I feel like crap, so the detox must be working…

I don’t feel that bad, just a bit like I’ve been hit by a truck. I’m exhausted without doing anything. I’m not sick, nothing hurts, I just have very little energy, and as DH just discovered, I’m a bit sensitive and grumpy! I’m trying to make the most of the process, lazy hours reading in bed, or just lying in bed doing nothing. I’m not that sleepy, just wiped out. I just had a nice long hot bath with lots of baking soda (helps to draw out the toxins) while sipping a cup of dandelion tea (helps the liver detox) that DH kindly made for me. He is doing very well with his detox. His main issue is tea, which he loves, but he gets terrible headaches when he doesn’t have enough at the right time. When we did the first detox three and a half years ago he was pretty sick for a week while he went through the caffeine withdrawl. This time around he is doing it more gradually. Cutting out coffee first, then switching to a low-caffeine Ceylon tea, and then to white tea. While he has had mild headaches at times, it’s a lot more pleasant than the first time around! That is one of the advantages of starting the detox six months before we want to conceive… we’re not in a quite so much of a hurry, so we can take a gentler approach.

There are also lots of things that we have cut out completely since the first time around, such as toxic household and persona care products. While we are still not perfect in this arena, there are a lot toxins in our lives these days, so the detox is not as much hard work as it was the first time. The second time round I am focusing more on adding in nourishing, beneficial foods and supplements to our diet, than on cutting out bad ones. The main things I have to cut out (not that I have much of them to begin with) are sugar, alcohol and caffeine (in that order). I’m already non-dairy and gluten-free, so that makes things easier.

I really don’t have much sugar, since I’m allergic to most things that have sugar in them, but it sneaks into your diet in insidious ways…. ketchup, jam, toothpaste (not mine) peanut butter (which I don’t eat, but it’s in the sunflower substitute I like), etc. I already avoid corn syrup (one of THE most EVIL “foods” around) religiously. So for me it’s things like honey, fruit juices, dried fruit, and other things with naturally occurring sugars.

Alcohol is probably the worst thing I have regularly, but I only have a few glasses a week, usually of organic red wine. Red wine does have some health benefits, but it is also pretty hard on the liver, so I’m taking a break during the detox, and the pregnancy, and the breastfeeding, so I’m pretty much not going to be able to have wine for about the next 3 years. Now I’m going to cry. I must admit I did drink the occasional half glass of wine while breastfeeding the first time around. But I absolutely did not drink at all during pregnancy. I was also very very good during the four month detox before getting pregnant, however I did have one bad night at a friends wedding in Bali only a few weeks before getting pregnant. My son can blame any of his future health problems on that night. The good thing is that I was already so detoxed that by body would have been able to process the alcohol very quickly. Or so I keep telling myself.

The caffeine thing is pretty easy for me, since I don’t really like black tea, and I only have coffee once or twice a month, since it gives me the jitters. My main source of caffeine is dark chocolate, which is very hard to resist, and very good for you, if it’s not combined with too much sugar and other processed additives. My one deviation from the detox since last wrote was a piece of vegan, gluten-free chocolate cake. It’s so rare that I can find pastries that I’m not totally allergic to that I couldn’t resist… But if that’s the worst thing I had all week I think I’m doing pretty well… Now I’m off to apply my detox foot patches (more on these soon) and go to bed!

how things have changed (for the better)

When I was pregnant with my son almost three years ago I had to search far and wide to find natural and organic products for him to wear, be bundled in, play with, eat and drink out of etc... now I get an email from Amazon today sending me a link to pages and pages of Organic Baby Products...

It's a great time to be having an organic baby! Lately I have been feeling a bit guilty about using my first child (and only child for the moment) as a bit of a guinea pig... as much research as I did the first time around, doing a full detox before conceiving, eating mostly organic food, using hypnobirthing techniques in a midwife-run birthing centre, breastfeeding him for two years, dressing him in organic cotton, etc etc etc... there are so many more things that I would do differently if I could...

I would...
- have less (or possible zero) ultrasounds (sonograms). I had three the first time... one at 10 weeks, 12 weeks and 20 weeks.
- delay immunizations longer (and maybe not get all of them?).
- not eat nuts while pregnant or breastfeeding (I ate a lot of hazelnuts and now my son is allergic to them, even though he's never eaten them!).
- use safer bottles/sippy cups.
- have a better bed for co-sleeping.
- have my soil testing before baby starts eating it!
- travel less (especially less radiation-filled airplane flights).

You get the picture... I will blog more on all of these topic later (hopefully sooner), but in the meantime if you have any comments, suggestions, questions, etc on any of the issues I've mentioned (or anything else) please feel free to leave a comment!

while my organic baby sleeps...

my beautiful organic baby boy is asleep :) he has a cold at the moment, so he is waking up a lot, and I am loath to let him cry for very long since he sounds so pathetic with his raspy cough. I am feeling a bit frustruated about he and I having been sick so much lately... isn't one of the benefits of being organic and breastfeeding so much that we shouldn't get sick? Under normal circumstances, probably, but we have been doing so much travelling the last few months that our sleep and eating habits have been rather disrupted, and it's a bit of a vicious cycle to break through since I am so run down now... I had an acupuncture treatment today and I think that helped... I was able to sleep while bob (beautiful organic baby/boy) had his afternoon nap... part of my problem had been that I couldn't sleep during the day, when I usually catch up on sleep... I had too much going on in my head and it took too long to wind down... (more on that later). I'm starting to feel tired now, so I'm going to get ready for bed!!!