[.ca] Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year (ISBN 0961462000)

Off the cuff health advice is dangerous:
While Susan Weed covers a great many topics and remedies in this book, she doesn't cover any of them with enough detail. She leaves out warnings, indications and rational for many of her reprinted remedies. This book is only150 pages, but should be 3 times that considering the number of topics that she covers. For example she says that "excess vitamin C" is a Teratogen. Well, how much vitamin C, when and why? Things listed as teratogens are listed as cures later in the book (ex. caster oil). Overall, this book left me confused and frustrated with more questions than answers. This is the kind of book that gives herbal self-medicating a bad name.

Whew! This book became essential to me:
I came to my midwifery career (see my memoir, BABY CATCHER, Scribner 2002) via the traditional route of nursing school, working in hospital delivery rooms and alternative birth centers, then going to midwifery school, graduating as a CNM. Nowhere along the way was I taught anything about herbs. When I found myself doing home births in Berkeley, CA, many of my clients assumed I was an herbalist. Although I never once claimed to have a knowledge base in that field, I learned enough from Wise Woman Herbal to talk intelligently on the subject. Many women who choose home birth shun not just hospitals but also traditional Western medications. Wise Woman Herbal was always the resource to which I turned when I needed to know if a particular herb a woman wanted to use was safe and/or efficacious in pregnancy. And eventually I carried and recommended certain ones with confidence, especially blue and black cohosh, ginger, and oil of evening primrose. From me and from all midwives when they were new: Thank you, Susan Weed.

dissappointing:
I bought this book, based on the good reviews. However, I was dissappointed by the impracticality of some of the advise, e.g. St. Joan's wort. To have this oil, you are supposed to pick the flowers in June, store them for months, prepare them and then you have the oil to use! Also it advises stretching, exercising etc. that is all very well if you have a "normal" pregnancy. I enjoy living a healthy organic lifestyle, however, this book is too "mother-earth" for me.

Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year:
The Childbearing Year contains a wide range of resources for woman pertaining to their reproductive health. This information includes activities, foods, and herbal supplements that can benefit woman hoping to conceive, who are pregnant, or who have a newborn child. These topics range from increasing fertility health for better odds of becoming pregnant and things to stay away from to reduce the likelihood of miscarriage through safe remedies for morning sickness and ways to alleviate late pregnancy back ache to herbs that will reduce the intensity of post partum depression and safe remedies for colic. I recommend this book to any woman who is thinking of having a child, is pregnant, or has a newborn. Not only does this book give the reader a clear idea of activities, foods, and herbs that she can use for common reproductive related ailments but the author also explains the safest ways to use these remedies. Moreover, the author also includes foods and herbs that can actually make the situation worse or that can even be hazardous to the baby's health so that the reader is forewarned about such potential dangers.

Awesome book! One to always look at for many reasons!:
THis is a fabulous book that I always run to for my herbal advice while pregnant, nursing or even for my sickies. It has herbs listed to help out with many needs durring pregnancy, after pregnancy, with the baby and I even run to it for fevers and such. THe information in this book is beyond helpfull, and right now I am finding a second and 3rd copy so that I can lend out my books without risking being without it when I need it myself. I have done that twice. I advise you to get this book...