I hesitate to tackle the topic of pregnancy and babies. For one thing, I run the risk of getting myself so delighted at the thought that I decide to go for Baby #4. On the other hand, I run the risk of exacerbating my own guilt at what I did/didn’t do when my three were babies that I should/shouldn’t have.

However, I’ll face the risks. Honestly, is there anything more powerful, more life-changing, more world-changing than bringing another life into the world? And ensuring that new life is as healthy as possible is, quite simply, a mother’s most important task.

Let’s start with some sobering statistics.

Before a baby takes his/her first breath, he/she has more than 300 chemicals in the bloodstream. Things like mercury from fish, flame retardants from household dust, hydrocarbons from fossil fuels, pesticides from produce and our own backyards…and the list goes on. The womb is a baby’s very first environment…and it’s increasingly contaminated.

Not surprising, really, given that there are currently 83,000 chemicals in use – with another half-dozen added daily. But what’s more alarming is that there is no health or safety data of 89% of these. We certainly know that some are not as benign as we may have been led to believe, such as asbestos, formaldehyde, DDT…

What can moms and moms-to-be do? Well, there’s only so much we can control, given that much of our exposure is out of our hands. But our bodies and our homes is a key starting point. And any reduction is exposure is a good thing:

Clean up your diet: A diet rich in fruits and vegetables is always a good idea, whether you’re pregnant or not. Unfortunately, pesticides often piggyback on our nutrient-rich produce, making their way into our bodies. According to the Environmental Working Group, moms-to-be can reduce their pesticide exposure by 80% by avoiding the most contaminated produce.

The so-called “Dirty Dozen” includes apples, bell peppers, celery, spinach, imported grapes, pears, nectarines, cherries, carrot, kale, lettuce and strawberries. It’s also a good idea to stick to organic meat and poultry to avoid adding hormones and antibiotics to your diet. Your hormones are probably dealing with enough at the moment…

A Greener Clean: Moms are often the quintessential germophobes, dishing out hand   sanitizer and wipes with abandon, oblivious that what’s in the bottle or wipe is undoubtedly worse than anything that’s actually on their kids’ hands. Dirt is not the problem, unless Junior has been spraying RoundUp on his Fisher-Price crops. Air fresheners are another fave of moms, eager to replace that diaper smell with field-fresh daisies. But guess what? Daisies have never come anywhere near those cans or plug-in air fresheners. Environmental Defence “Toxic Nation” campaign studied the ingredients in solid, spray and oil fresheners and discovered that the products emitted more than 100 different volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as benzene and formaldehyde. All were present in levels of exposure greater than what is considered to be safe for humans. Stick to the old stand-bys – baking soda, lemon juice, vinegar and Borax for cleaning. To make an eco-friendly air freshener, mix together a 1:1 ratio of vinegar and water and add about a dozen drops of lavender or lemon essential oils.

Don’t Mess with Mothers!: Educating ourselves is the first step toward activism. It’s important to demand a healthier world. We’re doing our part to green our bodies and our homes…but its about time governments and companies cleaned up their acts, too.

My mother, no doubt, feels vindicated. She always insisted on “family time” as she called it. Our entire family was required to sit down at the dinner table together – no TV, no phone calls. To reconnect. Of course, my brother and I resisted just to drive our mom crazy… We complained, we whined, we rolled our eyes. But, in the end, we sat down and ate.

It’s a dying practice, according to recent statistics, which reveal that one in five meals is now eaten in the car.

And while farmer’s markets are growing in number, so are the offerings of heat-and-serve meals at your grocery store. It can be tempting, at the end of a long day, to turn on the microwave and sit the family down in front of the television. Or to grab dinner en route to hockey practice or dance class.

But what price do we pay for this convenience? And what is to be gained by insisting on the family dinner as a ritual of connection – to each other and to the earth that provides our food?

A decade long study from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse revealed that teens who regularly have meals with their family are  less likely to get into fights, think about suicide, smoke, drink, use drugs, are more likely to wait until they’re older to have sex, and these teens perform better academically than teens who do not. The study also showed that eating with parents was associated with higher intake of fruits, vegetables, and dairy products.

Laurie David, producer of An Inconvenient Truth and author of the just released The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time, insists that family meal time should be sacred. Not only is it a chance to ensure that your children are eating a healthy diet, it’s a chance to reconnect in an increasingly fractured world. If extracurricular activities are interfering with your family’s ability to sit down and break bread together, she says, eliminate the extra-curricular activities. Nothing, she says, is better for your kids than the family dinner. Like David and my mother, I insist that my three children sit down with us to eat. And like my brother and I, they often resist in various ways. Sometimes I’m forced to endure a steady chorus of “yucks” depending upon what I’ve put on the table.

More often, though, we talk. About what we’re eating. (“Angela has good pigs,” my seven-year-old enthused recently, referring to the pork we were eating from our local farmer Angela). What’s going on in our lives. Sometimes we talk about nothing special. However, it’s as important a family ritual as bedtime stories and good-night kisses. And my mother, three years gone, is undoubtedly thinking to herself, “I told you so.”

The Christmas of 2007 might go down as the year that parents were paralyzed by toy recalls, with more than 25 million taken off the shelves.

In August 2008, U.S. congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, a bill that bans lead and several phthalates from children’s products, including toys. Phthalates are a family of chemicals added to plastics to make them soft and pliable. The kind, of course, that kids like to put in their mouths. The problem with phthalates is their link to hormone disruption, leading to breast cancer, early onset of puberty in girls, disruption of sperm in boys and reproductive problems. Not exactly the gifts we want to give our children.

But does this mean that parents can head back to the toy aisles of North America, secure in the knowledge that the toys on the shelf are perfectly safe?

M’mmm…not exactly.

The good news is that any new toys manufactured for sale in the United States are supposed to be free of lead and phthalates.

The bad news, says Mary Brune, co-founder and director of MOMS (Make Our Milk Safe – www.safemilk.org), is that “The Center for Environmental Health tested toys last year, after the law went into effect, and found seven children’s products that exceeded federal limits for lead in children’s products. Most of the items found to contain lead were made from vinyl or soft plastic.” She recommends that parents simply avoid items made from these materials. (Vinyl is easily identified by it’s “beach ball” smell but any soft plastic can be culpable.)

And the further bad news, explains Brune, is that “the move away from lead may give rise to an increase in another toxic concern – cadmium – which may have been used as a replacement for lead in some items.”

The concern with cadmium in kids’ toys is that it’s a known carcinogen and, like lead, can hinder brain development in young children and cause kidney problems. According to a report by MSNBC, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention puts it at number seven of its list of 275 most hazardous substances in the environment. What’s more, tests of many pieces of kids’ jewellery showed an astonishing level of cadmium content, more than 90% in some cases.

How can parents spot cadmium? There is no shorthand, though kids’ jewellery made in China is a good thing to avoid. According to Mary Brune, “Parents should check out the Healthytoys.org database to see which toys might contain harmful toxins.”

A few years ago I was given a food processor. It was a nice enough food processor but there was something huh? about this gift. I hadn’t asked for one. Indeed, I already possessed a food processor.

And then, when I opened up the box I found a business card – belonging to someone other than the gift giver and in that instant I knew that the food processor had likely been a door prize at a fundraiser. I was the recipient of a re-gift.

I didn’t mind particularly, though it left me with the obligation to find a home for the food processor as I can’t stand having items in my own home that are neither being used or admired. I ultimately offered it up to charity. And made a mental note to ensure that my own re-gifting efforts were executed a bit more thoughtfully.

Regifting has its detractors, but I’m certainly not one of them. Even Miss Manners has weighed in on the side of regifting. So, I’m sure, has Mother Nature. The challenge, of course, lies in regifting judiciously. To simply pass along an unwanted gift seems a lot like dumping your garbage onto another’s lap for disposal. A gift should truly be an expression of thought and appreciation. If the body lotion you received via the office Secret Santa isn’t that for you then why might it be for someone else?

I have a regifting cupboard in which I put gifts I’ve received that, while they might be nice, don’t match my taste or my needs. In that cupboard you’ll find lovely earrings (I haven’t taken my estate (reuse!) diamond studs out since my husband gave them to me 10 years ago), duplicate toys that my children were given, a wallet, a book that I’ve already read…

And I have my “Rules of Regifting”:

• If you think the product is garbage (for example, personal care products teeming with toxins), don’t pass it along to someone else. That’s kinda like offering up a Trojan Horse, with an unpleasant surprise inside.
• Choose the re-gift as carefully as you would choose a gift. I sometimes receive items that I don’t need – that wallet, for example – but is a really nice item I know another friend, whose wallet is, shall we say, long in the tooth, would love.
• Be careful to remove any evidence of re-gifting, such as tags or worn-looking bows. And if a book has an inscription, it’s best not to re-gift.
• And finally, re-gift with consideration not only to the planet, but to the recipient as well.

My mother loved the holidays. While she feigned poverty the other 364 days of the year, (“If you need new sneakers, you’ll just have to wait until Christmas.”), she pulled out all the stops on December 25. Christmas was when we got soda pop – two bright red cases of Pop Shoppe, filled with Cream Soda and Black Cherry, Lemon Lime and Orange. Christmas was when bowls of Humpty Dumpty potato chips magically appeared. We were treated to utterly unnecessary over-the-top gifts that she would never have bought us at any other time. There was the Magic Eight Ball (“signs point to Yes!”) and  the year she gave my brother and me “dancing daisies”, fake flowers that “danced” when music was played. Think of them as the precursor the Billy the Singing Bass. Then, like the Christmas songs that saturate the airwaves in the days leading up to the big day, it all vanished by Boxing Day. All that was left was a mild Pop Shoppe hangover and sweet memories.

Like my mother, I love the holidays. Unlike her, I lean toward less consumption, not more. As time marched on (and my dancing daisy stopped dancing and simply drooped, destined for landfill), I became less enamored with the orgy of consumption that marked the holidays.

I resolved to create holidays that reflected who I was…not who some marketing person thought I should be. It wasn’t easy. When I suggested we cut back on gifts, my in-laws responded as if I’d suggested we eat my children for Christmas dinner. I was accused of not “enjoying” shopping for others. When I suggested to my own family that perhaps they could scale back a bit on the gifts for the kids (our family room was starting to resemble Toys R Us), my mother responded as if she didn’t hear me and simply continued to bombard my kids with gifts.

I had to recognize that I was asking people to shift perspective, which requires time. I stood firm, offering up gifts of homemade antipasto and donations to relevant charities that reflected the recipients’ interest. I eased people into the notions of fair-trade and co-op produced goods, organic and charitable. I felt good about where my money was going…and good about where my gifts were going.

It took awhile, but a few years ago, they all got it.  The result is a holiday that now features a lot less wrapping paper and a lot more laughter. It’s marked by less debt and richer relationships. Less frenzy, more friends. And, while we still indulge in organic soda pop and potato chips, this year, there won’t be a dancing daisy to be found.