Focus on Nutrition

Although I haven't posted much about nutrition on this blog, it has definitely been a focus of my mothering, especially over the last three years in treating Alayna's eczema. Discovering that she has food sensitivities to dairy, peanuts, tomatoes and carrots forced me to stop relying on prepackaged foods and casseroles with lots of ingredients and get back to basics, making simple meals from scratch. By doing this, I've become aware of so many ingredients in our foods that we avoid simply by eating fresh food (i.e. perservatives). I never knew the harm that these perservatives can wreck on our bodies until recently. I watched an interesting documentary recently called The Beautiful Truth that I thought was very eye-opening. The premise is that food directly affects our health either negatively or positively and we can avoid and even treat illnesses and disease (cancer) with certain foods. I've always favored natural treatments over drugs, so I found the information very valuable.



There's also some great info in the film about the use of flouride in our drinking water and mercury fillings in our teeth. The information confirmed my gut feelings as I decided against giving my children flouride pills (which they encourage here in Oregon where the water is not flouridated). We still use flouride toothpaste and the kids get flouride treatments at their regular dental cleanings. I personally feel this is a much better use (and has more research to prove it actually works!) than adding it to our drinking water or taking pills.

Another resource that really helped me connect the dots with Alayna's eczema is the Eczema Natural Healing website. Until then, every time Alayna would have a flare-up, I'd try to figure out which specific food caused the reaction. When I couldn't figure it out, I started wondering if it was an environmental sensitivity (maybe a type of fabric in her clothes or the type of soap or detergent we used). After reading the site creator's story, I began to realize that it might not be one specific thing that was causing Alayna's problems. It could be that she was malnourished (which actually didn't surprise me, she is a three-year-old after all). So, now my big challenge is to make sure that my picky eater is consuming fruits and vegetables. I started buying Superfood Green Juice (which is available at most natural food stores) and make sure that my kids drink at least one glass a day. It is a bit on the expensive side (different brands range from $5-$9 for 64 fl. oz.) but if I were to compare the price to what one pays for the average prescription at the pharmacy, its rather cheap! Hopefully we'll be able to purchase a juicer at some point at which time I can stop buying the juice and make it myself with fresh organic fruits and veggies!

To finish off, I'd like to share a recipe for taco seasoning that I found online. I looked this up because I forgot to buy taco seasoning once and wanted to make tacos. Instead of making a special trip to the grocery store, I figured I probably had all of the spices to make it myself. The best part is that I completely avoid MSG and any other fillers that commercial taco seasoning contains. Now that I've made this several times, I will never go back to store-bought brands. It tastes amazing!

The Four Preventative P's

I was reading a blog called Academic OBGYN and found a fascinating article about handling slow labor. After the article, I always read the comments....sometimes just a handful of opinions since a lot of these blogs will boast hundreds of comments. Near the top I found a comment by Amy Romano, who is a pretty well known and respected midwife who writes a blog for Lamaze International called Science and Sensibility. In her comment she took a moment to talk about what she calls "The Four Preventative P's":

I give a talk on optimizing labor progress and talk about “Four Preventive P’s” rather than the 3 P’s and other variations, all of which I think address how to treat rather than prevent dystocia.

Briefly, the four P’s are:

Permission – freedom of movement, autonomy in decision making, freedom to vocalize, throw up, ask for help, or whatever it is the woman needs to do to get her baby out.

Physical environment – there are some intriguing pilot studies showing beneficial effect of simple alterations like removing the labor bed and/or giving women freedom to rearrange furniture and props in her own room.

People – continuous support from a doula or other trained labor companion has many documented benefits and should be the standard of care.

Practices – avoid routine use of interventions that slow labor down. Avoid arbitrary time limits, etc.

Of course, you don’t get the Four Preventive P’s in most hospital environments.

I had a thought after reading this that this could be a birth plan for any mother planning a natural childbirth. Its short, easy to read and gets right to the point. If her doctor or midwife has problems with any of these four things, it would be a good indication that she isn't going to get the birth she wants and should look for a new provider. Also, I like how it simplifies the requuests to four items. Sure, there are a lot more than four things asked for here, but since it basically bullet-points four things, it doesn't look like such a long laundry list of requests.

What do you think? Would this work as a birth plan?