Books & Music...

My wife left a frantic voicemail on my cell phone this week. "Where are you?" she droned, turning a three-syllable sentence into a six-syllable sentence. It was a pertinent question considering the circumstances. My wife's belly is burgeoning with our second child, meaning that any day now she could go into labor. But it's not always easy to hear my phone while biking to work each morning.

Over the past few weeks, our conversations have shifted from plumbing the depths of every baby name book to find the one we both agree on (It's "Julianna" for all those interested) to how can we make sure our daughter has the healthiest environment to grow up in. With our first daughter, my wife made all her food from nearly all organic fruits and veggies. But since then we've learned there's even more that we don't know (which is sometimes hard to grasp when you feel like you possess a great deal of knowledge on the topic).

One of things we learned was about the toxicities in baby bottles. Have no fear. When it comes to green knowledge, we're here to help. Check out what Alan Greene had to say in his book, Raising Baby Green: The Earth Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Child Birth and Baby Care, regarding selecting the right bottle:

When shopping for baby bottles, look for products made of glass, polyethylene, or polypropylene. Polycarbonate bottles (about 95 percent of the bottles on the market) can leach BPA, a hormone disruptor that acts like human estrogen. Even tiny amounts of this have been associated with health problems such as early puberty, hyperactivity, and decreased sperm count. I do not recommend using any polycarbonate products for babies.

* The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP, www.iatp.org) says bottles made of milky, soft, translucent plastic usually contains no polycarbonates.

* Highly rated bottles by the Ethical Consumer include Born Free (www.newbornfree.com), which are guaranteed to be free of BPA (I like the air vent in these bottles as well) and the Medela Breastmilk Storage and Feeding set, which is made from polypropylene. Find it at www.target.com and other stores.

*Replace the conventional rubber or latex bottle nipples that come with some plastic and glass baby bottles with a nontoxic, clear silicone variety (Conventional nipples may contain cancer-causing nitrosamines.) Evenflo and Circo both make silicone nipples, sold separately from their bottles.