Category Archives: health

Cellular memory – emotional imprinting on unborn child

health, pregnancy

Several weeks ago I met with the midwife I was planning to have at my birth, and we we had a long and fascinating conversation.  One of the things that I appreciated about when taking my detailed personal birthing history was how insightful her questions were.  For example, when I detailed one very long and difficult birth in which the baby was asynclitic, she told me it sounded like a child who wasn’t ready to be born.  And then she asked me about that child’s personality and way of dealing currently with new situations, and how it correlates (strong correlation).  It was fascinating, and very much in line with my belief that every unborn child is imprinted at a deep level with the emotions his mother experiences during her pregnancy.

When I recently took one of my children for an appointment for reflexology, a meditation was played aloud during the session and the practitioner told me I would probably benefit by letting myself follow along with it, too.  I told her that I already do regular meditations and surprised, she asked why.  I answered that I have so many stresses in my life right now that I feel I have to make a conscious effort to stay emotionally balanced in order to be present for my family and myself in a healthy way.

After she finished the session, she asked me about how the pregnancy and birth of this child were.  At the end of that pregnancy I had a lot of stress in my life and correspondingly, a lot of negative thinking.  (Since then I’ve tried to be much more careful about my thoughts and feelings during pregnancy.)  I told the practitioner, who knows that I’ve been recently dealing with some  intense stresses in a very concentrated period of time, that this is a large part of why I’ve made a conscious effort to relax with meditations.  I don’t want to imprint emotionally in a negative way on this baby.  She immediately agreed with me that imprinting happens on the cellular level, known as cell memory, before a child’s birth, and becomes part of a child’s makeup.

It was very interesting to have had these two conversations with the midwife and naturopath.  This is the kind of thing that people don’t talk about much, you don’t see much written about, because it’s not quantifiable.  It’s something that happens almost at the soul level to a child, and is very real regardless of if you can see it or not.  When I used to go to my chiropractor in the US, she did deep energy clearing at this level, which I appreciated.  Now I don’t have access to that, but I did bring my Bach flower essence kit with me, and this is an ideal tool for facilitating soul level healing.

You know the saying, “You are what you eat”?  I think it’s just as accurate, perhaps even more so, to say, “You are what you think”!

Avivah

Homemade vitamin B supplement

frugal strategies, health, nutrition

Recent bloodwork showed that a couple of our family members were very low in vitamin B – one was almost totally deficient, while the other was just regular low.  Seeing these lab results, I am assuming that other family members would also benefit by boosting their B vitamin intake.

Vitamin B is important for so many things, and are known as ‘the happy vitamins’.   Common symptoms of being deficient in vitamin B include low energy, being tired all the time, and being depressed.  Eating sugar, processed foods, caffeine, or experiencing stress all burn through your body’s supply of vitamin B.  And though we hardly eat any processed foods or caffeine and not much sugar, moving overseas and integrating into a new culture definitely qualifies as stressful!

A friend who is a psychologist recommended a particular vitamin B food grade supplement; she’s seen many people benefit emotionally by taking it and also said if she gets it to women right after giving birth, that there’s no postpartum depression.  I bought a bottle of it, and though her source for it was cheaper than what it would have been otherwise, it still wasn’t cheap.  When I looked at the ingredients on the bottle, I thought to myself, “I can make this!”  So that’s what I did.

Of course, I don’t know what the proportions are, but here are the ingredients as listed on the bottle: brewers yeast (vitamin B complex), molasses (iron), fruit juice concentrates,  water, assorted herbs, spices, carob, natural vitamin C or E.

Here were the proportions of the first batch of vitamin B mixture that I made: 250 grams brewers yeast, 200 grams carob syrup (I happened to have this in the house since someone bought some, didn’t like it, and asked if I could use it), 2 T. sodium absorbate (vitamin C), 3 small scoops bioflavanoids (I think each scoop is 1/4 teaspoon – the bioflavanoids balance the sodium ascorbate and should be taken together), cayenne pepper (I tasted this in the supplement I bought), and then I planned to add molasses and water.  When I started making my first batch, I didn’t have molasses but thought I’d be able to get it within a day.  But life happened and I didn’t get the molasses for a week, and so some of thick pasty mixture that I made got eaten by the spoonful.   Though it tasted pretty good, by adding the molasses afterward I can’t with any accuracy tell you how much was needed since I don’t know how much was already eaten.

When I did get the molasses, I made a second batch, being a little more creative.  What I did was mix nutritional yeast, molasses, sodium ascorbate and bioflavanoids, and spirulina powder all together.  (I was sure I’d remember the proportions to share here but of course, I didn’t.  :))  Then I added some water to thin it out until it was an easily pourable syrup.  Honestly, this doesn’t taste as good as the first batch – it’s okay but I can’t say I love it – but I think it’s probably much higher in vitamins that the first batch.  And it’s way cheaper!

Warning about using spirulina – it’s packed with vitamins but it gives everything its mixed into a dark greenish/black color that is unappealing.  The kids think this batch looks disgusting and not one of them was willing to taste it.  I don’t mind the color so much but I find the taste of molasses to be overly strong for my tastebuds, so I swallow down my tablespoon of mixture quickly and then take a drink of water.  But dh thinks the mixture tastes good, and regardless of taste, I think that this mixture is better absorbed by the body than taking a bunch of vitamins!

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

How to recognize redbud blossoms

frugal strategies, gardening, health

I learned about these local edible blossoms just a few days ago here, and the very day after reading about them, saw a tree next to my house that looked like the picture shared.  I was pretty positive the first time I walked by the trees after reading about them that these were redbud blossoms, but to be sure, we picked some to bring in and compare.

Redbud blossoms
Photo by Bob Gress – the blossoms above are mostly closed and just beginning to bloom


Sure enough, it was a match, and I’m delighted to have another wild edible to add to my list of local foragable foods!  The tree is beautiful, and now that I know what it looks like, see that they’re in bloom all over my city.

How can you recognize these lovely edible blossoms?  The tree is usually less than twenty feet tall, with young trees having a smooth, gray bark.  More mature trees have a reddish-brown bark with flattened scaly plates.  The flowers are a beautiful pinkish color, and the central petal (called a standard) is flanked by two more petals (called wings).  Below them are two more petals called keels.  (Tell your kids all about this when you’re picking them and you’re learning about science and botany!)  The leaves of the tree are like a heart shape.  (More details here.)

Since we have so many dogs locally, I don’t do much foraging of things that grow on the ground for obvious reasons.  Seeing the abundance of these blossoms growing on trees so close by has got my frugal juices flowing!  I’ve scoured the internet for ideas on how to use them, and seen some yummy sounding ideas.  Use them in muffins, pancakes, for dessert with yogurt and berries, sprinkled into salad, pickled, or made into jam!

Redbud blossoms have an almost nutty flavor; they more closed they are, the more tart they are; the open blossoms have a sweet flavor that is very pleasant.  I wasn’t surprised to learn that they are high in vitamin C, because the tart flavor makes one think in that direction.

The young pods of this tree are also supposedly edible, but since they come out after the flowers, I haven’t yet had a chance to taste them.  I often wondered when I saw these pods if they were edible, but didn’t know what the tree was called.  Now that I know what the tree looks like, I plan to experiment by using the pods in stir fries in place of snow peas.

Avivah

Just in time for Pesach – the plague of lice

health, parenting

Head lice are more common here than the US (probably because insistence on kids going to school lice-free isn’t strictly enforced), and knowing that, I’ve kept a watchful eye on everyone since our move.  And it’s consistently been fine.

But recently when all the kids were sick for a while, it wasn’t on my radar to think about this and I overlooked one child scratching his head, something I would have usually jumped on immediately.  It wasn’t until two weeks after that that I checked the kids last week, and I saw signs of lice in three of them.  It was actually amazing that so few of them had it, being that it spreads so quickly and easily when children put their heads next to each other.

Of the three kids who had signs of lice, two had a very small amount that was easily taken care of.  The third was so heavily infested that I felt almost hopeless for the first few hours I was working on him on day one.  But when I started on day two, there was such an obvious difference thanks to all I did on the first day, and I’m happy to say that the issue is now resolved!

Since I lived here when my oldest four children were young, I had to deal with lice on an ongoing basis, so I’ve developed my approach to handling it that has been pretty effective.  There are many tips available about how to get rid of lice, but I’m going to share what I do.

Firstly, never use the poisonous lice shampoos like RID.  They are dangerous, and even carry warnings on them not to use them too frequently.  Not only that, I don’t think they’re very effective!

I’ve seen suggestions about using vinegar, mayonnaise, Listerine and other things to wash out the hair and smother the lice.  But unless it makes you feel like you’re doing something, it’s just extra work without much added benefit.

The first critical step is to make sure there are no live bugs in your child’s hair.  I have a two pronged approach to this – I check manually and I use a fine toothed metal lice comb to thoroughly comb through their hair. (I bought the least expensive one available at the pharmacy – 35 shekels.  Don’t bother with the cheap plastic ones, which don’t work at all.)  I absolutely don’t rely on lice combs on their own, since I used to see how much they missed, but if you use them regularly and well, they’re probably enough.  It’s like someone speeding – the cops might not catch you the first few times, but eventually you’ll get ticketed.  So if you  keep combing you’ll eventually catch the lice even though the comb will miss a few times.

It’s helpful to condition the hair well before combing.  (Ideally, combing their hair after every bath and shower should be done proactively to prevent lice in the first place – I wasn’t doing this, but now it’s been instituted as standard protocol for everyone.)  I comb firmly against the scalp, to get off anything that might be there.  Lice live close to the scalp, so that’s where you’ll generally find them, not further down the hair shaft.  I do this every day or two once for about two or three weeks if I see a sign of lice, since new eggs can hatch and then mature after the point you think there are no bugs left.  The newly hatched eggs are tiny – about the same as a speck of sand.  You’d have to look closely to even realize that it’s a louse and even then you might be hard pressed to believe it!  They don’t reach sexual maturity until 5 – 10 days, so you don’t have to worry about them laying eggs until then.

After being sure that there are no live bugs, you’ll need to attend to the removal of the nits.  This is a painstaking job (though I personally find it gratifying and don’t mind it), which is where the term nitpicking comes from!  A nit looks like a tiny teardrop shaped bump on a hair – you can tell it’s a nit and not dandruff by touching it.  A nit is firmly attached to a hair, and the only way to get it off is to pull it off each hair individually.   Dandruff can be flicked away. (A couple of kids had dandruff, and I asked them to do a vinegar treatment to get rid of dandruff before I checked them to make it easier for me – I didn’t want to look at every fleck on their heads.)

Nits are different colors depending on their age, so based on this you tell what’s been freshly laid and what’s oldest and about to hatch – white when just laid, getting darker brown and finally black right before hatching.  This can be of practical value to know when there are so many nits that you give priority to those that are the oldest – this is what I did with ds over the two day period I was cleaning him out; I took out the darkest nits and left the lighter ones for the next day.  I know some people rely on combs to get the nits out, but I really don’t think they work for nit removal – what I think you’re relying on is that the nits that hatch will eventually be caught by the comb.

Look particularly behind the ears and by the nape of the neck for both lice and nits.  For some reason, lice seem to love these locations.  I give these areas extra checks and go through the hairs in this area extra carefully.

A couple of myths to debunk:

– You don’t have to disinfect every corner of your house when a child gets lice.  The things people do in this area don’t do anything but make themselves crazy  – the vaccuming, bleaching, etc.  Lice need the head of a host to live, and nits certainly can’t hatch once they’re removed.  I kill every louse that I remove if it’s big enough; the small ones go into a container of water while I comb and then are flushed down the toilet. I wouldn’t drop the nits onto a pillowcase 🙂 but you can do what you want with them; it really doesn’t matter.

– Lice do jump.  I’ve read that people say they only can crawl from one head to another, and it’s true that heads need to be next to each other.  But I’ve repeatedly seen lice jump several inches when I’ve been combing them out.

Prevention: comb out regularly, use a rosemary essential oil/shampoo on your hair (lice don’t like the smell), and if you see a child scratch his head, immediately check them.

I’m happy to be going into Pesach having dealt with this, so that when we talk at the seder about the plague of lice, it will be past history!

If you’ve ever had to deal with head lice, what are the tips that have worked for you?

Avivah

Hungry for Change – view free until Mar. 31

health, nutrition

‘Oh, great, another real food documentary.’  That’s the unenthusiastic thought that went through my mind when I saw the notice about a new movie, Hungry for Change, that is premiering this week worldwide.  I’ve watched several food related documentaries over the past few years, and though I found them all interesting (except one in particular that I couldn’t make myself watch through the end – Fathead), there’s only so much you can watch on the same topic without it becoming tiresome.

But for some reason despite my lack of enthusiasm I watched the short trailer, and that made me sign up so that I could receive free access to this movie until March 31.  I watched the entire thing today, and I enjoyed it so, so much – more than any of the other food films I’ve watched before.

It was intelligently done, so that someone without a background in health and someone with a lot of knowledge would still come away with something.  But what was really different, was that it wasn’t all about food.  Yes, it started off discussing obesity and ill health, and how food is manufactured to create addiction.  This is a huge issue.  But when I hear people talk as if eating healthy food is all you need to be thin, I feel frustrated because that hasn’t been my personal experience.  What if you don’t eat any processed foods and haven’t for years?  You can’t blame MSG and artificially concocted chemicals for your health issues.  Since my eighth child was born four years ago, I’ve been unable to get back to my ideal weight (after my seventh I did), despite an extremely good (WAP) diet.

Yet after this part of the film, it went on to talk about solutions – solutions that go beyond buying local or organic (though you can hear this referenced in comments, it’s not a main focus).  The way juicing was presented made me rethink my position on it, which I suppose was good since I haven’t seriously considered it since I mentally put it to the side years ago along with low fat vegetarianism as a path to health.

I loved that they then they went on to discuss the non food related aspects of ill health – stress, exhaustion, and the thoughts you put in your mind.   I think all of these are really critical issues, and the latter topic is one I have a special affinity towards.  In all of these points I was able to see areas where I had room to improve (I tend to burn the candle at both ends), and I felt inspired to make positive changes as I watched.

Where I’ve found other programs interesting, I found this something I would really strongly recommend.  I really, really liked this.  I’m going to rewatch it sometime in the next week, despite the pre-Passover period being, hmm, slightly more busy than usual.  🙂

Here’s a link for the film – http://www.hungryforchange.tv/.  To get free access, you have to sign in at the top right hand of the screen with your name and email address; at first I couldn’t find this and was a little frustrated that it was supposedly free and I couldn’t view it!

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Home remedies for the flu

frugal strategies, health, home remedies

I realized early on this week that all the kids had the flu (funnily enough, ds18 called home and he has it, too!), though I didn’t feel like mentioning it to anyone in person because I didn’t feel like answering the inevitable question: “You didn’t give them a flu shot?”  Because if I was asked that, I would have felt it necessary to explain that the underlying assumptions about the effectiveness of the flu shot are false, along with a host of other points that I didn’t feel like getting into about vaccines concerns.  And sure enough, the first person I mentioned the flu to exlaimed, “What, you didn’t give them a flu injection?  I take it every year and I never get the flu!”

I really dislike that the seasonal flu is now on its way to being considered life threatening, along with everything else that we have vaccinations for.  Sure enough, this same woman told me about how many people die every year from the flu – as I said, I know when starting even a casual conversation about a topic like this how ready you have to be to intelligently counter the ‘facts’ that people have heard.   

Anyway, let me not get onto the flu vaccine issue!  The flu isn’t fun but it’s really just a super bad cold, and if you can find ways to move through it faster or more easily, that’s a good thing!    Everyone around here has been sleeping lots and drinking plenty of fluids (chicken broth and tea).  My go-to remedy for any sickness is high doses of sodium ascorbate dissolved in juice, but not all of our kids like taking it like this.  

I realized tonight that my brain was on automatic, and I needed to pause and think about other remedies I might have on hand that would be helpful for the kids.  Here’s what I thought of:

– Aconite – this is a homeopathic remedy ideally given at the onset of the flu, which I didn’t do because I wasn’t thinking along these lines.  The early dosage would be 3 pellets of 30 c each; I’m thinking three daily doses along for treating it at this point would be good.  Homeopathics aren’t my first line of defense because it’s not the area I feel most competent with (and I don’t know what happened to most of my remedies when we moved), but I do have aconite on hand so this is a good option even though we didn’t catch it early. 

– Most people are deficient in vitamin D, especially in the winter when the sun isn’t out as often and doesn’t shine as intensely.  Did you ever think about why it’s so common to get sick in the winter and not the summer?  Our vitamin D levels have a lot to do with that!    One of the main immune system functions of vitamin D is to help trigger production of a substance called cathelicidin. Cathelicidin is a naturally produced antibiotic that is able to be made only in the presence of high vitamin D levels in the bloodstream.

The littles have been having cod liver oil a few times a week, but the rest of us haven’t been very consistent with it after my initial efforts.  That’s a good option for vitamin D, but I have high quality vitamin D3 in my cabinet, and this has been shown to be very effective in fighting the flu.  (I researched this back when there was the H1NI/swine flu hysteria going around – here’s one article if you’re interested.)  3000 – 5000 IU of vitamin D3 seem to be recommended just to maintain adequate vitamin D levels; today I gave everyone 10,000 IU right now to fight the flu (this includes all the kids from age 9 and up – the littles are getting just 5000 IU). 

Olive leaf tincture- I made a good sized batch of this back in November.  So I pulled it out and put it to use!  Rather than make everyone aware I was giving them a dose of it, I made a big batch of regular tea (which everyone requests as soon as they wake up from their extended naps), and added a couple of spoonfuls of the tincture to the large container.  The heat will cause the alcohol to evaporate, and the flavor is hardly noticeable because it’s so diluted.

Also, yesterday my first batch of home-cured olives were finished!  These were from the olives that I picked on an outing with ds5 and ds2.  I thought I’d share instructions for this process once we tasted them, but I’m not fully satisfied with the end results – they’re okay but still have a hint of bitterness underneath.  However, as I was eating some today, I was thinking that the effective component in olive leaves is oleuropein, which is bitter.  And the reason that you spend three weeks curing the olives is to remove the oleuropein.  So maybe our health is benefiting by eating olives that still have some bitterness remaining in them!!

A couple of kids had ear pains in addition to other symptoms, and I fortunately had a batch of what I call my ‘ear oil’ already prepared!  Very simply, this is minced garlic that has steeped in olive oil to pull out the healing properties.  Strain, and put a few drops into the ear that has pain.

Another child had red and irritated eyes yesterday – I usually use the homeopathic euphrasia for something like this, but as I said above, most of my remedies disappeared when we moved.  So I did a bit of googling to see what I had in the house that would be useful, and learned that an eyewash made of fennel seeds or raspberry leaves would be helpful to bathe his eye. 

It’s nice to be able to deal with this at home – everyone is feeling kind of yucky, but it’s so valuable to have something in my home arsenal to help my family. 

What are your favourite home remedies for the flu, or even just a cold?   Have you tried any of the things I mentioned, and if so, how effective were they for you?

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Steam treatment for head colds

frugal strategies, health, home remedies

Today my diligent dd15 went to school in spite of my strong recommendation she stay home another day until she was fully over the flu.  She insisted she felt fine and needed to get back to school, so that she wouldn’t miss too much material.

But the weather today shifted from warm and balmy to cold and rainy, and she came home definitely sick.   Tonight dh suggested that she do a steam head bath, something I had prepared for him a while back when he had a head cold.

This is a simple but effective remedy that will help clear head and nasal stuffiness, as well as chest tightness.  You boil a pot of water, then pour it into a large bowl.  Add a few drops of essential oil to the mixture – tonight dh used eucalyptus oil, but tree tea oil or anything else with camphor-like qualities would also be good. These help clear the sinuses out, and can be found in most health food stores.

[There’s a lot of hype around the quality of different essential oils, and though I happen to use the ones that many people claim are the best (Young  Living – because I was able to barter 60 pounds of spelt for a few bottles of these oils before moving!), I personally have some skepticism about that claim.  I think for this kind of steam treatment, most oils that you find in the store will be helpful.]

After adding several drops of essential oils to the bowl of boiling water, lean over the bowl and drape a towel over your head to hold in the steam.  When I do this, I try to breathe with my mouth open to let the vapors into my lungs (I do this when I have tightness in my chest that makes it hard to breathe).  If you feel it’s getting too hot, lift the towel very briefly for a couple of seconds or totally emerge from the towel.  I try to do this for as long as there’s still steam remaining but it really depends on how you’re feeling – when you’ve had enough, then stop.

When you finish, either pat your face dry or rinse your face with cool water (to close your pores).  Also, have a couple of cups of water to replace any fluids you may have lost during the steam inhalation.  There will usually be a noticeable improvement in how you’re feeling!

Avivah

(This post is part of Monday Mania and Real Food Wednesdays.)

Availability of organics and green products in Israel

aliyah, frugal strategies, health

>>Sorry to open a can of worms (and feel free to ignore the question if it’s too complicated)– what is the organic situation in Israel? My friends in Jerusalem subscribe to an organic CSA for weekly produce delivery, do you have any options like that up north?<<

And from someone else a few days ago:

>>  Is organic produce available and how expensive is it? We shop here at Trader Joe’s where the organic produce is relatively reasonable.

We get our natural household products without the sulfates, parabens, phalates, etc. from places like Whole Foods. Are such products available over there? Are they exorbitantly priced?

I am wondering if dairy products are healthier over there. (Does the Israeli government allow bovine growth hormone to be used?) My kids don’t drink milk (only rice milk) b/c of the toxicity. Can you get raw milk there any easier than over here?

In general, from my research over the past year and a half on all health fronts, it seems that our wonderful U.S. government is literally the worst in the world when it comes to protecting the health of its citizens. Whether it’s the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, or the cancer industry, healthful information is deliberately hidden from the public, while any and all toxic substances are allowed to pass, as long as it will be profitable for them. I know that the Israelis in government are no saints but the question is, are they any better than the U.S.? I hear they are trying to get a law passed now over here to somehow shut down all health related websites so that we will no longer have any way of accessing info on health.<<

Organics – as I’ve written before, my budget unfortunately doesn’t have room for the extra cost of organics.  In the past I’ve bought them when I could find them at a comparable price (eg salvage/discount stores).  The only vegetables that we eat that I’m sure are organic are the things I harvest myself from local vegetation/fruit trees.  So I haven’t yet found a local source because I haven’t looked.

However, I have seen notices of people posting about organic produce in various communities, and am sure this isn’t  something that is difficult to do, as long as you have the budget for it.

Natural health products – I’m not sure what you use in the US.  I use baking soda and vinegar for just about everything, and don’t buy any ‘green’ products. I found a place here where I was able to buy a 50 lb sack of baking soda, which was great since the teeny tiny containers they sell here are something like 40x the bulk price.  I’ve been making my own laundry detergent for quite a while,  but since all of the necessary ingredients aren’t available for purchase locally, have been buying the regular detergent and sometimes I add baking soda for an added boost.  We use baking soda for toothbrushing and deodorant (works better than anything else I’ve ever tried!) and use regular shampoo without artificial colors added.  There are health stores where overpriced ‘green’ products are sold, just like in the US – pretty much anything you would want here, I think you can find.  There seems to be a lot of interest in the alternative health realm; to me it seems like more interest and openness than the US.

Raw milk – someone told me about raw cow milk, but it seems much easier to find raw goat milk.  (Which is pretty understandable, being that this  country is so tiny and cows take up much more space than goats.)  I’ve been in touch with a couple of people about this and found sources about a 40 minute drive away, but not having a car makes this very difficult to arrange, particularly since those raising goats are usually living in areas with irregular bus transportation.  It’s  not realistic for us to take a bus to get the milk, due to cost and difficulty in bringing home an adequate amount for our family.  The other option is renting a car for the day to get the milk, which also makes the cost shoot up (not to mention gas that costs $8 a gallon!).  So we’ve pretty much cut out dairy, and the answer to how healthy the regular milk sold in the store is, I don’t know.

So basically these are lots of questions I’d also like more details on but don’t know the answers to. 🙂  However, I’m sure some of my readers do, so please share relevant details, suggestions, and contact information for people in the comments!

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Fresh, a real food movie – free to watch online today

health, nutrition

I just found out that the movie Fresh will be available through today to watch free, online.  This has been around a while but I’ve never seen it. I started watching it but then thought I should probably share this here with you for others who might want to see it while the offer is still available.  So far, it looks like the same genre as King Korn and Food, Inc – a real food documentary.

The link to view it is here – http://action. freshthemovie. com/p/salsa/ web/common/ public/signup? signup_page_ KEY=6608.  You have to sign up with your name and email address to view the movie.

To real foodies, the interviewees will look familiar, as will their message.  Joel Salatin, Michael Pollan, etc.  But it’s been a while since I’ve watched anything along these lines, other than the Monsanto film that I mentioned a few months ago, so I’m not feeling overly saturated with the  message right now.

We just popped some popcorn and I’m sitting down together with dd11, ds9, ds5, and ds4 to finish watching this. 🙂

Avivah

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Is it fair to have children closely spaced?

health, nutrition, parenting

I started writing this post over a year and a half ago, and I had to smile when I recently checked my drafts file, since so many of the topics that I wrote about then are still things I think about!

There’s a lot of strong opinion on the topic of ideal spacing of one’s children.  This is a highly personal decision that is fraught with emotion – I know I’ve had a negative knee jerk reaction to reading some of what is written on this topic, and I’ve had to remind myself that people are entitled to do whatever is right for them.

I’d like to address to a particular sentiment regularly expressed by real food devotees, the nutritional argument.  Those in the real food camp (where I consider myself) try to follow traditional food practices – to eat food as it was eaten for generations, because this has been key in the health of many generations.   As we’ve gotten away from this inherent wisdom of our bodies, our collective health has suffered.

Many people have noted the significant spacing between children in traditional societies, and felt that this is important to implement in our lives.  This is in order to give a mother time in which she can rebuild her nutritional stores after being depleted by pregnancy (and breastfeeding).  An unborn child can only ‘take’ from the reserves that the mother has in store; if it’s not there, his body won’t be able to use it.  And by carefully spacing one’s children, each child can be granted his “birthright of perfect health” (sorry, lost the complete Sally Fallon quote I wanted to share with you).

Now obviously, since I’ve had nine children born within fifteen years,  you don’t have to be a math whizzard to work out that I haven’t followed the ideal child spacing of three to four years between children!    And I’m not going to be an apologist for that.  Rather, I want to question what I perceive to be a dogmatic belief that ideal nutrition trumps the value of bringing children into the world, as well as the idea that you can eliminate any variables in the development of an unborn child.

(Parenthetically, something that is usually not mentioned when making the argument about what traditional societies did regarding child spacing, is that this was accomplished in large part because men had several wives and weren’t intimate with each wife for a lengthy period of time after childbirth.  True, we can replicate traditional spacing by using birth control rather than polygamy, but long term usage of chemical birth control (versus natural family planning) comes with it’s own related health concerns.  (Edited to add: how timely that after posting this I saw Kelly’s post about the dangers of birth control!  Definitely take a look so you can see some of the issues involved.)

There are those who feel passionately enough about this topic that they are willing to not have another child at all if it means that he won’t be conceived from a position of nutritional strength.  I respect that this is their belief and priority, and there would be a lack of integrity for someone who believed this to make any different choice.  For me, it’s not a choice I have chosen, even knowing all that I do about how prenatal nutrition affects a growing child.

I’m going to write a post (hopefully sooner rather than later!) detailing the physical differences that I’ve noted in the  jaw structure of each of our nine children depending on what I ate during pregnancy as well as birth order.  And though I can see that some have better facial bone structure than others, I don’t believe in even the tiniest part of me that because one had teeth that were more crowded than another and needed braces, that I shortchanged them or made a mistake by bringing them into this world.

I believe that there’s an inherent value to having a child, a spiritual piece of eternity that a mother can be part of.  That doesn’t mean that no matter what your current reality is, that having a baby is a good idea right now.  As I said earlier, this is an extremely personal decision and I can only share the criteria that I personally use in determining if pregnancy is a good idea at this time – a woman’s physical and emotional readiness to nurture a child.

While there are nutritional concerns that the expectant mother would benefit by addressing when children are close in age by being particularly careful that she has a high nutrient diet,  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are benefits to a mother and child to being spaced more closely.  Each child has a constant playmate and companion, which often develops into a close relationship that is maintained over the years.  When children are each other’s entertainment, this makes the physical aspect of parenting much easier than for a mom of a singleton or those who are widely spaced.

A mother absolutely should not deplete herself  to the point that she has nothing left to give.  But there’s a lot of ground between absolute physical exhaustion, and striving for the physical perfection of child.  It’s this sentiment of idealizing perfection that I’m disturbed by in the real food community.  I’m not a fan of striving for perfection in any area, since I think it’s stressful, depleting, guilt inducing, and not productive.  (Excellence, yes, but definitely not perfection!)

It’s true that the mother of closely spaced children isn’t likely to be able to replenish her nutritional stores like someone who has worked on it assiduously for several years without the draw from pregnancy.  However, let’s not forget that there’s plenty a woman can do to eat well during pregnancy to improve her unborn baby’s health.  This is not an all of nothing process.  (I’ve written about guidelines for high quality prenatal nutrition here.)

And on the other side of the equation, there are no guarantees in life.  There’s a conviction in the real food camp that if you eat well enough, nothing can go wrong with your child’s prenatal development.  Guess what?  It doesn’t always work like that.  It’s wonderful that there are so many things that we can affect with good nutrition, and this is very empowering.  But there are always going to be potential issues we can’t control for, as comforting as it is to think that we can.

What do you think the ideal child spacing is?  How has that worked for you and your children?  

Avivah

(This post is part of Monday Mania, Real Food 101, Fat Tuesday, Traditional Tuesdays, and Real Food Wednesdays.)