See - The Field Guide to Pregnancy

The Field Guide to Pregnancy is a personalized account of pregnancy based on my years of experience working with all types of moms-to-be (including myself). My two decades of practicing complementary medicine, along with my partnerships with Western medical doctors who specialize in gynecology and fertility, has exposed me to all sorts of stories and intimate details about many different kinds of pregnancies. Often, it is the challenges that stand out.

To get to the underbelly of some of the more common symptoms I hear aboutas well as some of the more obscure onesIve scoured medical databases that not all women have easy access to and combined the comprehensive information Ive found with the experience Ive gained working with thousands of pregnant women in my clinical practice. From this breadth of research and anecdotes, Ive amalgamated information about the wide range of symptoms you can reasonably expect to encounter during pregnancy and what you can realistically do about them.

As a scholar and practitioner of Chinese medicine, I have always focused on womens health, with an emphasis on excavating the stuff thats not usually talked about and approaching solutions with moderation. Many of the recommended strategies of Traditional Chinese Medicine are taught from an ideal standpointnot a realistic one. Because Chinese medicine treatments can be unachievable for the average Western woman, they are often simply frustrating and discouraging.

I believe things have to be doable to be effective. For instance, Chinese medicine often advocates strict dietary regimens, directing patients not to eat cold foods or prescribing exotic foods, instructions, which turn out to be nearly impossible for most of my patients to follow. Chinese medicine is ever evolving and adapting to work in a modern context, and I simply have not found it effective to force strict traditional regimens on my patients. Through my studies of Western and Eastern herbalism and nutrition, and simple observation of my clients and their well-being, I have learned that most ancient Chinese prescriptions need some balanced interpretation to adapt smoothly into our modern lives.

That said, the continuous thread from Chinese medicine that I do adhere to in my practice is the belief that women are inherently capable of taking care of themselves and their children in appropriate ways. In this book, I hope to empower pregnant women to let their instincts guide them and to balance their gut feelings with sound, integrative medical research in order to arrive at the very personal strategies and decisions one must make along the way while cultivating a healthy baby.

This book uses traditional strategies for a modern pregnancy, informed by the most useful research from Western medicine, to help pregnant women mingle intuition and time-tested remedies with information.

It is too simplistic to say that intention is enough to override very real symptoms, but staying connected to the original motivation to have your babywhile enduring discomfort and introducing or building on good habits in the face of discomfort and unknownscan be a very powerful coping tool. Your pregnancy is an opportunity to cultivate your growing relationship to motherhoodall of the excitements alongside all of the intensities. This book aims to highlight your symptoms and things you can do at home to ease your unease. It gives you the tools to safely utilize nutrition, lifestyle changes, and helpful differential diagnosis for your self-care.

While I began this book from the clinical perspective of a medical professional working with moms-to-be, during the writing of this book I was fortunate enough to go through my own pregnancy, which made for a much richer account and some noticeable edits that I hope round out a professional and personal approach to pregnancy care. No purely academic experience prepares one to comment on the process of pregnancy; ideals can butt up against circumstance. Although each womans pregnancy is completely unique, Im glad to be able to incorporate invaluable direct experience to my advice and suggestions. In the pursuit of wanting to do everything we can to support our babies and ourselves, we can easily get overly idealistic and bypass simple pragmatism. Sometimes good enough is enough. Remember, part of health is happiness, and part of happiness is striving to do the best you can, while incorporating comfort and ease into your actual life.