The book  has information that counselors for Motherisk share two hundred times a day. Since 1985, the Motherisk program at The Hospital for Sick Children has provided counseling based on the most up-to-date evidence research on tertatogens, substances or environmental factors that can cause birth defects. Motherisk is one of the biggest programs of its kind worldwide, counselling some 2,000 callers per week. This book will be an invaluable reference throughout a pregnancy and while nursing.

Requiring much introspection and writing in a journal, the author guides readers to pick out patterns in their lives regarding self-image and to work on overcoming negative experiences and thinking of themselves in a more positive light. In addition to her advice concerning the mental side of fitness, the author also provides specific suggestions for exercising and eating. She encourages women to be positive and flexible, stressing the point that attitude is everything.

An exploration of how threats to maternal health have been defined and addressed at the global, national, and local levels, the book presents two contrasting, and oftentimes competing, definitions of risk: those that form the basis of international recommendations and national maternal health policies and those that do not. The effect that these contrasting definitions of risk have on women’s fertility-related experiences at the local level are explored throughout the book.

This study employs an innovative approach to the analysis of maternal health risk, one that situates rural Tanzanian women’s fertility-related experiences within a broader historical and sociocultural context. Beginning with an examination of how maternal health risk was defined and addressed during the early years of British colonial rule in Tanganyika and moving to a discussion of an internationally conceived maternal health initiative that was launched on the world state in the late 1980s, the author explores the similarities in the language used and solutions proposed by health development experts over time.

This set of "official" maternal health risks is then compared to an alternative set of risks that emerge when attention is focused on women’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth at the local level. Although some of these latter risks are often spoken about as deriving from spiritual or supernatural causes, the case studies presented throughout the second half of the book reveal that the concept of risk in the context of pregnancy and childbirth is much more complex, involving the interplay of spiritual, physical, and economic aspects of everyday life.

In this authoritative yet thoroughly approachable guide, world-class immunologist Dr. Robert Lahita brings to bear his years of intensive research, patient care, and diagnostic acumen to shed light on the mysteries of these conditions, with a particular focus on how they affect -- and how he treats -- women. Dr. Lahita strikes a refreshing balance between medical explanation and readability. Through the use of case studies, he describes the early warning signs (including minor triggers such as headaches, nausea, or exhaustion), symptoms, diagnostic processes, and the latest and most innovative treatments for the familiar -- as well as many of the lesser known -- autoimmune diseases. This scientifically sound, grounded, thorough, and sensitive work will be greeted with appreciation by anyone who wants to better understand these perplexing and often debilitating diseases.