A Reader Asks: Do I Make Enough Money To Have Kids?

I recently received a message on Facebook from a couple that are interested in having children, but are worried that they don't make enough for the woman to be a full-time mom, and they were curious what I spend on Anders.

Before I share what I spend on Anders, here are some things that I know:

1) There is a wealth of information about this on the internet that can be Googled. There are even cost calculators that you can do by geographic area. Assume that your costs will be higher than those listed if you will not be feeding your child fake food. Also, cheap plastic diapers and wipes gave Anders diaper rash, so we used the Seventh Generation brand which is much more expensive. We used plastic diapers when we were out. We used cloth diapers at home, but I did not wash them myself, I had a diaper service. You could save money by using cloth diapers and washcloths and washing them yourself. Also, I was never willing to use the cheapest childcare available for Anders (daycares), so my child care costs (high quality babysitters) were always higher than what the websites list as well.

2) I read that parents spend about 33% of their expendable income on their first kid. If they have a second child that number goes up to 41%. If they have a third child that number goes to 47% and after that it stays around there, just under 50% regardless of how many children the couple has.

So my first thought is: Do you have expendable income?

Note that at my house, one cannot say, "No." Because my husband worked minimum wage jobs for ten years and during that time lived on just 20% of his income. No joke. So literally no one can tell him that they "can't save."

Now, what my husband did, I do not think most people are capable of doing. The sacrifices he made blow my mind. He parked miles from venues but never once paid for parking until he was over thirty years old. He periodically slept in his car for a few months to save on rent. He shared a studio apt with three other people. He couch surfed for years while working and saving. He worked as a bus boy at a restaurant and only ate the free food from there. The only food he was willing to pay for was Ramen noodles and cans of tuna fish. He drove a car with no a/c and a busted window in Los Angeles for over half a decade. He did not go out to eat or to movies - ever. He did not pay for books or movies, he only rented from the library. Stuff like that.

If you have a dream and you can make these sacrifices for it, even working minimum wage jobs, you can save. So, regardless of how much you make, what is your savings rate? Assume that 30% of your income needs to go to your child and another 10% needs to be saved each year, can you live on 60% of your income?

Surprise! If you were married to my husband, saving 10% would not fly. He would say you should save a minimum of 30%. Assume you will spend 30% on the child and save 30%. Can you live on 40% of your income? Start experimenting now to see. How does it feel to make those sacrifices? Because if you are not happy to do it now, when you are getting enough sleep, you will feel much less happy about doing it when you are a bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived parent.

If you are going to have a child you should definitely have six months of income stashed in a savings account for emergencies. If you are Mormon, you have to have an entire year. Do you have that?

3) Another thing I know is that, from the book, The Price of Motherhood, if the woman makes less than 50k a year, it is a better financial decision for her to stay home than it is for her to work. This is because the costs of childcare and taxes negate the entire worth of the woman's salary if it is below 50k. If you haven't read that book, I recommend it.

4) For Tom and me, our highest value is health. I would consider it cruel to have a child that I couldn't afford to feed a nutritionally-dense diet. Can you afford to feed your child real, chemical-free food? If not, start making friends with local organic farmers.

Also, remember that you need to prepare your body for two years before you have the child to maximize the DNA you pass on (this is from what I have read about epigenetics). Have you been doing that? Have you read about the pregnancy-prep diet in Nourishing Traditions?

5) Tom and I take pride in our family being "hard to kill." Are you prepared for black swan emergencies? Do you have a gun and know how to use it, gold and silver coins, medical supplies, batteries, and two months of stored water and food and a way to cook that food if there is no power? If you live in a cold climate and the power is out, how will you heat your home? Do you have a wood stove and two months of back up wood? *Assume it is not safe to leave your home for two months and figure out how you will survive. If you are Mormon, assume a year. (I really respect the Mormons in this area!)

In addition, have you taken an EMT class? Not CPR, that is basically useless, EMT. Have you studied a martial art, hopefully krav maga so that you can protect your family if there is ever an emergency?

Remember that children cost a lot more in time than they do in money. Assume that your family will now be your hobby. After work, are you happy to skip your favorite activity or show/video game and instead go to krav maga for your family? For the next year, experiment with having no down time. Instead, spend your free time on your unborn child – working extra to get the emergency food stash, money, and skills you need for your family to be hard to kill. How does that feel? Are you happy to be a king instead of a squire? If not, you will most likely not enjoy having a family. (The king/squire comment is referencing this post. If you have not read it, I recommend it: http://roslynross.blogspot.com/2016/07/living-right-story-parents-as-kings-and.html)

6) Finally, what do I spend on Anders every year? I don't have the info with me for the first few years, but in both 2015 and 2016 we spent about 18.5k, not including food or plane tickets. Here is the breakdown:

2015 (Anders was 3)

$10k on childcare
$5k on classes, camps, experiences, books, and toys. (We buy almost no toys, opting instead for experiences and camps.)
$100 on haircuts
$2.5k on health, this includes insurance (catastrophic coverage only), and dental apts. Keep in mind dental costs would be a lot higher if we agreed to fill his cavities. And medical costs would be higher if we went to the doctor for "checkups."
$900 on clothes

2016 (Anders was 4)

$4k on childcare
$11k on classes, camps, experiences, books, and toys.
$150 on haircuts
$2.5k on health, this includes insurance (catastrophic coverage only), and dental apts.
$1k on clothes

Food costs an additional $1k per month if we are feeding Anders in Los Angeles and an additional $200 a month if we are feeding him in Nicaragua.

Thoughts:

-Where you live matters the most. If you live in Nicaragua and make 30k, you are rich. Like, maid, cook, driver rich. If you make 200k in Los Angeles, you still can't afford those things.

-There are ways to do kids for a lot less than what I spend, of course. If you have a social network that you can rely on for hand-me-downs, that can save you money. Goodwill is a great option, but it's a big time investment. If you get the plastic tubs now and start hitting the store once a week, you could have a good collection of clothes two years from now when you need them. It doesn't work to go there when you need the clothes, as you will leave with only one or two items each time you go.

-If you have relatives nearby that would babysit once a week for a full day, that would help significantly. You will need time off. After Anders was a newborn, Tom and I got zero help from our families. Many families try to do without time off. I think that, except for a select few, this doesn't work. I think planning to have no time off is basically planning to end up divorced.

-When Anders was younger we didn't go to any classes (except for his RIE baby class), so I imagine those costs were negligible. There are free classes offered at libraries and through homeschooling networks that I know are available, but in general I found them to be not what I was looking for. I think that if Tom and I had a stronger social network (which would require being more mainstream) they might have been.

-I don't think kids need their own rooms until they are much older. So one way to save money is to plan on sharing a room with your child until he/she really wants one of his/her own.

-I do think it's important for you to think about what will keep your family together. Because if you don't plan for it, your family will most likely disperse and then – what was the point of having kids? This means: Are you in a city near your own family? Are you in a city you could live in for the rest of your life? Are you in a city you would be proud to have your child live in for the rest of his/her life? Are you in a line of work that you can share with your child? Start thinking now about how you will involve your child in your work life. Start thinking now about your grandchildren and great grandchildren. Have you read The Little House books? They were poor, and they had a happy family life. But the children were malnourished and unable to produce viable offspring. For me, that is a big fail. They would have been better off limiting themselves to one child. Or staying in the big woods where they had the support of their families. Either way, the point is to start thinking long-term. Most people think that if the children survive to adulthood, the parents were successful. I disagree. I think the children must survive to adulthood and be better off physically, emotionally, and financially for the parenting to be deemed successful. (Note that I am not suggesting parents should be perfect, just that they should think realistically and long-term about their abilities to do better in all three areas than their own parents did.)

-Tom and I would save quite a bit of money if I would stop writing this blog, and instead spend my free time growing veggies, preserving food, taking Anders on hunting and fishing trips, and learning how to make our clothes and do basic home repairs. I recommend saving money by not starting a blog! :)

-If you can get your hands on The Baby Decision by Merle Bombardieri, I highly recommend it. And one of those books along the lines of 100 Questions to ask before getting married. I do not agree that love is enough. (I think one should breed primarily with one's head, not one's heart.) Values and long term plans should be addressed before the long term commitment is made.

-And finally, if you don't do any of these things that I recommend, and you decide to be what I would call "irresponsible," remember that because you read this blog you will probably still be better than 99.9% of the parents out there.

I give you sooooooo many point just for even considering these things before having kids!

Only Kings and Queens Can Found Kingdoms: A Story About Successful Marraiges

This is a messy blog post. It is an idea I want to share because, though it may not be The One Truth, it's a story that has been helpful to me.

My husband and I have a great relationship now, but we didn't always. We had horrific childhood attachment issues to overcome in addition to terrible relationship models coming from our two sets of divorced parents. There was a key moment in our relationship right after we got engaged. We got into a terrible fight (of course I cannot remember what it was about). I called my mom, and she said, "Yeah, relationships end. Sounds like yours has run its course." He called his mom, and she said something similar.

When we made up from that fight we realized we could never call our parents to help us through our marriage struggles (if our goal was to stay married). Similarly, I couldn't turn to the advice offered by Ayn Rand or Nathaniel Branden on the subject of marriage and relationships as neither of them had marriages I would want to emulate. I started my search for new relationship role-models.

A few years later Tom and I were married, and I was pregnant. Tom's single friends at the time were Tindering it up, and his married friends (and him) were all feeling a little jealous and trapped. I had this realization then, that changed how we saw the situation.

Joseph Campbell wrote about the "human story." He saw a woman's life story as having three main arcs: Maiden then Mother then Crone. For a man was: Squire then Warrior then King. I don't think those work well for today, so I updated them to: Maiden then Warrior Queen Mother then Wise Woman and, for a man, Squire then Warrior King Father then Wise Man.

"The problem," I said to my husband, "is that your friends think they are still squires. They are like the 40-year-old married women running around in short skirts. They're living the wrong story. I'm not a maiden anymore. It's hard to let that story go. Flirting with squires was fun. But now I will live the Warrior Queen Mother story, and I will try to make that story as glorious as my Maiden story was.

As a Warrior Queen Mother, I don't want to wear skimpy dresses and flirt with boys. I want to fight for the survival of my kingdom (e.g. my children). Your married friends would feel a lot better if they stopped seeing themselves as squires who are supposed to be chasing maiden-tail. They are kings now, and they have kingdoms to fight for. They can be heroes. Or they can be playboy princes that destroy their kingdoms."

This story rings even more true now. I was at a department store the other day trying on dresses for a cocktail party. The saleswoman was trying to get me to buy something extremely short and "sexy." "You've got such a great body; you should flaunt it!" she kept telling me. I was totally uninterested and tried to explain to her that I am in my mid-thirties not my mid-twenties, that I am married, that I an not trying to attract anyone, etc. She found it sad that I didn't think I "could" wear sexy stuff anymore.

I became interested in this exchange. Hollywood loves the maiden/squire story and has fed us a ton of one-liners to keep us pursuing our mates rather than building kingdoms. It is rare, on television, to see loyalty between partners. There is so much back-stabbing. And yet it is partnership and commitment that leads to riches, the kingdom we create that leads to a better life.

Squires and maidens tend to spend money in their efforts to show off and attract a mate. Smart kings and queens are more likely to save money because security and ensuring the survival of their offspring is what motivates them. Maidens and squires, whether they have children or not, are largely focused on attracting a mate, not kingdom building.

Maybe it's because we give away our children to be raised by others – there is no kingdom to fight for anymore. Maybe it's because of all the subterfuge involved in today's battle for survival. On the subject of nutrition alone – how many wealthy dynasties have failed because of inability to produce viable heirs due to nutritional depletion of genetic stock across generations? Many wealthy and middle class people think they are successfully "surviving," but they are not, not if you take a long-term (three or more generations) view of it.

I find this reflected in my parent-friends who, rather than be focused on the battle for the survival of their children, are focused on their careers. "Your family is your job!" I want to say. The point of a flashy career is to attract the best possible mate. A married person overly focused on career is a person looking to get divorced (and "trade up" in mates). A king or queen would only be interested in their career to the extent that it could benefit their kingdom, perhaps by making family alliances so that their children can find the best mates possible. But in a very deep way, Kings and Queen know it's not about them anymore, and that's wonderful!

I am all about selfishness, but for me, the battle for the survival of my children is what I want right now. Every time I hear my parent-friends talk about their search for sexual fulfillment, I can't help but think – you are stuck in your old story. By all means, if you are so wealthy that your children are eating farm fresh organic Weston A Price food, if you and they have straight teeth with no braces and no cavities and no other signs of physical degeneration, if you have fantastic communication skills with your partner and your children and you are raising them and not having them raised by others, then perhaps you have so much free time that you could be focused on "sexual fulfillment." Otherwise: You are falling for what seems to me like a media sales gimmick.

When a twenty-year-old tells me about her wild sex life, it's entertaining. When a forty-year-old does so, there is something unattractive about it. And I think it's this: The social cues you are giving me with your focus on sex or your career is that you are not focused on your kingdom.

Having been born into poverty and having been studying successful families since the minute I understood what I wanted, and knowing that most people who make it into the top 1% will stay there less than two years and 80% will stay there less than ten years, and knowing that while I worked my butt off and rose in wealth throughout my life, I have watched most of my friends (who were raised in wealth) fall. Why? Why is it so hard for a family to keep its wealth once it has acquired it?

One conclusions I have made is that wealthy people equate their wealth only to money. This is a fatal mistake in the creation of a dynasty. Ask any of the failed dynasties why they failed: Inability to produce heirs (decline in genetic stock), poor parent-child relationships (which the parents will pass off as unmotivated kids), fighting among heirs (failure of family to share values).

It became clear to me while I worked for unhealthy 1%ers that you cannot lose focus on health and healthy relationships. My husband and I talk about this as we build our wealth. We will build our wealth more slowly than we can, but we will do it right. The foundation of physical health for our bodies and our children's bodies is our highest priority. We can always make money. But money cannot buy good health that has been lost.

Same with relationships. Divorce destroys kingdoms. Children who hate their parents destroy kingdoms. So though my husband and I could be moving toward our financial dreams twice as fast if we put Anders into school and I joined the paid workforce, that is sacrificing the future for the present. And it would likely destroy our kingdom, if not in our lifetime, in our children's lifetime. And why? My husband and I are taken; we don't need flashy amounts of money or success to attract mates. We only need enough money for our own enjoyment and to maximize the quality of our offspring.

Money will only serve the mind that can match it. It is far more important that we focus on giving our son a mind that can match and grow our current level of wealth, than that we keep growing it.

The battle for survival that my husband and I fight is glorious. We must be quite high earners just to feed our family properly. Tom has to earn twice as much as husbands whose wives work so that I can raise our son. But we have a dream of a family like one we have yet to see in our lives. There is nothing more bonding, nothing sexier, than going to war in this way with my husband. It's exhausting of course, but it's a beautiful, fun, and interesting exhausting because it is meaningful for us.

Something else I noticed recently: Battle scars are tragic and hideous on maidens and squires. On kings and queens they are hot, proof of our strength, our prowess. And thank goodness, because I don't think anyone makes it to old age without them.

The belief that we are warriors now, not innocent, happy young folk, also helps us on to the next phase of our life story – old age and accepting death. When you are a maiden or a squire death is tragic. When you are exhausted from battle, scarred, used, death is rest, something that you can be happy about (just a little bit).

This is a subconscious experience for us, an emotional story. But you better believe I am out there making friends who are living this story. Most parents I meet are still maidens and squires. They are not kingdom building and alliances with them are becoming more and more unfulfilling. They are married and have children, but seem to have bought into the advertising media pitch that their life purpose should be ... sex. I like sex as much as the next person, but as your meaning in life?

I was having lunch with a friend of mine the other day who is getting her PhD in sexual health. She was telling me how important sexual fulfillment is, and when I told her it wasn't a priority to Tom and me, she became worried. But upon further questioning it turned out that we have a "healthy" amount of sex. Yet we don't make sex dates or have a date night as is recommend for couples with children. Just the fact that we like each other is enough to get us into bed. I am not holding our relationship out there as a Model For Everyone To Follow, but I think that we are still attracted to each other because of how we see each other. Like I said above, there something bonding and super sexy about seeing each other as warriors fighting a battle together.

Here are some more metaphors: I think many wives subconsciously do their best to stay maidens because they think that is how they will keep their husbands. But it's actually the opposite. If you stay a maiden and keep your husband in squire-mode, eventually you will break up. Why? Because a mother cannot compete with the maidens. A forty year old woman cannot out maiden real maidens. Even if she isn't older than they are, her focus is divided, her story is wrong, and there is always something unattractive subconsciously about people living the wrong story. Rather, the woman who wants to keep her husband should specifically try to not be a maiden or compete with maidens. She should focus on being the most incredible queen any king could wish for. No maiden can compete with a true warrior queen. And no king is attracted to maidens - they are pretty, silly things, not useful to him in battle.

What does it mean when a married woman and mother dresses in a way to attract men? Does it mean she is confident about her body? I don't think so. Something about it is unattractive. (And that is interesting to me.) This is what I think: What it says to me is she is not happy in her relationship, that she may cheat on her husband, that she may wish she were still a maiden, in other words: I should not trust and form alliances with her kingdom as she is alerting me to its instability or lack of success. Perhaps she genuinely thinks she is just showing the world that she doesn't care what it thinks – but that's just out of touch with reality. And I don't think it's attractive to be out of touch with reality. The fact that you will be judged by how you present yourself is unavoidable. To dress as if that is not a fact just makes you in denial and likely to fail.

I think about the things we used to think (as a society) were "bad." Dressing slutty. Divorce. We don't want to stigmatize the people who do these things. But at the same time, in some ways, they signify someone's success or failure to grow up.

I went to a conference over the summer where I was hit on rather a lot. It was flattering, but it occurred to me that it's boring to me now. What's interesting to me is my son and my husband, our growth, our finances, the creation of the best life possible for our family, the dream of building something that could last generations. Several times I was hit on by people who have open marriages who wondered if I have the same. And I ... don't see that in my future. Because it's boring. Seduction and being seduced was once the most fascinating and marvelous thing to me in the world. I read books on it! But now it simply doesn't serve me. It doesn't serve my kingdom.

I can't help but wonder about the people who are married and have children, but are still pursing mating. I wonder how their kingdoms will do (long term) with their energies so distracted.

Likewise the high percentage of women who abandon their children and return to the workforce. This is a subconscious signal to me that they don't trust their relationship. Their relationship is on such shaky ground that the woman cannot afford to specialize in the children, she has to be prepared for the coming divorce. She has to have "her own" money. If you haven't even figured out how to make a committed alliance to your own husband, how can I trust any alliance you make with me?

Not to mention your children. I am looking for the best mates for my own well-raised children. If your children are going to be raised by servants, middle class teachers, and the television, they are not good mates for mine.

Some women think that staying in the workforce is sexier to their husbands. These women are completely out of touch with reality. Every father I know wants his wife to "do whatever makes her happy." But every last one of them hopes that caring for his children (and him) is what will make her happy. I have never seen a man jump for joy when his queen announces that she, actually, would not enjoy caring for his children. What man can forgive that betrayal? Of course they smile and pretend they are modern, but I think that when their wife shows she cares so little for the children, he starts to detach from them as well.

A man cannot become a king without a queen. A woman in the workforce is not a queen. Queens are focused on their kingdoms, on their children. Likewise men pursuing outlying career success are not kings. Kings are focused on their kingdoms. That is what the money is for.

Both partners must choose to mature. If the man stays a squire he will be obsessed with maidens, and since his wife cannot be one anymore, he will end up leaving her for one. And with his new wife he will start a kingdom a second time. And then he will leave her for a third maiden. Never will his kingdoms progress or grow in glory. He will have wasted decades of valuable kingdom building time reliving the same old story rather than committing to the new one.

I maintain that kingdoms can be built at any social status. It is a way of life, not a social status. Some people will argue that their family "cannot afford" to have one partner at home, but according to Ann Crittenden in The Price of Motherhood, if the wife isn't making over 50k (possibly 65k in today's dollars), it doesn't actually pencil for the woman to be working. What does "cannot afford" mean? Money is all about choices. We choose what we value. For a kingdom builder, nothing is more valuable than the children.

For the record, I don't agree with women being stuck in the house with the kids. Please see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1185171129?type=review#rating_109775433. But I also don't think there is any other option today for the woman that values the health of her children and future of her kingdom.

When my children are ready, I will give up my throne and become a wise woman. This is one of the hardest and most important things a king or queen must do. The failure of many parents to "give up the throne" destroys relationships, and especially the children. It is this awareness of my future obsoleteness that enables me to give Anders my very best happily. Nothing like being a warrior for a few decades to make you feel excited about resting!

I had lunch with one of my favorite girlfriends the other day. Unlike me she grew up in a wealthy family, and she has happily married parents. She said, "Many girls marry rich men because they want to be a princess. But to be a princess you must make your husband your servant. If you make your husband your servant, he will soon be poor. Instead you must seek to be a queen at his side, and make your husband your king. If you treat your husband like a king, he will soon be more rich."

I love this story too. Princess-wives are another example of a way people can fail to change stories.

I apologize for any of this sounding judge-y. Like I said above, this is not The One Truth. There are many glorious stories to live, this one has been mine.

UPDATE

Frank pointed out below that it might be easiest for people to move on to their next story when they have lived their current story to the fullest. As in: squires and maidens who milked every last drop of their squire and maiden experience might be happier to settle into the warrior kingdom mode. Likewise, those who accept the warrior kingdom and live it to its fullest might be the happiest to let that go and become the wise "letting go" generation.

In my studies of death it occurred to me that Buddhism is a disturbing religion for the young. Nor is it helpful for the kingdom builders. But man is it the perfect religion for the old! It's about acceptance and letting go. The entire Tibetan Book of Living and Dying has one main thing to teach: how to die with grace and dignity. Buddhism is the religion for our final stage. I would say Christianity and Judaism (war-making religions) are quite fantastic religions for kingdom building. And for maidens and squires? Well, they should be Pagens. Again, not saying this as Fact. Using these ideas as metaphors to describe the human experience and how we can best facilitate one another to live our stage to the fullest.

Lack of Motivation and Entitlement Among the Wealthy -- Would a Baby Fix It?

I find the general lack of motivation and attitudes of entitlement of the extremely wealthy fascinating. But I think about it very differently than most.

I was raised by poor people. I thought it rather sucked, and got a full scholarship to a private boarding school and then a full scholarship to a private university and then worked for insanely wealthy people in Los Angeles. At this point in my life I have actually spent as much time around extremely wealthy people as I have around extremely poor people.

Here is what I think about "lack of motivation":
-The healthier I get psychologically, the less motivated I am. I was always very driven as a child--but driven by necessity (I hated being poor) but also driven by insecurity (if only I achieved x, I would finally be good/happy/pretty/rich enough). I no longer suffer from either of these issues (that much) and consequently, my drive has nosedived.
-The better I get at coming into the present moment, at listening to my body, at being in touch with my real needs, at not judging myself, the more time I spend resting and relaxing.
-When I am in Nicaragua I note how lazy most animals are--cows, chickens, dogs, cats. They spend a little time eating, a little time playing, and a lot of time laying around. I notice this about my neighbors. Where we live in Nicaragua it is not that hard to build a little hut and get some food. There is a Ted Talk about this called Life is Easy. It is. If you don't mind third world poverty, you can spend most of your life just hanging out.
-So consequently, when I think about people with so much wealth that they don't actually have to work, when I talk to my friends and they tell me about the lack of motivation they are suffering from, my answer is: Do less. Lay around more.
-At lunch today I told my friend this and she said, "But then I will never be the best in the world at something." Which brings us to entitlement.

Here is what I know about "entitlement":
-The healthier I get psychologically, the less I care about success. I am going to die one day. And whatever "success" I find, I don't get to take it with me. However much money, however many awards, however much approval I get from friends or strangers--it doesn't matter very much. I am still going to die. I won't care how many people attend my funeral because I will be dead. I won't care if I left behind books or movies that people love for centuries because again, I will be dead. The more I come to terms with that reality, the less future success I need and the more interested I am in enjoying life right now.
-The irony is that when you stop caring about being successful, you get to fart around doing those stupid things you kind of enjoy. You have no motivation to work and achieve so you basically rest and play. Because playing is fun, you do it enough that, little by little, you become pretty damn good at whatever is "play" for you. And you find success. But strangely, you don't really care anymore, because that's not what you were after. And there are all these people who are whipping themselves into being the best in the world at x who can't even compete on your level--because they are working and you are playing.
-This is why life can seem so unfair. One person is killing himself working sooooo hard to achieve x and another is just farting around and achieving it. Even if the person killing himself does achieve x, it doesn't make him happy--and that makes him even more upset! He killed himself for this and he's still not good enough or rich enough or whatever. He climbed to the top of the mountain and can only see more mountains. And on top of that there are a million guys just like him yapping at his heels. He has been sucked into playing the game of thrones. After all that hard work, he doesn't even get to rest. He's got a full time job just keeping his spot at the top of the mountain, a spot that doesn't even make him happy like he thought it would. But definitely a spot to which he feels entitled. After all, he sacrificed everything to get it.
-Entitlement is not an attitude problem. It's the tragedy people suffer from when they "should on themselves," when they make themselves do what they didn't want to do and desperately need payment for their misery. Feeling entitled to a certain result means you are seeking the wrong result  for the wrong reasons.

Everything I have read thus far has led me to the following conclusions:
-We are all working too hard and need to rest more.
-Chasing success will never make us happy.
-Playing will.
-And if playing doesn't make us successful, at least it will have been fun.
-Because fun is the only success.
-We're all on the Titanic. There are no lifeboats. Whether you're the captain or just someone dancing to the music, you're going down.

That's me buying the story we are sold by today's priests, the "mental health" dealers. But part of me can't help but think that they are totally wrong. The purpose of status and wealth (evolutionarily) was procreation. What if the unmotivated wealthy are just ...  childless? That's what the money is for. That's why your parents subconsciously worked so hard to get it. That's what success is for--to attract the highest quality mate you possibly can and then breed as many babies as you possibly can. 

Humans can (and do) reject their biological purpose. But if you find yourself purposeless, instead of pursuing more empty joy, try biological fulfillment. 

Ancient Child Spacing Wisdom

Here is what I know about child spacing:

Hunter-Gatherers had their children 3-6 years apart and usually had 4-5 children. 

What this information means to me is that my body evolved to function best having babies every 3-6 years and to have 4-5 children, but that doesn't mean, should I want to have twelve babies in twelve years, that my body could not do it.

However, in the 1920's Weston A. Price spent over a decade traveling the globe looking for the healthiest people in the world (a control group to which he could compare Americans). He recorded the dietary and lifestyle habits of the thirteen or so native groups he considered to be the healthiest people in the world and noted that they followed this ancient pattern of spacing children no closer than three years. He learned that the native people believed that a baby born closer than three years after a sibling was considered to be unhealthy. He looked into this and found evidence enough to convince him of the validity of this concern. In the photographs he includes in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, one can see the perfectly straight, white teeth of siblings spaced 3 or more years apart and the crooked teeth of the sibling born too soon. Crooked teeth were just one signifier of in-womb nutrition deficiencies though--narrow faces, narrow hips leading to more difficult births, club feet and almost all other birth defects were more common in children born closer than three years.

Price's theory was that pregnancy exhausts a woman's nutrient stores. Nursing a baby further depletes those stores (or slows down the replenishment process). It takes a woman's body several years to replenish and be ready to give everything to a new baby. A baby born only a year or two after a sibling will most likely not be able to receive enough nutrients in the womb to develop properly.

There are many other things that can deplete a woman's biological fitness and make it not wise to have a baby. Children born soon after a woman suffers from a major illness or during a time of famine also showed signs of not getting properly nourished in the womb. This did not mean these babies couldn't survive, it just meant their gene expression was not optimized. 

To put this theory into a real life example: very few Americans today, even the healthiest, will have children with naturally straight teeth. But if any of their children have straight teeth, it the most likely be the couple's first born. This could also be why the first born will have the highest IQ, be the most attractive and the least likely to have a hormonal imbalance. (If a woman's nutrient stores are properly replenished before she gets pregnant again, it is possible for all her children to be attractive with straight teeth and high IQs. Again, this does not mean that babies whose gene expression was not optimized will be stupid and unattractive, it just means that had they been properly nourished in the womb, they would have been even more intelligent and attractive than they are.) I cannot find any examples from people in my life in which this is not the case. Whenever I run into people who look like they have nice, wide mouths and perfectly straight teeth I ask about their mothers' diets before they were born. 100% of the time thus far, the person with the straight-teeth-no-braces had a mom who ate a traditional diet or some strange traditional foods that most people don't eat today or, in one case, fished and ate fish for at least one meal a day every day.

For these reasons, I would never consider having children spaced closer than three years. 

Why did we lose our ancient knowledge and start having more children spaced closer together? The change took place after the middle ages due to religions pressure to not nurse and have large families. Nursing is a natural contraceptive. Native societies nursed their young for 3-6 years. When the church convinced women that nursing was sinful and dirty and babies started being weened either at birth or after a month, infant mortality skyrocketed (thus women had to have more children in order to have one or two survive to adulthood) and women were able to get pregnant again right away. The ancient knowledge, that this would lead to unhealthy offspring, was lost... and crooked teeth, narrow faces, and difficult child-bearing hips became normal.

If you would like to read more about this subject, check out:

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life

Home Birth vs Hospital: An Objectivist Is Horrified to Find Out the Hippies Were Right About Something

If you have your baby at home with a midwife, instead of in the hospital with an OB:

• you are twice as likely to survive giving birth
• your baby is three times more likely to survive his birth
• your baby is six times more likely to survive his first year

Therefore, the rational woman, seeking to maximize her and her baby's chances of survival, will choose to give birth at home. 

Hospital births cost around $10,000 ($20,000 if you have a c-section). Home births cost around $3000. Yet only .65% of American women choose to give birth at home. Despite their high price tag, most insurance companies only cover hospital births. Home birth is illegal in 23 states. Someone doesn't want you having your baby at home. 

In addition to the above, anyone who watches television has been programmed to think hospitals are the only place one should have her baby and only freaks and hippies have their babies elsewhere.

So maybe it's not so much that people who have their babies at home don't need the establishment. It's not so much that they think for themselves that is the problem, no, it's Machiavelli 101--it's the babies. The establishment wants to parent our babies; they want to establish whose babies they are. A hospital birth serves to recruit your baby into the medical industry. Toss in an intensive regime of pediatric visits throughout the first year and your baby has been indoctrinated from birth into a lifelong dependence on medical intervention. Seeing the doctor is normal. Trusting your body is not. Doing what you are told is normal. Thinking for yourself is not.

A personal note on how my research changed my pregnancy (and my life):

The above was not what I was expecting to find out when I began my research. If you had talked to me when I was twelve weeks along, I would have said that I was "going with a midwife for now" and that I was still looking into where I wanted to have my baby--as in, I wanted to tour at least three different hospitals in the Los Angeles area and pick my favorite. I was absolutely against giving birth at home.

Then I did my always-over-the-top research and told my husband that we should probably have the baby at home. "Only .65% of Americans have their babies at home," I said. "We're rational," he said, "If less than one percent of Americans agree with us, that sounds about right."

So how did it all work out? I went into labor at 2am on a Thursday. My baby was born 3 hours later. Unmedicated birth was fine. Doing it at home was WONDERFUL! After the baby was born I took a shower and got into bed with my newborn and my husband. The midwives cleaned everything up.

I didn't have to travel anywhere while I was in labor. I got to wear what I wanted (or didn't want). I didn't have to have an IV in my arm. I wasn't attached to any monitors. I moved when I wanted to where I wanted. I ate and drank what and when I wanted. I had one vaginal exam by someone I knew well. I had as much privacy as I wanted. I got to push in the position I wanted. There was no pressure, no timeline.

If you read the books I recommended in my previous posts, you already know that the key to having a quick, easy labor is feeling safe. My lower, primal brain felt very safe in the comfort of my own home. It's not just the drugs at the hospital that prolong labor--it's the strangers, the noises, the lights, the fact that no matter how much your higher brain insists this is a safe place, your lower brain instinctually knows it's not.

If you only read two of the books I have recommended, read Baby Catcher and How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor.

*Update on this post: A huge backlash has come out against homebirths since I wrote this post. Fascinating that before homebirths started gaining popularity, the mortality rates I could find showed homebirths to be safer. Those same reports that I read have disappeared. Now all I can find is (A LOT OF) zealous reports about how dangerous homebirth is. I imagine if homeschooling gets too popular the same thing will happen there too. We've got to get the population incensed so we can regulate birth and force those crazy homebirth women to have their babies how we say! Go government propaganda machine go!

Numbing Out vs Natural Birth: Where Objectivists and Hippies Can Find Common Ground

What you will hear from the pop culture herd: giving birth is a personal experience and the best path for you--natural or drugs--only you can determine.

If you don't subscribe to the cult of moral grayness that denies objective reality, there is only one choice and the thinking about it goes like this:
-Is it rational to not want to experience the pain of childbirth? Yes.
-Is it rational to sign up for an epidural unconsciously, without looking into the costs? No, unconsciousness is unacceptable.

Therefore, inform yourself by reading the following:

When you sign up for an epidural, you also sign up for an IV and a bag of fluids, a urinary catheter, a blood pressure cuff to tighten on your arm every 15 minutes or less and continuous fetal monitoring.

The forced fluids in the IV may cause your perineum to become engorged and not able to stretch so you will be at a higher risk for needing an episiotomy. The urinary catheters will put you at a higher risk of getting a UTI. The epidural itself will likely cause hypotention, a sudden drop in your blood pressure--hence the blood pressure cuff monitoring you. Your baby will also have to be monitored as a drop in your blood pressure decreases the amount of blood (and therefore oxygen) going to him/her which can lead to fetal distress.

Epidurals eliminate the normal hormone process of labor which will make your labor take three times longer than a natural birth. The epidural will slow down or stall your contractions. That is why most women who get an epidural will also require Pitocin. Common side effects of Pitocin include: nausea, vomiting, and much more painful contractions. Less common side effects include: rash, hives, itching, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue, blood clotting problems, changes in heart rate, cardiac arrhythmia, pooling of blood in the pelvis, postpartum hemorrhage and a ruptured uterus. Side effects for your baby include: bleeding in the eye, irregular or slow heartbeat, seizures, jaundice and low Apgar scores. Less common side effects for your baby include: brain damage, neonatal retinal hemorrhage and death.

Epidurals make pushing more difficult and increase the likelihood of forceps or vacuum delivery by 20-75%. Common side effects for the mother of a forceps delivery include: cuts and heavy bleeding. Common side effects for the baby include: heavy bruising. Less common side effects for the mother include: permanent loss of urinary and bowel control. Less common side effects for the baby include: broken bones, brain damage and death. Vacuum assisted deliveries are less risky for the mother but have common side effects for the baby that include: abrasions on the scalp, cephalohematoma (a collection of blood under the fibrous covering of the skull bone), jaundice and eye hemorrhage. Less common side-effects for the baby include: retinal hemorrhage, subgaleal hematoma(a collection of blood just under the scalp, injuring the underlying veins), intracranial hemorrhage and brain damage.

Epidurals increase the risk of a C-section by 25-50%. Some common C-section risks for the mother include: infection, heavy blood loss, blood clots in the legs or lungs, nausea, vomiting, severe headache, bowel problems, a recovery that takes three times longer than a vaginal birth and complications in later pregnancies (uterine rupture and placenta problems that cause severe bleeding after birth which may require a hysterectomy). C-section risks for the baby include: injury during the delivery, need for special care in the neonatal intensive care unit and immature lungs and breathing problems if the due date has been miscalculated.

If you just get the epidural (and manage to give birth without Pitocin, forceps, a vacuum assisted delivery a or a C-section) common side effects include: feeling like you are not able to breathe, uncontrollable shivering, ringing in your ears, itching around your face, neck and throat, nausea and vomiting. Epidurals also double your risk of hemorrhage.

Less common side effects of epidurals include: allergic shock, convulsions, respiratory paralysis, loss of bladder control for months, severe headache caused by leakage of spinal fluid that lasts for weeks and requires bed rest and a blood patch, epidural fever (which will result in your baby being sent to the neonatal intensive care unit), permanent nerve damage, brain damage, cardiac arrest and death.

Common side effects for your baby when you get an epidural include: respiratory depression, fetal malpositioning and an increased risk of jaundice. Your baby will be born drowsy and will exhibit the same drug toxicity symptoms as a baby born to a woman taking cocaine and opium.

The epidural-experience doesn't end with birth. For hours afterward the lower half of your body will be numb. You won't be able to walk and you might not be allowed to hold your baby. Later you might get tingling, shaky and numb sensations in your legs, a severe backache, soreness where the needle was inserted and urinary or fecal incontinence. You will heal more slowly than a woman who had an unmedicated birth.

Because the epidural prevented your body from releasing labor hormones, you may have trouble bonding with your newborn. You will have an increased risk of breast milk production problems and you will be at a greater risk for postpartum depression.

Because the epidural prevented your body from releasing labor hormones, your baby may have trouble latching on (which can lead to breastfeeding difficulties). Your baby may also have trouble bonding with you.

For up to six weeks after birth, a baby that was drugged (because you aren't just drugging yourself) will exhibit neurbobehavioral effects such as irritability, inconsolability and decreased ability to track an object visually or to shut out noises and light i.e. epidurals will make you are much more likely to have a crabby, difficult newborn.

To conclude, getting an epidural carries many serious health risks to you and your baby. It prevents you from experiencing a couple hours of intense pain in exchange for extra weeks of recovery (i.e. pain...) and over a month of caring for a miserable infant.

95% of unmedicated births have no scary side-effects. Less women tear. Tears are less bad. Babies are born wide awake. The wide awake babies nurse right away. Moms get hormone rushes that make them fall in love with their babies and prevent postpartum depression and hemorrhage. The babies get the hormone rushes and fall in love with their moms. Moms get hormones that make their milk come in. Moms heal faster... the list goes on. The 5% of natural births that have complications end up as vacuum/forceps/C-section births with all the risks listed above.

The medical establishment makes a lot of noise about breech babies but breech babies can be born naturally and easily--this is not a complication. Neither is the cord around the baby's neck--the baby is getting his air through that cord and does not need to breathe through his mouth until that cord is cut. Big babies are not a complication either.

For your entire life you have watched women pretend to give birth on television--they scream and it's horrible and doctors have to save the baby and then the mother. This is nothing like reality. The reality is: your baby is three to four times more likely to die if you give birth with a doctor at a hospital than with a midwife at home. Birth isn't a medical emergency. It's a natural process. Your body was made to do this. Your body evolved to be successful at this--that is why your genes were passed on.

Moreover, it is not rational to compromise the health and well-being of your body or your baby to avoid some perfectly natural pain. The average unmedicated birth is around five hours. What is five hours over the course of a lifetime?

A personal note: when I started researching this I was desperately hoping to find evidence that would free me from facing an unmedicated birth. I thought, "I'm so healthy! A little drugs every now and then aren't so bad, right?" Instead, I found no way to escape the reality that the best thing for the health and well-being of my body, my baby and our relationship was to take the pain.

When I decided that I was going to give birth with no medication, I cried. I was so afraid of how much it would hurt. Then someone said to me: "Why be so afraid of something you have never experienced? You know the fear of pain is always worse than the pain."

They were right. I had a natural birth, no drugs whatsoever. It took three hours. There were no tears or other complications. It hurt, but it was a fascinating life experience that I wouldn't give up.

The side effects of my natural birth have been:
-A certain fearlessness that comes with knowing pain is just pain. It isn't that scary after all.
-Intense admiration in my husband's eyes when we tell people about the birth of our son.
-A baby that was born wide awake and healthy with a perfect Apgar score, a baby that settled into life easily and comfortably, a baby that was never poked, prodded, stuck with needles or taken away from me and his dad, a baby that never got jaundice, baby acne or cradle cap, a baby that doesn't spit up. My baby is now five months old and has yet to catch a cold. He is that healthy, happy, glowing, beautiful example of life-thriving that every mother dreams of having. Everywhere I go people comment on how healthy, conscious and beautiful he is when they see him. My reward for all the hard work I put into the choices I make is that everyone tells me how "lucky" I am. Only the very few know it's not luck.

To be more informed about what kind of birth you think is rational:

The Business of Being Born: why the medical establishment wants you to have a medicated birth.

Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born: how the medical establishment took over birth. On a side note, the author totally neglects doing thorough research into current birth practices (like epidurals) but the rest of the book is awesome.

Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife: an enjoyable and enlightening read. This book taught me how to think about birth and was instrumental for me when I went into labor i.e. it's possible my labor was only three hours long because of what I learned from this book.

How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor: This book won't just help you keep your kids healthy, it will teach you how to keep yourself healthy.

http://www.homebirth.net.au/2008/06/homebirth-vs-hospital-statistics-to-die.html: See for yourself some mother and baby survival statistics when midwife births are compared to hospital births.

Sources I used in this post series (Trimester 1):
webmd.com
mayoclinic.com
drugs.com
natural-pregnancy-mentor.com
homebirth.net.au
Weighing the Pros and Cons of the Epidural by Penny Simkin

After Studying Nutrition for Seven Years: Why I Concluded that the Weston A Price Diet Is the Best One

Eat the way your body evolved to eat, foods made by nature, not man: this is only the beginning of true health.

The next step is: how did our ancestors eat those things? This is crucial because. for example: various peoples have eaten whole grains for thousands of years, even hunters and gatherers ate grains, but no one ever ate whole grains that had not been sprouted or fermented. None of our ancestors before 100 years ago ate grains the way we do now. None of our ancestors before 100 years ago ate dairy the way we do now, they usually drank their milk sour, fermented or as curds and whey. They also didn't have pesticides on their fruits and vegetables or industrially raised meats. They also ate the whole animal. We think we are so evolved because we don't eat livers, feet and eyeballs anymore but the truth is: these are some of the most nutritious and important foods in existence. They are better for you than vegetables. Yay.

Though our ancestors had shorter lives due to infectious diseases and the hardships of life, they did not suffer from the things that kill us now--degenerative diseases, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, our bodies just starting to suck, etc.

The most astounding book on this subject is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. It's 700 pages long but reading it is hardly necessary because of all the photographs. Just borrow it from the library and look at the pictures and the captions. Go here to see a few of them: http://www.westonaprice.org/nutrition-greats/weston-price

Weston A. Price was a dentist who thought that crooked teeth (and cleft palates) were not caused by genes. He thought they were nutrition deficiencies. He didn't think that the road to perfect health began with studying sick people and finding cures for their ailments. He thought the road to health began by finding the healthiest people in the world and noting what they did to be so healthy. He set out to answer the question: what health is possible for the human being?

He spent a decade (in the 1930's) traveling the world looking for the healthiest people. He judged this by their teeth, he was a dentist after all. He found tribes of native peoples living everywhere from the Andes to the Swiss Alps to tropical islands who had perfectly straight, white teeth and no cavities (or 1 cavity out of every 500-1000 teeth).  None of these people ever brushed their teeth.

He noted noted that when any natives started eating a Western diet (natives of a similar race to the one he had just studied but who lived closer to Western civilization and whose diet had changed accordingly), they would retain their straight teeth but get cavities. The children born to parents on this diet would have both crooked teeth and cavities. Crooked teeth were caused by a malformed dental arch due to the diet of the parents, not by genes as he shows in photograph after photograph.

Children with crooked teeth showed marked behavioral differences as well as other health problems like narrowed hips (making child rearing more difficult) and decreased fertility.

If you are like me and you love to read things yourself (as opposed to reading a blog about what someone else read and thought), read his book! It's fantastic. But it is not as important as the 700 page book written by Sally Fallon, the woman who runs the Weston A. Price foundation, Nourishing Traditions. This book has all the same information along with all the most current and up-to-date info and recipes!

The Weston A. Price diet is very impressive as they do a ton of research and are always expanding their knowledge. They also involve people in their research. I have received emails asking what I feed my baby and how his health is and if I would like to participate in a study that would require me to eat pork and get my blood tested four times a day. Unlike most studies that are funded by the people selling the product (studies on wine are usually funded by people who sell wine, studies on chocolate are funded by people who sell chocolate, and everything else is funded by Monsanto and Coca Cola), this group is purely people passionate about health who just want to know what they should be eating and how they should be eating it.

The WAPF the magazine publishes many letters from readers. Most are personal stories attesting to how the WAPF diet changed their lives. Here is mine:

I grew up on a farm eating all whole grains, organic fresh produce and home grown meats. My parents, siblings and myself rarely got sick though I did suffer from acne and insomnia.

In college, I took a course in nutrition. I learned that most health problems are caused by vitamin and mineral deficiencies which left me wondering: could nutrition cure my acne and my insomnia?

I started keeping track of my vitamin and mineral intake. I recorded everything I ate for six months, making sure that I got 100% of everything every day. It was pretty high maintenance but it was also a homework assignment. I started inventing "nutritionally perfect meals", meals that provided 100% of the vitamins and minerals the government said I should be getting every day.

Unfortunately, the nutrition I learned at Wesleyan was from a USDA/FDA approved textbook, meaning it was a Monsanto/Coca Cola/McDonalds approved textbook. I learned things like: Aspartame only gives cancer to rats and MSG rarely hurts anyone, so though my meals were providing me with good nutrition according to my nutrition database, I was eating more processed food than I ever had in my life. I was eating very typical "healthy" American diet high in vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins like deli meat, nonfat dairy and since I was told that fruit was barely better for me than a candy bar, candy bars for treats. I also drank diet sodas.

This time period was the sickest I have been in my life. In fact, the only cold I have ever had was during this time. I remember it acutely as I finally understood those cold medicine commercials that I had never understood previously--runny nose, pounding head, etc.

I quickly returned to the diet on which I had been raised--a diet very similar to the WAPF diet--and though I continued to have B+/A- skin and terrible insomnia, I never got sick.

When I learned of Price's work my diet changed in the following ways: I eat something fermented with every meal, I consume most of my dairy raw and cultured, I drink a large quantity of homemade tonic-beers, similar to kombucha which I also drink but made with fermented ginger, and I eat liver and fish eggs. 

My skin is now glowing movie-star quality skin and my insomnia has disappeared. Other interesting changes include disappearance of sugar cravings which I use to have all the time. After about a month into the WAPF diet I was upset one day and thought, "Ah man, I really need a kombucha." I laughed. "Chocolate, I meant chocolate," I thought. Only the truth was... what I wanted to comfort me in that moment was kombucha. I used to enjoy a glass of wine at the end of the day but now I would rather have a home made ginger tonic. I have always had good energy but I have so much more now it's shocking. I am also happier.

My husband's story:

My husband grew up eating the standard unhealthy American diet. He got sick all the time before he met me and was often sick when we first began dating. We made a lot of jokes at that time about me being a "carrier". I worked with children and would carry those germs straight from the kids to him.

My husband changed his eating habits when we began living together (he started eating like I did) and has only gotten a cold--if you can call it that since it only lasted a day--once. But he continued to suffer from dandruff, eczema and hair loss. We cured his dandruff a year ago by experimenting with eliminating different foods (we found that he cannot tolerate any dairy, even raw, unless it has been cultured).

Since we began eating the WAPF diet he has ceased losing hair but he still has eczema. I will update this post if this changes because I bet that the eczema is on its way out and will just take a little longer. Or perhaps the fermented foods cured his hair loss but he will have to join me in eating liver and fish eggs to cure his eczema. It is also possible that he is just highly sensitive to the chlorine in our water.

On the taste of foods: if you study the science of taste, you will find that any food you can't stand, if you force yourself to eat it once a month for a year, you will come to like and even crave it. Taste is just habit. I don't like liver yet, but I plan to.

I feel it is important for me to note that in order to not drive myself insane, I follow the WAPF diet 80% of the time. The rest of the time I am a delightful dinner guest.

Health, Pregnancy, and My Results

Four reasons why rational, Libertarian couples will have incredible health (and if not, why they will spend at least a year getting healthy) before they conceive:

1. Because they know the healthier they are, the better genes they will pass on

"We can inherit harm," says Randall Fitzgerald, author of The Hundred Year Lie. "Toxic synthetic chemicals can negatively alter our DNA to program us and our descendants to experience illness and disease."

Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine who works in genetics at SFSU on this subject. What I learned is that we used to think DNA was something that didn't change but we are now finding that we might be able to alter what we pass on. I don't want to extrapolate too much but: what if you are more likely to have a child predisposed to health and happiness if you are healthy and happy before you conceive? What if your children will be more or less likely to get acne depending on whether or not you have cured yours before you conceive? What if you children will be more or less likely to get cancer depending on how healthy you are when you have them? 

2. Because they know the healthier mom is, the healthier the baby will be

-Exposure to toxic chemicals cause about 28 percent of all developmental defects. (National Research Council Commission on Life Sciences study, 2000).

-Women who are overweight but not obese have a 15% increased risk of delivering a baby with certain heart defects. The incidence of some defects is twice as high among children of obese mothers.

-A 50% increase in the level of persistent genetic abnormalities in newborns was detected in those whose mothers had high air pollution exposure. (Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention Reports, 2005.)

-The fastest-growing rate of cancer for any age group over the past two decades has been among children. (The Hundred Year Lie)

-Exact percentages change depending on the study you are reading but as an average--if one parent is overweight or obese there is a 66% chance the children will be. If both parents are overweight or obese there is a 90% chance the children will be.

3. Because they know the healthier habits they have, the healthier habits their offspring will have

I was raised on a farm. I didn't have sugar for the first time until I was seven. I didn't have fast food until grade school and couldn't eat it without throwing up until high school. Making healthy eating choices is effortless for me because those foods are normal. I never ate Doritos as a kid so when I see them at parties, it doesn't register in my brain that that is food. (And the truth is, they're not.) My parents never fed me fake food so when I taste it, it tastes like fake food to me. I find the chemically flavor of Kraft mac'n'cheese repulsive. My body doesn't know what it is and doesn't like it.... I am insanely grateful to my parents for this gift.

My husband is the opposite. There is a whole array of pretend food that he was raised on and loves--fast food, pizza and pudding snacks. He is a very rational man though, so when he started learning about nutrition, his desires instantly changed. He has no desire to poison his body with chemicals. But there is a huge difference between us--he still likes those foods. When he tastes them, they taste good to him. Whereas I naturally like and crave real food, he has to eat real food with his brain. He has to constantly override his habits.

4. Because they know the healthier mom is, the easier her pregnancy will be on her (and therefore on their marriage)

Pregnancy is different for everyone, but let me tell you a little about mine: I had a healthy pregnancy that resulted in a 9 pound 6 ounce baby boy born ten days early after a three hour labor with no tearing.

I took very good care of myself in the following ways:

-I cut down on my hours at work a month before my husband and I started trying.
-I further cut down my work hours to part time so that I could focus on taking the best care of myself that I could.
-I stopped working entirely when I was 36 weeks. Women who stop working at this point are more likely to have their babies come early than women who work up until 40 weeks (they are likely to have their babies come late).
-I ate healthily, regulated my blood sugar with many small high-protein meals, didn't indulge in fake food.
-I walked, hiked and biked until I was too big and then I did prenatal yoga and swam.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I didn't just get lucky and the following is related to what good care I took of myself:
-We got pregnant on our first try.
-My blood sugar, urine protein, blood pressure, baby movements, baby position--everything at every appointment was exactly as it should be.
-My baby came 10 days early and was over 9 pounds even though I only gained 35.
-I never had a single craving.
-I only threw up twice (and both were my fault--I let myself get too hungry).
-My baby had baby acne for about five hours total and never had cradle cap or any of the other classic issues.
-My baby spit-up maybe twice in his first six months (though I think that had to with my healthy post-pregnancy eating habits).

All that being said, I am still shocked at how uncomfortable pregnancy was and how traumatizing those first few weeks of recovery are.

Things to help you on your quest to becoming physically heroic:

Real Food: What to Eat and Why or Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two and Baby's First Foods

The Hundred Year Lie: How Food and Medicine Are Destroying Your Health: Here is a great quote from the book: "Most large grocery chains these days post a sign in at least one section of their stores describing it as a 'health food' section, which has prompted some of us to wonder whether the rest of the supermarket should have signs identifying aisles as filled with 'illness food,' or :'unhealthy food,' or even 'death food.'"

Nourishing Traditions: The cookbook for the informed.

Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives: Not well-written or even a great book but some good information if you are thinking of getting pregnant

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_eisen_meet_your_microbes.html?source=email#.UAOCYqBwQZc.email

90% of Americans Have Vitamin Deficiencies - Vitamin Deficiencies Cause Health Problems that Kill You Slowly

How you feel every day, your body's ability to fight its ailments and your emotional state are all directly connected to what is and is not going into your body.

On what is not going into your body:

Your body requires a certain amount of nutrients each day to perform every function it needs to do. Some examples include: repairing damage to your skin, growing hair and nails, breathing, pumping blood and fighting off the viruses that are attacking you every minute of every hour of every day. If you don't eat enough nutrients you will develop a deficiency.

A deficiency of vitamin A can cause dry skin and hair, slowed healing of wounds, impaired immune function, night blindness and growth retardation. A deficiency of the B vitamins has been linked to hair loss, headaches, fatigue, depression, indigestion, insomnia, PMS, cataracts, carpal tunnel, atherosclerosis, heart disease and cancer. 

Those are just the first two vitamins. 

Almost all Americans, 90% according to the USDA, suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. A malady caused by the deficiencies is usually so slow to take hold that it goes unnoticed until the malady is severe. At that point the malady is treated but the underlying cause is not. For example: see a dermatologist about pimples and you will go home with creams and a prescription for antibiotics. The malady is being treated but the underlying cause—the nutritional deficiencies you aren’t even aware you are suffering from—is not.

Most deficiencies won’t kill you immediately. They will simply cause problems that, over the course of months and years, get worse. You will become accustomed to them and you will blame the way you feel on your genes, bad luck, your age, an old injury... but you will be wrong. If you give your body the tools it needs, it will fix its ailments.

Not to be too dramatic but… your body is life or death. Are you giving your body the tools it needs to accomplish its goals as quickly and efficiently as possible? Are you eating large quantities of organic, tree or vine-ripened, mostly raw fruits and vegetables with every meal? Are you eating foods as similar to what your body evolved to eat as possible--as in, as unrefined as possible?

On vitamin supplementation, from The Hundred Year Lie: "Synthetic vitamin C is really just ascorbic acid, comparable to the outer skin of an orange; 90 percent of the ascorbic acid in the United States is manufactured at a facility in Nutley, New Jersey, owned by Hoffman-LaRoche. In this plant the ascorbic acid is derived from cornstarch, corn sugar, and volatile acids mixed in a fermentation process. Most US vitamin companies purchase this ascorbic acid, bottle it, and attach their own labels before selling it as vitamin C. Even less well known, most synthetic vitamin E comes from an Eastman Kodak plant, where it is a by-product of an emulsification process used to manufacture film. After purification it is sold to the supplements industry. At the level of moelecules seen under a microscope, syntheitc and natural vitamins may look similar to some chemists, but they don't assimilate the same way in the humanbody. Studies of both vitamin C and vitamin E show that the naturally occurring forms [in food] are more absorbable by the body and more biologically active than synthetics... The truth is that vitamins are not individual compounds. Vitamins are biological complexes. In addition to ascorbic acid, real vitamin C must include bioflavinoids [the natural pigments in fruits and vegetables] like hesperidin, rutin, quercetin, tannins, along with other naturally occurring compounds. Mineral cofactors must be available in proper amounts. If any of these parts are missing, there is no vitamin activity." 

On what you is going into your body:

If you are an average American, you don't eat very much food i.e. Doritos, Oreos, McDonalds. You eat an array of chemicals that impersonate food. 99% of these chemicals have never been studied so we have no idea how the human body will tolerate them. The other 1% have been studied and have been shown to be toxic to the human body but only in "large doses" so we continue to eat them. If you are an average American, you wholeheartedly trust the government to define "large doses."

If you are an average American, those foods that you eat that are actually food (wheat flour or sugar cane) have been processed to the point that... they are no longer food i.e. white flour and white sugar.

If you are an average American, those whole, unprocessed foods you eat (like spinach and potatoes) are contaminated with a half-dozen deadly pesticides that vigorous scrubbing cannot remove. You cook the vegetables in pots coated with Teflon (more deadly chemicals) and then then you boil those vegetables in tap water containing chlorine, fluoride, perchlorate, trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids (which have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems and birth defects). All those chemicals combine together in the pot to form who-knows-what.

If you are an average American, you are a guini pig.

Here are some numbers for you to consider (From The Hundred Year Lie):

1. Cancer. In the year 1900 Cancer was responsible for 3% of all deaths in the US. Today it is responsible for 20%. From 1950 to 2001 the incidence for all types of cancer in the United States increased by 85%, and that was the age-adjusted rate, which means the increase has nothing to do with people living longer. The fastest-growing rate of cancer for any age group over the past two decades has been among children.

2. Diabetes. In the year 1900 Diabetes affected less than .1% of the US population. Today it affects 20%. A diagnosis of diabetes subtracts twelve years from your life.

3. In the year 1900 the following health problems were virtually nonexistent: asthma, breast cancer, heart attacks as a result of coronary artery disease and autism.

4. In the year 1900, the average American consumed 10 pounds of sugar, most in the form of molasses. This year the average American will consume 147 pounds of sugar, almost all of which is highly refined. 

5. In 1940 the US produced one billion pounds of new synthetic chemicals. In 1950 the US produced fifty billion pounds. By the 1980's the US produced 500 billion pounds.

6. Average male sperm counts have dropped 50% since 1940.

7. Learning disabilities have increased 200% in the last 40 years.

8. 106,000 people die each year in American hospitals from side effects of their prescription medications. Adverse drug reactions are the 4th leading cause of death in the US.

9. Half of all Americans take at least one prescription drug every day. Many of them consume three or more every day. "Traditional systems of medicine from India and China have both developed over four thousand years of knowledge based on trial-and-error testing of untold millions of people in the longest and most widespread clinical trial tests of plant-based healing in human history. Both systems place more emphasis on illness and disease prevention--especially using food and diet--than does Western-based medicine.... Neither of these traditional systems believe it's appropriate or effective to isolate specific compounds or to synthesize moelecules from a traditional plant." Much like vitamins.

10. Obesity. Within a year of arriving in the United States, 16% of new immigrants become obese for the first time in their lives.

11. Common diseases rarely found in native populations (such as Peruvian Indians, Australian Aborigines and Swiss mountaineers): heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, hypertensions, stroke, appendicitis, diverticulitis, malformed dental arches, tooth decay, varicose veins, ulcers, hemorrhoids.

12. In 1900 gold was money and the federal reserve didn't exist.

Other big things that affect your health include whether or not you are getting enough sleep, the quality of your sleep (light pollution has been linked to cancer), where you work, body parts you overuse or misuse, and medications.

When you give your body the tools it needs to repair its ailments, you will be able to sit back and watch in awe as it does. When you stop doing things that prevent your body from functioning well, it will go back to normal. Health is normal.

To find why it is even more essential for you to make your health a priority if you plan to have kids, continue to part 4!