Baby Matters is a groundbreaking book that only a mother with both rigorous scientific training and an extensive alternative health practice could have assembled. Dr. Linda Palmer uncovers the hidden consequences of parenting choices both physiological and psychological and filters out what is not valid or substantiated. Baby Matters is not just another rehash of conventional advice. Neither is it an extremist s cry. It contains solid never before published scientific knowledge in easy-to-digest language for the interested new parent. This book has served as a text book for lactation consultants brought strong confirmations to new parents wanting to follow their own instincts and given parents extensive documentation to convince their physicians that their natural parenting choices are highly evidence based. This book will continue to be a valuable reference for years to come. Dr. Palmer addresses current issues that receive far too little attention or scientific discussion elsewhere. She gives parents the power to make better decisions about baby care by unraveling the research about hormones and bonding breastfeeding the big problems with antibiotics for treating ear infections (and why they are usually inappropriate anyway) and the real causes of ear infections colic allergy-sensitivity reactions and SIDS. Furthermore she describes exactly how breastfeeding and formula-feeding can produce vastly different mental and physical health outcomes for baby. Finally Palmer explains that cow s milk consumption beginning with formula is strongly associated with diabetes lower intelligence ADHD early puberty and eventually reproductive organ cancers. After years of solid sales Baby Matters was updated by the author and re-released by Sourcebooks as The Baby Bond. After their sell-out Baby Matters has returned.