Debi Lewis "KITCHEN MEDICINE" and Aileen Weintraub "KNOCKED DOWN"

Join Debi Lewis and Aileen Weintraub to celebrate the launch of their books, Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive and Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, moderated by Megan Margulies.

About the Books:

Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive

Parents whose pediatricians cite their children's "failure to thrive" should find comfort in this story about a mom's fight to help her daughter. Despite being born a week past her due date, Sammi weighs less than five pounds. Unlike her older sister, Ronni, a voracious, adventurous eater, Sammi sometimes subsists on little more than blueberries. Lewis, her understandably worried mom, takes her to see doctors and prepares unusual family meals. To avoid reflux triggers, she prepares meals without lemon, chocolate, or tomatoes. And during an elimination test, she forgoes dairy, soy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and wheat. Before Sammi turns five, she finally gets diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that damages the esophagus. Then, after surgeries and good medical treatment, she officially becomes a well child. Today, she is a healthy 16-year-old. Lewis, previously obsessed with her daughter's diet, concludes that it's important to pick the right battles and doctors and to see beyond a child's medical issues. It's sound advice for parents who find themselves in Lewis' shoes or more accurately, given how much time she spends cooking, in her apron. 

Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir:

Love, marriage, and a harrowing pregnancy yield a haunting story of survival in this gripping account from Weintraub (We Got Game!). After a year of dating, Weintraub married her partner, Chris, a New York City hedge fund trader, and the two moved in to his family's empty farmhouse in Accord, N.Y. When Weintraub became pregnant, the happy life they dreamt of living felt nearly complete, until doctors discovered that she had one tennis-ball- and two football-size fibroids competing for womb space and put her on strict bed rest; "The message was clear," she writes, "lie down for the next five months and don't get up. Ever." Delving into the mental and emotional toll she underwent in "near-solitary confinement" ("My only crime: an ailing cervix"), Weintraub details a constant "loop of anxiety," amplified by her and Chris's decision to purchase a troubled local business. As their marriage buckles under the strain, their dilapidated farmhouse becomes a poignant metaphor for their situation's fragility: "We had become so delicate... not wanting to give up anything, not even to each other." Weintraub balances her brutally frank account with hope and humor before finding the ultimate release in the delivery of her healthy baby boy. While the catharsis isn't easily given, there's beauty on every page. 

About the Authors:

Debi Lewis is the author of Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive and has written for outlets including The New York Times, Bon Appetit, Huffington Post, Romper, Wired, and more. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two teenaged daughters. You can learn more about her at http://www.debilewis.com and follow her on Twitter at @growthesunshine.

Aileen Weintraub is the author of Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, a laugh-out-loud story about marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take. She has written for the Washington Post, Glamour, NBC, and AARP among others.  Find her on Twitter @aileenweintraub 

About the Moderator:

Megan Margulies is the author of My Captain America: A Granddaughter's Memoir of a Legendary Comic Book Artist, and a freelance writer whose work focuses on motherhood and digging into our expectations of our own bodies. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Good Housekeeping, and Parents Magazine, among others. Her most recent essay for the New York Times is about recommitting to her marriage and body after the onset of chronic illness, and for Parents Magazine she wrote about rediscovering her body with TikTok. She also has a reported essay forthcoming spring 2022 in Elle Magazine about gender bias and misdiagnosis in medicine.