GROWING TOGETHER by Carson Meyer contains "Doula Wisdom & Holistic Practices for Pregnancy, Birth & Early Motherhood." Meyer is a Los Angeles based childbirth educator and photographer who has created this text in order to share material from her online and virtual classes. She splits the text into four primary sections, one for each trimester of pregnancy and then one for the first 100 days after birth. Her tone is quite conversational and she offers homeopathic remedies and common sense advice to numerous questions (e.g., How long should each feed be? Do I need to switch breasts each feed? Help! My breasts hurt!). Meyer includes weekly activities such as writing "a love letter to yourself" at week three after birth to help with "treating yourself with the same compassion and patience you would [for] your baby." While new parents might be too overwhelmed to reach for this text, having read earlier sections might cause them to continue to seek out Meyer's calm advice ("have a code word with your partner so that you can politely send away any visitor who is overstaying their welcome" or her discussion of elimination communication with their baby). Throughout, she provides charts (e.g., innate knowing vs. modern knowing), introspective questions, and frank discussion (e.g., "those first trimester feels" or "tending to the family nervous system"). GROWING TOGETHER contains recipes, endnotes, and a list of additional resources.

I don't think I'm the target audience for this book, even though I'm a new mom who thinks the standard for maternal care in the US is lacking. I agree with the author about some of her points but couldn't get past her disregard for obstetricians and the way she repeatedly described birth as not being a medical event. Plus some of her recommendations in this book are the exact opposite of what ACOG recommends, and she does not have a medical degree, so I think that is dangerous for people who aren't as informed. But I know there are many people who will agree with her perspective and the book is well written and well formatted. Lots of people do want to be able to combine holistic and medical care and I hoped this book would be more about how doulas can work together with medical professionals to come together in support of a new mother. But I personally think it's dangerous to recommend holistic care over medical care by fearmongering and including facts that simply are not true and not supported by science. To be fair, there were no endnotes included in this ARC but based on the suggested sources list, I don't think most of the data in this book came from scientific studies.

i don't think I am the audience for this book and therefore don't feel comfortable giving a review. Thank you for the ARC and wishes to the author for a best release. It is very well written and I love the format/structure of the book.