top 10 things I am doing differently this time around...

As many of you know, my husband and I did a four month detox before getting pregnant with our son, almost four years ago! Something must have worked because we got pregnant right away :-) It's time to start preparing for #2, so we are gearing up for another detox. This time it's going to be SIX LONG MONTHS of no caffeine, no alcohol, no dairy, no wheat, etc etc. Why the longer detox? The theory we used for the first one is that

it takes roughly four months for eggs and sperm to "mature" before conception,

so you want your body to be in peak condition during those four months.

The fatal flaw in our plan was that we STARTED the detox four months before conception, but that doesn't mean we were detoxed for four months... it takes a while... in fact, we can never be truly detoxed in modern society... even Indigenous Peoples living in the Arctic have a body burden of PCBs, VOCs, and other POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants - the wrong kind of organic), that are in our air and water and fish that no one can avoid unless we move to another planet, in which case we will receive a mega dose of cosmic radiation. (Another thing I am doing differently this time is that I am not going to fly while pregnant).

So the problem is that doing a four month detox is not enough, because you spend the first few weeks/months being MORE TOXIC than usual, as your body flushes everything from your system... so you need a buffer period to get out as many of the toxins as you can so that you can have four months of being as clean as possible.

So, off the top of my head (but with years of thought and research put into it), these are the things that we are doing differently in the lead up to making baby #2:

1. I will start detoxing six months before conception instead of four.
2. I will not fly on an airplane for six months before conception (or during pregnancy - I flew from Australia to America, across America four times and then back to Australia while I was pregnant with #1- that's a lot of cosmic radiation!)
3. I have had my mercury amalgam fillings removed well before starting the detox for #2 (I had two such toxic fillings during #1's conception and pregnancy).
4. I am not going to drive in a new car during my detox or pregnancy (we bought a new car just before #1 was born, so he spent his first few years inhaling a cocktail of VOCs and other nasty off-gassings).
5. I'm not working in a job that stresses me out, or with people that stress me out. Stress hormones are not good for babies (or mothers-to-be).
6. I'm getting bioresonance therapy with a Bicom2000 machine from the lovely Michele at Recharge Life in Melbourne. Bioresonance therapy is one of the few modalities that can help eliminate allergies and food intolerances.
7. I'm cutting way down on the naturally-occurring food chemicals in my diet, such as amines and salicylates, that I now know I am sensitive to.
8. I'm going to get a filter for my shower and bath so that I am not inhaling and absorbing so much chlorine when I bathe... if anyone can recommend some good filters then please leave a comment!
9. I'm not going to get any ultrasounds/sonograms during my pregnancy. I know I can have a healthy baby, I don't care if it's a boy or a girl (see previous post) and if it's twins the midwives will be able to tell soon enough.
10. I'm going to spend more time in the sun. Baby and me need our vitamin D!

Why everything I thought I knew is being turned upside down...

Big apologies for not posting recenly... I know I promised a blow-by-blow of our pre-conception detox, but things got a bit de-railed, and we went off on a journey of discovery that has solved lifelong mysteries (mostly of the bumps on your skin, pains in your tummy type) and turned my world upside down and inside out.... I don't have time to go into the details now (I never do, which is why I never post, so I figured something was better than nothing)...

So, to give an idea of what I don't have time to post about (and may never, but you never know...), I have recently discovered, through the course of doing an elimination diet and subsequent research, that:

-Organic food can actually make me sicker (in the short term.... but conventional food will still kill you in the longer term) because it is naturally higher in salicylates, a naturally occuring chemical to which I, and my organic toddler are both very sensitive.

- Far from being healthy, fruit is one of the worst things I can eat, especially organic fruit, because of the aforementioned salicylates. The only fruit we can eat at the moment is peeled pears... (recipes for pear crumble, pear muffins, pear pancakes etc to come...)

- I have been diligently avoiding sun in the middle of the day for years, when actually that is the best, and safest time to get much needed sun exposure, as the beneficial UVB rays are highest and the harmful UVA rays are lowest in intensity... I had been doing the opposite, and exposing myself to more damage in the early morning and late afternoon when UVA is higher, and missing out on the important UVB rays that help make vitamin D!

- Microwave ovens are still evil, but using them to cook and defrost meat (which should still be organic, no matter what... if you can't afford it then eat less meat!) can help to control the breakdown of protein into amines, another one of those "naturally occurring" chemicals that makes me and my whole little organic family sick!

So, as if all this wasn't enough, I am now in the process of feeding my beautiful baby (who is of course no longer a baby) gluten every day for a week, so that he can have a blood test for coeliac disease, even though the gluten is clearly not reacting well with him. This is a very painful thing for a mother to do... to keep feeding something to your child that you know is not good for them, but if he doesn't have the gluten in his system then the blood test won't work...

I'll let you know how we go.