Some inspirational videos for the pregnant or breastfeeding mamas out there!

Awesome photo collection of Dads wearing their babies!

A Dad’s perspective of their home birth

Another Dad tells the story of how he navigated the choice between hospital or home birth.

And yet another Dad tells us why, if he had a uterus, he would never give birth in a hospital.

Thought provoking article about first time mothers.. “If I had a dollar for every woman I have heard say “I want a home birth, but the first one is going to be in the hospital, JUST IN CASE” I’d be a midwife with a lot more dollars.”

This is a long read, but so worth it. I remember the first time I learned about how going through all the natural stages of birth actually affected my hormone levels, helped me birth, and even made me a better mother.  Mothering article, The Hormonal Blueprint of Labor.

One mother’s story of why she chooses not to vaccinate

Lies and truth surrounding breastfeeding.

This article finds me nodding in agreement about the tendency moms have to neglect their marriage, but then seething with anger at the man’s completely idiotic conclusion.  It’s an interesting opinion on marriage and breastfeeding.  Ack, what a douchebag he is, though.

Mothering article on preparing your home for a homebirth.

Another Mothering article, about Elimination Communication.

The yuck factor of breastfeeding in the bathroom.

A thoughtful blog post of the safety of home birth.

One in three hospital births are via cesarean section?!

Five questions a pregnant mom should ask her doctor to help avoid a c-section.

Giving Birth Naturally has compiled a list of fascinating facts about birthing in our country, complete with references.

It’s Day 1 of getting my system back into balance!

Some of you are probably asking why on earth people do stupid stuff like health diets and cleanses.  Everyone’s reasons are different, but I’ll tell you mine.

I do diets/cleanses like this because I feel so much better afterwards.   I am currently showing big signs of being out of balance, as in major cravings for sugar and sweets, experiencing aches and stiffness in the mornings, weight gain, and increased brain fog.  Eliminating sugars and grains while taking certain supplements resets my system.  Most noticeably, I have more energy and easily keep my desired, natural weight.

Hopefully, some of you are joining me.  C’mon, it’s fun!  There’s always a good reason not to, but let’s all just join hands and say, “There’s no time like the present!”

Okay, forget about the joining hands part.

Even if you planned to start but you’ve already goofed up, get right back into it.  It’s all good.  And, yes I know that there are wedding receptions and graduation receptions and barbecues and parties and so on and so forth all on your calender just smirking at you, threatening to destroy any attempt to stick to an eating plan, BUT you can totally do it.  And just think how much better you’ll feel when everyone else is complaining of aches, pains and gained weight.

I’ll share what I’m doing, but if you are on any diet/cleanse, you need to pay attention to your body and do what works for you.

I normally follow a strict MEVY (Meat, Eggs, Vegetables and plain Yogurt) plan, and it works great.  It is also really, really difficult.  I’m trying something a little different, and hoping I still have similar great results.  Usually when I am simply re-setting my system I remain on the diet for abut 2 weeks.  But in lieu of this food list change, I’m planning to be on it for about 4 weeks.

The food list of what I can and can’t eat is pretty long, so I will just link to it.  Illegal/Legal food list.

I begin the day by drinking a glass of water with a slice of fresh squeezed lemon.  This helps balance my pH.  Sometimes I cut out coffee, but this time I’m staying on it.  We’ll see how it goes.  Interestingly enough, after having the lemon water today, I didn’t crave my coffee, and ending up drinking less than I normally would.  (My normal amount is 1 1/2 drinking mugs, or 4 cups according to the coffee pot measure.)

Tonight I will take 7 drops of melaleuca alternifolia essential oil in a capsule, and will continue to do so for about a week.  This has always worked really well for me in killing candida overgrowth.  I’ll also be taking a probiotic, Life 5.

I’m actually looking forward to this.  Knowing how good I’m going to feel even by the end of this week makes all the discipline and restrictions bearable.

I recently came across a new label, born out of the attempt to define a “new” group of people, particularly but not exclusively women, who are embracing home, green living, social justice, and responsible consumption.

They’re being called femivores, and they’re creating ripples of change not only in families and neighborhoods, but also in schools and workplaces.

At first glance, it would be easy to accuse these individuals of not appreciating the great strides made (supposedly) under the banner of feminism and equal rights for women.

Except that most of them do not fit into the categories our culture likes to cram homemakers into – the elite upper-class who stay home because their husband can afford it and who fritter their time away on shopping and spa treatments, and the religious Bible-thumpers who subjugate women to a silent and subservient role of servitude and passivity.

The problem with those definitions of homemaker is that they’re a result from the underlying mentality that clouds our views of economics and of domesticity.  What I mean by that is, we tend to view our entire lives with a consumeristic mentality.

Homemaking is seen, by and large, through this lens.   There is the ever present push for purchasing goods and services; groceries, clothing, transportation, appliances, medical, etc.  Then shuttling children to and from activities and classes we paid for; school, music, sports, etc.  Even our downtime is usually through purchasing something; movies, restaurant meals, entertainment devices, etc.

Betty Friedan brought this to light in her startling book, The Feminine Mystique. She wrote about the dissatisfaction housewives felt as their lives; built around getting married, prettying up a home, and having babies; felt meaningless.  She was right, in one sense.  The mindless acts of shopping and taxiing children can cause a women to wallow in unfulfilled potential, as they cease to contribute to anything beyond giving credence to the consumeristic mentality on which their lives were based.

And so, women in large part left the home and joined the workforce.  And yet, as we have seen, they too have not escaped the pervading consumeristic mindset.  Just as housewives sought to find purpose and identity through purchasing, now businesswomen needed to rely on even more purchased goods and services to maintain their lifestyle.  Labor and time saving appliances are even more in demand, as is more professional clothing, another vehicle, more take-out meals, gym memberships to offset the desk job, and nicer vacations because, heck, after all that working she deserves it.

So where are we now?

Women constantly battle between two paths, which they believe hold opposite benefits;  The workforce, where they can achieve financial independence and success.  Or as housewife, where they can fill their need to nurture and create a haven of sorts.

But are these virtues so different and opposite?  Must a women give up one for the other?  And that’s where the femivore comes in, as she says a firm and cheerful “No!”

The femivore is neither a housewife nor working mom, at least not in the usual stifling definitions.  It’s not really about a rejection of those things, as it is in the embrace of something different.  Instead of being controlled by a consumeristic mindset, they seek to live in such a way that relies less and less on purchasing and consuming, and more and more on family, community, environmental health and social justice.

In our city of Flint and nationwide, there is a lot of talk about building communities, eating local, nutrition, caring for the earth, health, reusing and recycling, going green, and on and on and on.  Everyone knows why we need to be concerned about these things, but not many know how we’re going to do it.

You can talk all you want about how our current economic system encourages poor nutrition through the flood of processed foods, fast foods and soil damage, harms the planet, splinters families by separating them most of the day, supports the mistreatment of animals in factory farms, contributes to the health crisis with drug advertisements and unaffordable medical care, blah blah blah blah blah.  You can create community gardens, allow farmer’s markets to accept food stamps, preach about the problem of childhood obesity, try to attract whole food groceries into urban neighborhoods, blah blah blah.

But who is going to take those assets and turn them into practice?  How will that carrot actually get into the stomach of a child?

The fact is, our culture has forgotten the basic skills that even make it possible to live an economically productive life, let alone a ecological sustainable one.  The majority of people are still going to choose a purchased meal over a home-cooked one, because of the lack of time, skill, and cost.   Of course, femivores understand that knowing how to produce food and prepare it actually saves time and money, savings which are compounded over time when factors such as health are considered.

While many may still turn up their nose at the idea of having chickens, growing gardens and baking their own bread, it is truly the progressive and forward-thinking individuals who recognize that not only are these things rewarding, they are vital to our families, communities, and yes, the planet.

(These are written in no particular order. So #1 is no more important than #56. If a product is mentioned, I am not getting compensated from some company to review or rave about their product. I’m just a mom sharing, well, things I wish I would’ve known about a long time ago.)

TIWIWKAALTA #8  ~ Avoiding food with dye is very important to the health and well-being of my children.

People often mention the effects that sugar has on children.  Most notice that some children become hyper and difficult to manage after eating a sugary treat.  But, in my experience, the problems probably arise from the dye in that food, as much if not more than the sugar.

I remember the first time the relation between food dyes and hyperactivity clicked in my mom brain.

It was Angel Imp’s birthday, my fourth child.  I don’t remember the exact age she was, but it was quite young since she chose a Blue’s Clue’s cake from the grocery store bakery.  Usually, I make a homemade cake with better ingredients, like honey or  unrefined cane sugar, but I remember life being busy and full and I thought, “well, it won’t hurt just this once.”

This particular daughter was known to occasionally have crazy periods where it seemed she had no control over her own body.  I could only describe it as energy times 100, as she practically bounced off the ceiling.  Shortly after we cleared up the cake and ice cream, it began.  My Angel Imp turned into Monster Girl.

Not again! I thought, dreading the approaching bedtime hour, where I knew she would continue her tornado-like state until she collapsed with exhaustion.

The next day, I happened to notice that her bowel movements were blue.  As in bright, Blues-Clues blue.  Ew, I frowned.  That stuff can’t be good for little bodies. Then the light came on.

I watched her closely after that, and the connection between food dye and her behavior became undeniable.  I began reading ingredient labels even more carefully and discovered that practically everything has dye in it.  Pickles, purchased baked goods and dough, and cereals all had to go.  Some colors affect her more than others, with blue and red being the worst.

Now, I see children acting like orangutans on crack and I realize it’s no wonder.  They likely just had a snack of packaged cookies with a handful of “fruit” snacks, all washed down with a glass of Kool-Aid.  Ack.

I think of the kids labeled as ADD, ADHD, or just “troubled” and I wonder how many had Lucky Charms for breakfast.  Even the roll in their school lunch probably has dye in it.  Their strawberry milk certainly does.

It is interesting to note that food dyes did not seem to have any significant effect on my 3 older children, at least not enough that I noticed it.  So it’s not like dye has this effect on every child.  (Which is why the FDA still allows dyes in food; Any study performed that does show a link also has a number of children who are not affected.  Just enough to ignore the facts, I guess.)

But, knowing how dye can affect someone so visibly, do I really want to ignore the possibility of it causing currently undetected consequences in the health of my other children?

1997 Graduate Student Research Project conducted at the University of South Florida linking artificial food additives to ADD.

Diet and behavior in children. Center for Science in the Public Interest

2007 study linking hyperactivity and food coloring.  Psychiatry Online

The Truth about Food Dyes.  CBS news

Another mom’s personal story regarding food in Gradual Change.

All right, I could post links all day.  Just Google, “food dye effects on children”.  You’ll have lots to read.

If you knew me several years ago, you’d remember me as a kombucha brewing, kefir guzzling, goat milkin’, wheat grindin’, as-granola-as-they-come hippie chick.

I still am, but much to my chagrin it is to a far lesser degree.

I have several things to blame for this.

(It’s not my fault, after all.  Tsk.)

First, moving to a different home is hard on my scobys and living grains, as they tend to be forgotten in the hoopla and chaos.  If they do survive the cooler ride, settling into a new place still upsets my routine of making batches with them. If things like that aren’t used occasionally, they tend to die.  So suffice it to say, between two moves and a baby being born… yeah.

Then there’s the hard to accept fact that our raw cow’s milk supply ended.  So that means no homemade yogurt or kefir.  Yeah, I still get raw goat milk, but I just don’t like to make cultured foods with that.   Speaking of, I have to admit that I don’t even drink the raw goat milk anymore.  There.  I said it.  Oh, my kids and hubby inhale it still.  But, me…?  I don’t know if it’s just that my taste buds changed with this last pregnancy and never went back, or if it’s because the herd is no longer 100% LaMancha (they are known for their mild milk) but… Ew.

Probably the biggest factor is our ever widening circle of friends and people we hang with.  No longer are the majority of them health freaks just like me.  For most of my friends, their idea of a balanced diet is to have something from the 4 standard food groups every meal; Dye, HFCS, MSG, and partially-hydrogenates.   (If you don’t know what those are, consider yourself an example of what I’m talking about, since you likely eat them all the time.)  So, when we get together (which is often) I tend to just eat what they are having or have brought, as not to step on any toes.  Unfortunately, I see some of that sliding into the rest of the week.

There’s another side effect to eating and preparing food with this larger group of people, and that is the fact that I have started to buy more packaged food (to save time) and also prepare food differently.   Why use my more expensive ingredients for those who do not care or appreciate it?  So, for the first time in years, I often purchase store bought baked goods and have white sugar and flour in my cupboard to use when making things for people other than my family.  But, of course, I and the children eat it too, and it just opens the door to continue in that direction.

And last but not least, living so close to restaurants makes it far too easy to grab take-out or fast food, and I could easily justify it.

So you see my great quandary.

Oh, I still grind my own wheat.  Sometimes.  I still bake homemade bread from scratch.  Occasionally.  I still purchase most of our meat and poultry from local farms who don’t use hormones.   I limit packaged foods.  And last year I still managed to grow a lot of produce despite where we live.  But there are so many things that I have let go.  And, really, there is no excuse.

Friends who have more recently learned about whole foods, and soaking grains, and sprouting, and culturing, and canning, and natural fermentation, and sourdough starters, and on and on, have sparked my interest in these things once again.  It has challenged me to brush off those dormant skills and put them to good use.

So if I seem a little more hippie the next time you see me, tell me so.

I’ll be thrilled.

My dear husband wrote on Facebook today, “my baby (aka supermom) is not feeling well. ” which led to a number of inquiries, each wondering how I’m doing.  And then, if I actually answer honestly I’m often met with, “What? I didn’t know about any of that!” meaning, of course, that since they read my blogs they assume they know most everything about me.  Which is somewhat true.  But.

I don’t normally write about stuff like, say, the fluid filled membranous sacs that frequently grow on my ovary.  I know. Ew.  Part of me feels somewhat dishonest, as if I’m sidestepping a large part of my life, especially since their unwanted presence has such an impact on me.  I did mention it once, I think.  It’s just one subject I avoid since experiencing increased traffic, because frankly, who wants to read about that?

Besides, throwing out anything health related usually means one is bombarded with everyone’s opinion about how you should be handling it.  The fact is, many women deal with ovarian cysts.  It’s not like they’re really unusual.  The sad part is, conventional medicine offers nothing beyond “wait and see” and then cutting them out if they get too big, or going in for intravenous antibiotic if they burst.  Preventative measures are nonexistent, besides taking birth control pills.

So, without going into great (boring) detail of all the icky symptoms, for the most part I have learned to cope while learning how to treat them naturally.  But that takes time.  When one does grow rather large, it is apparent to me and I pray that when it bursts it isn’t painful.  Some are, some aren’t.  However, even after that is finished the following weeks continue to be difficult as the toxic fluid is absorbed.  I continue to use natural supplements to keep help my immune system remain strong throughout the additional burden.

And then this week I developed a urinary tract infection that is putting up quite the fight against my arsenal.  Sigh.

So.  There it is.

I’m laying low, which basically means I’m still in my pajamas at lunchtime, laying on the couch spending way too much time online, begging the kids to not make a really huge disaster.

The really good thing about days like this is the increased appreciation I have for the days that I feel good.  I am truly blessed.

A couple years ago on my family website, I published a natural childbirth article with a funny twist on Thanksgiving dinner.  I am reposting it below.  (I could no longer find a valid link to the original article.)

by Carolyn Keefe 
from Citizens for Midwifery News, Fall/Winter 2004

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to think about the normality of birth. We often say that birth is a normal physiological process, but its hard for most people to understand what that means. Comparisons to other normal physiological functions are valuable. Although some others more closely resemble birth, eating will work to illustrate how a normal function can be spoiled by over-zealous attempts to control it.

Of course, birth is a far more profound and rare experience. Also, in both cases, sometimes some people need help — when eating people can choke, have allergic reactions, have digestive disorders, and even need to bypass the whole process. But in both cases, most of the time, our bodies can perform the function more or less as designed.
Let’s imagine, then, consuming our Thanksgiving dinner under the same circumstances that most women in the US give birth:

Welcome to our humble establishment. We hope you enjoy sharing your special Thanksgiving Dinner with us. Well do our best to make your dinner a unique and memorable experience.

Our highly trained professional staff is among the best in business and will work to ensure your comfort, privacy, and safety while dining in our establishment, a state of the art facility. The home-like ambiance will help you relax, and you’ll appreciate the comfort of knowing that the operating room is right down the hall, should the need arise.

• First, you make the decision to leave home and go out to the “best” restaurant in town with the “best” chefs. This means leaving behind your children and most of your family, but you agree anyway.

• When you make your reservations, you are informed that consuming the meal will very likely be dangerous and difficult, so a surgeon will be supervising in case it becomes necessary to insert a tube.

• The restaurant insists that you arrive before Thanksgiving and get started on the meal early, so as not to miss the holiday.

• You are encouraged to change into appropriate clothes for eating, though they may be uncomfortable and make you feel self conscious.

• Before you can sit down to eat, you’re hooked up to an IV and wires to monitor your progress with swallowing and digestion, just in case emergency surgery is needed.

• As you eat, various medical personnel hover, looking in your mouth periodically — sometimes in mid-chew — to make sure you’re progressing well.

• At the first sign of displeasure or difficulty, you’re offered seasonings to mask the flavor and the meal is pureed to make it easier to swallow.

• If you aren’t eating quickly enough, the surgeon comes in to give you something to improve your appetite and tells you that the tube will need to be inserted if you don’t finish soon.

• When the moment you’ve been waiting for finally comes, the surgeon performs a procedure to expedite the process.

• When the meal is all over, everyone tells you that are lucky to have finished it alive, with your entire family intact. After all, such unpleasantness is the price we pay for eating safely.

• Even if you are able to complete the meal under these circumstances, any complaints you might have are dismissed as ingratitude. You learn to not discuss it and accept that you will be expected to undergo exactly the same experience for each Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, birthing women are in a far more heightened state of awareness. They are extremely vulnerable to stimuli, which can have a profound effect on their ability to function well under such circumstances and on their perceptions of the experience later.
If the meal described above seems unpleasant, imagine how difficult giving birth under such circumstances must be. That so many women do it successfully with a minimum of negative effects is remarkable. Then again, many do not. Small wonder.

Happy Thanksgiving and Bon Appétit!

Enjoying the peace that surrounds a home birth