing this rise, I think most of the scientific community agrees that, in addition to the genetic factor, it is a result of multiple toxic exposure during pregnancy. Therefore, limiting such exposure when we are trying to conceive and when we are pregnant is the goal here. But how to go about doing that? That standard doctor’s list is a good place to start. I will do my best to continue it here in this category over the coming months; and I am now invested in the subject as well — we are expecting our next little bundle in May.