Category Archives: Healthy Living

Yirmiyahu is in the emergency room

Healthy Living, miscellaneous

On Monday evening, my chiropractor made a space for me to come in for a visit before my return to Israel.  In addition to typical chiropractic work, she does energy work and asked me something that she never asked before: What do you want to work on today?

I told her that I feel like I’m handling things fine, but am afraid that suddenly something little is going to happen –  the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back – and I’m going to totally fall apart.

It’s a good thing we released some stress from my system since this morning would have been the point I would have cracked.

After a very stressful and draining day, I left the US on Tuesday evening.  It wasn’t an easy flight because of Yirmiyahu.  I’ve been very worried about him since he got sick on Shabbos; this has been different than anything else I’ve ever seen with him.  No matter how sick he was before, I could still see him but this time it’s like he’s someone else.  When I got back to Karmiel Wednesday evening, everyone in my family was worried when they saw him – ds5 asked me why he looks like a different Yirmiyahu than the one I took to America.

First thing this morning I asked dh to schedule a doctor’s visit for Yirmiyahu as soon as possible; I wanted to take him but was so exhausted and dizzy I didn’t think I could safely walk there so dh went instead.  He called me from the doctor’s office to say the doctor immediately put him on an iv and oxygen and insisted on directly transporting him by ambulance to the emergency room.  They’re at the ER now, and I’m waiting for an update.  Right now we only know that he’s very dehydrated (despite the large amount of liquids I’ve been giving him almost nonstop for the last few days).  For those who would like to pray for him, his name is Yirmiyahu ben Avivah Michaelah.

I’m very grateful that he’s there, and though I would have wanted to be with him at this time, I’m glad my husband is with him.  As tired as he may be, he has more physical and emotional resources than I do at this point.  Hopefully they’ll both be home soon.

Avivah

The importance of nature in our lives

aliyah, Healthy Living, Homemaking

When we were determining if we should stay in Karmiel or move to a different more central area that would have better access for the services for Yirmiyahu, I made a list of all the positives about Karmiel. One thing that was hard for me to think of leaving was the natural beauty of Karmie that can be seen at every turn – we don’t have to look far or go out of our way to find it.

This may sound material, but it’s not.  For me it’s a spiritual and emotional experience.  Whether I’m literally having an outdoor experience by camping in a forest or just taking a walk locally and observing the scenery around me, I feel happier, more relaxed and more centered.  Living here isn’t like living in a nature reserve by any means, but there are plenty of places for your eyes to rest on something beautiful.  So when I saw the book Last Child in the Woods about nature deficit disorder in today’s generation of children the concept immediately resonated with me and the title itself seemed to validate my feeling about the importance of nature in our livess.

Unfortunately, that ebook wasn’t available to check out from my library, but fortunately, the follow-up book was – The Nature Principle.  The book basically detailed different aspects of how people benefit by connecting to nature were discussed: physically, emotionally, pyschologically, socially.  It’s a worthwhile read.

But you don’t need to read a book to know the restorative power that there is in having some quiet time in a beautiful place.  I have my own special place just a fifteen minute walk away – the waterfall in Park Hagalil – and though I infrequently go there, just thinking about it makes me feel more relaxed and calm.

(l-r) Ds9, ds6, ds4, ds2 cooling their legs opposite the waterfall
(l-r) spring 2012 – Ds9, ds6, ds4, ds2 cooling their legs in pond by waterfall

Then there are the many parks and green areas, the rolling hills surrounding the city, the amazing views that I keep discovering in different areas – even a little area where we discovered a number of woodchucks living – I love these things.  There are edible plants all over (though I haven’t done much foraging lately I still love seeing them) and literally every single time I walk outside I see something that makes me feel happier inside.

Every time I come back to Karmiel after a day in one of the larger cities, I have this feeling of “Ahhhh, I’m so glad to be home….”

beautiful view from our porch - hills in the distance and our street in the foreground
view from our window

So often I think how glad I am to be able to raise my children in a place where it’s normal for them to experience the natural world.  Not having this would be a loss for me.  There are conveniences in bigger cities but there’s also a loss when the buildings are so high and the only view you have is of more buildings and more buildings and more buildings…

I spent today traveling to Haifa and though I had plenty to do at home when I returned, instead I chose to watch the kids playing in the park a couple of minutes away, knowing that it would do more to help me recharge after a tiring day than anything else.

park 1

Seeing the beauty in nature helps me connect to myself, my creator, to be more patient and loving to others…when I’m having a hard time, being outdoors helps me find the quiet and clarity inside.  I have a busy life and if I had to drive somewhere to have this experience, it would never happen.  But fortunately, every day during my half an hour walk to pick up ds5 from kindergarten I can see beautiful sights without going out of my way!

I don’t think that beautiful natural surroundings are enough to make a person happy if their other important needs aren’t being met.  I would have loved to live in a small village-like area but our family would have been unhappy with friends and schools for our kids being far away.  We found a good balance for our family by moving to a centrally located, low density neighborhood in a small city, but you can find natural beauty everywhere – sometimes you just have to look harder!

Do you relate to the feeling of nature filling you up with something good, something important?  What does it do for you?

Avivah

Homemade herbal diaper cream

Healthy Living, home remedies, Intentional Spending

Recently we began giving Yirmiyahu a special hypoallergenic formula, hoping that this will resolve the wheezing that began when he stopped exclusively having mother’s milk.  Unfortunately, just like when we tried soy formula, his bottom began bleeding within a day of having it – clearly something in the formula is irritating his skin (he also simultaneously developed a slight rash around his mouth both times).  And the wheezing has only slightly improved.

The obvious thing to do is stop giving him this formula, but we were told that we need to give his body time to adjust to it.  That’s what we’ve been doing, but everyone dreads when he needs to be changed – he’s usually a very easy going baby, but now he screams when he has a dirty diaper and it takes a few minutes until after the diaper is changed until he stops.

With our last nine children, I’ve almost never used any kind of diaper cream.  The only thing I can remember is applying coconut oil twice when one of them had a yeast infection.  Then again, they were all exclusively nursed. and he hasn’t been, so unfortunately I’ve needed this pretty often to deal with the side effects of different formulas we’ve tried.  However, this is so bad that the standard zinc oxide cream just isn’t enough.  So I decided to make my own supercharged herbal diaper cream.

Homemade Diaper Cream

  • 2 cups coconut oil
  • 1/4 c. comfrey
  • 1 T. yarrow
  • 1 T. echinacea
  • 1 T. St. John’s wort
  • 1 T. chamomile
  • a few olive leaves
  • 2 oz. beeswax pastilles

The first thing you need to do is infuse the oil.  There are two ways to do this, quickly or slowly.  The slow method is to let the herbs sit in a jar of oil for 4 – 6 weeks; the fast method – which is obviously what I needed – is to mix the herbs with the oil and then gently heat it.  This can be done over a double boiler on a low flame for two hours, or in a covered ovenproof dish for three hours at 200 degrees.   I asked one of the kids to do this step, and should have chosen the second choice since we don’t have a double boiler and the herbs got a bit crispy.  Still usable, but it made the final product a darker color.  Strain the oil through a fine mesh cloth.

Mix the strained oil with the beeswax pastilles (I bought them at the local health food store – 45 shekels for 400 grams), gently reheating them together and stirring the mixture until smooth.  Once it’s finished, pour the warm cream into containers of your choice; wide mouth is preferable for access.  I used a two cup size plastic container for household use (past experience showed me it was a mistake to use glass jars for something taken out so often by so many different aged children), and a smaller four ounce lidded tin to keep in the diaper bag.  It solidifies once it’s cool.  The yield is a bit more than two cups.

Most recipes for salves and creams call for extra virgin olive oil as a base, but I prefer to use coconut oil for the antifungal and antibacterial qualities that it has.  I used coconut oil for the huge batch of first aid salve that I made over three years ago that lasted until now (actually, if we hadn’t moved we’d still have some – we only had room to bring one small jar with us), and I was very, very happy with how effective it was.  My inlaws (who got some for Chanuka the year I made it) gave me back the empty container a year later and when I returned it to them refilled, they told me they were very happy I took the hint 🙂 – they said it was excellent.

I decided to boost the healing properties of this cream by adding in a number of herbs that are anti-inflammatory, antibiotic and soothing.  I considered adding in lavender essential oil but decided that enough was enough.  🙂   It’s not necessary to use all of these herbs; you can use the comfrey and add in as many or few of the other herbs as you have, keeping each one to about 1 tablespoon.

I just started using this for Yirmiyahu so I can’t say how fast it’s worked, but from past experience with a similar salve I’m optimistic that it will be very helpful.  Though I created this to be used for diaper rash, it can be used for burns, bug bites or cuts.  In a home with small children, a good multipurpose antibiotic cream is worth its weight in gold!

Avivah

Online autism conference lectures available online

Healthy Living, Trisomy 21

I recently became aware of a number of fascinating online lectures that have been made available for free online.  These are from the 2012 AutismOne/Generation Rescue Conference.  Just look at the list of topics – they’re all so fascinating that I want to listen to them all!  Not that I have the time to do that, but I wish I did!

This year they had a track for T21, since 10% of those with T21 have autism as well.  The T21 talks are listed at the bottom of the page of recordings, just scroll down if you’re interested.  I’ve only listened to three of the T21 lectures, but I appreciated them all.  I’ve spent a number of hours learning about the biochemistry of T21, and I was very impressed at Dr. Anju Usman‘s talk, in which a number of these points were very simply and succinctly explained.

What I love about things like this is that there is so much known about what is going on with these diagnoses, and there are people who are taking action based on that information.  I just love this kind of information.  You won’t hear it from your doctor.  You won’t hear it from most people around you.  I’m learning to keep quiet with medical professionals because if I even mention anything slightly non-mainstream that I’m doing for Yirmiyahu (eg the pediatrician didn’t like that I give him a special vitamin supplement formulated for those with T21 that includes iron – she would prefer that I only give him the iron supplement that they recommend to all babies, the physical therapist didn’t like that we made an appointment at the Feuerstein Institute for an evaluation- and to me these hardly touch an alternative approach), I’m spoken to in a way that I find disempowering and unsupportive.

But there is a lot – a whole lot – that we can do to help our children outside of the standard recommendations given.  There is so much information here that will be of value to any parent, regardless of if they have any kind of diagnosis or not – for example, I’d been thinking about what I can do to rebuild ds13’s digestive system, which has necessarily taken a hit as a result of the high dosage of antibiotics he’s been given to treat the hip infection.  Then I saw Biofilm, Bugs and Bowels: Rebalancing Your Child’s Gut, and watching this reinspired me to get back to making fermented vegetables on a regular basis, something I’ve been wanting to do but haven’t had enough motivation to push to the top of the list.  The curried sauerkraut is now in two jars on the counter.  🙂

There are tracks about: nutrition, biomedical research and treatments, gastrointestinal, chiropractic, vaccines, education, therapies…there’s so much good information out there, and even if we learn just a tiny bit, that tiny bit when applied will help our families.

Avivah

Home from the hospital

Healthy Living

Ds13 came home earlier than expected – he arrived a half hour before Shabbos!

The hospital is literally right by the Mediterranean Sea, which is stunningly beautiful.   Just a three minute walk from the hospital building and you see this:

visiting bin 017

Dd18 and ds13 together, enjoying the view.

visiting bin 019a

When dd18 brought the littles, we thought they’d enjoy seeing the sea.  The trouble was, it was already nighttime and they were really creeped out by the sight and sound of the waves in the darkness.  And ds6 was really cold (he was really sick later that night, but I can look at the pictures and it’s obvious how under the weather he already was feeling.)

visiting bin 059

The sea may have not been much fun, but wearing their big brother and sister’s sweatshirts and getting a ride on ds13’s wheelchair was definitely something they enjoyed.

visiting bin 060

So much fun that they wanted more and more rides when they were back inside the hospital!  Ds13 was very obliging.

visiting bin 050

We’re so glad to have ds13 back home with us! Ds3 told me he wants to go to ‘his (ds13;s) room’ again – meaning his hospital room.  I had to tell him that it’s not a trip we’re going to be making now!

Avivah

Making the most of the hospital experience

Healthy Living

It seems redundant to say that things have been busy lately, since really, things are always busy around here!

Ds13 has been hospitalized for the last week, and people have been asking about what he’s there for.  He has a septic hip infection, which wasn’t symptomatic other than hip pain (ie no fever or sign of inflammation); this is apparently uncommon.  He’s being treated with antibiotics via iv as well as having had pus in the hip joint drained out a couple of times.  Most of the pain is gone though he’s been told to stay off his feet, so he’s getting pretty good at doing pop a wheelies with his wheelchair.  We hope that he’ll be discharged on Sunday.

I’ve enjoyed spending time with ds at the hospital.  Getting out of the house isn’t easy, but once I’m at the hospital I enjoy being there.  I’m getting to know more staff and other parents, know what to expect in terms of shifts and routines, and it feels increasingly more friendly every time I’m there.  I like connecting with people and I’ve had the chance for some interesting and meaningful conversations with other parents in the pediatric ward.

Yesterday a young secular mother who asked me what prayers her husband should say at the time of their baby’s operation.  I told her that I don’t have special powers that she doesn’t have because I’m dressed as a religious Jew and she’s not – that prayer doesn’t have to be formalized to be powerful.  I shared the belief that has gotten me through some difficult situations – we can’t avoid crises, but we can choose how we think about them.  This is often the only power we have in a situation.  However you define it, the reality is objectively whatever it is, and what determines how you experience that reality is based on how you define it and the meaning you give to it.

Then I spoke with a young couple there with a one month old baby (their first) and advised them about how to interact more effectively with the hospital staff.  I had overheard them say something to a nurse that I felt would position them to be treated poorly (because of their hands off approach to non necessary medical care).  I shared with them some of my own experiences; they were so appreciative to feel someone was validating them as parents.  I spoke with another mother who treated her kids holistically for years and now is having a hard time seeing her child having a major illness that she can’t do anything about.  I told her, ‘believe me, I know where you’re coming from!’

I spoke with an Ethiopian father and a secular Israeli father, with a couple of other secular Israeli mothers – all such nice people.  Ds13 is a people magnet and who he is has opened the way for some of these conversations.  Kids of all ages in the pediatric ward like him (as do their parents)- the two year old in his room who brings him balloons to play with together, an eight year old a few rooms away came to show him his new toy car, the eleven year old in the playroom did computer stuff with him and then found a wheelchair just like ds13’s so he could copy him…so talking to the parents of all these people is very easy.

It’s a nice to be able to interact with so many people in a meaningful way, which is a luxury you don’t get in daily life – everyone is always rushing somewhere, but in the hospital, we’re all there, without anywhere else to be or anything else to do.

Lest you think this has been a relaxing vacation-like week, I’ll just say, it hasn’t – all that time doesn’t come out of my empty schedule!  Dd18 has been an amazing help and I don’t know what I’d do without her; she’s rearranged her schedule so she’s able to take care of Yirmiyahu when I need to go to the hospital, and she goes to the hospital when I’m home.   Dd16 spent last Shabbos at the hospital and plans to go again for this Shabbos (though she’s sick so that might change).

At every hospital I’ve been at, I’ve noticed how the Arab families have so many visitors at times that don’t seem to be easy times for people to visit – mid morning and mid afternoon – and I really wonder about how they do that.  We’re really stretching ourselves to have one person at a time staying with ds at the hospital, forget about more than one person coming!   (Though last night dd18  brought ds3, ds5, and ds6 to the hospital with her to visit ds13, then after staying a couple of hours they left to go home with me.)  What I think is that the families live very close to each other and they take care of each other’s children, which is wonderful because they have so much built in emotional and social support.

I got home with the three boys from the hospital at 10:15 pm, then was up with Yirmiyahu until 3:3o am, since he had to be held upright in order to sleep so I put him in a wrap when I went to bed, then leaned against the wall while sitting and tried to fall asleep.  It didn’t work well.  🙂  Then all of the boys ages 6 and down were sick today so they stayed home, along with dd16.  Hopefully I’ll get a decent night’s sleep tonight, and we’ll all rest up over Shabbos!

Avivah

At the hospital…again

Healthy Living

Tonight I’m posting from my ds13’s hospital room in Haifa.

We spent hours in the pediatric emergency room, after beginning our day at the pediatrician, being referred to an orthopedist, and then being sent here.  Do you know what tomorrow is?  The end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.  Hence, all the programs on the National Geographic Channel (which is what was showing in the emergency room) were about this.  The rapture, mark of the beast, apocolypse, huge amounts of birds and fish dying in a close geographic range, ten ways the world could come to an end…somewhat interesting but very inappropriate for a children’s waiting room.  I passed my sentiments on to the staff.

We’re here because ds woke up on Shabbos morning with pain in his hip, which got worse within a short time.  It’s pretty intense and it’s constant.  He’s spent all day and night trying to find a comfortable position to sit or lay in, and only gets up to walk if it’s absolutely necessary.  Painkillers dulled the pain but it wasn’t passing and I was concerned about the possibility of infection in his hip joint.

The xrays showed everything was fine with the bone itself and he didn’t have any external signs of infection, but to make a long story short,  the blood work showed an infection so they decided to hospitalize him for treatment.   I’ve spent this week being really concerned and I’m relieved that this will be treated now.

In light of the upcoming apocolypse I should be appreciative for being alive :), and I am glad we have access to good medical care, but I’m honestly getting tired of hospitals.  Prior to moving here, we rarely saw a doctor and had just three emergency room visits for all of the kids together throughout the years.  I’ve been to more doctors than I want to think about, we’ve been to the emergency room at least six times, and that’s not including the four days I was in the hospital after Yirmiyahu was born, the daily visits until he was released from the NICU, or the visits to my mother when she was hospitalized recently for hip replacement surgery.

When we were told to take ds to the emergency room, thanks to my increased familiarity with four area hospitals (five if you count the geriatric hospital my mom went to for rehab) – two in Haifa, one in Tzfat, and one in Nahariya – I was able to quickly decide which one would be best.  Since every time I’ve gone to a new hospital it’s taken time and effort to figure out how to get there, it was a nice side benefit of my past experiences that today I didn’t have to do that.  Since they’re all good, the biggest remaining part of the equation was which was easiest to get to via public transportation so that we can regularly visit him, which is why I chose Haifa.  It’s further from Karmiel than either Tzfat or Nahariya, but there are buses a few times an hour – and for some strange reason, the bus fare is a bit less than the other two cities even though it’s further away.

This is the same hospital that my mother was at for her hip replacement surgery but when I stayed overnight with her, I had a plain plastic chair to sleep on.  In the pediatric department, there are cushioned chairs that fold out into a bed, which is is so much more comfortable!  As of now I’m assuming he’ll be here for Shabbos, so I’ll stay until Friday afternoon when dd16 will come to spend Shabbos here with him.  Even though I wish we didn’t need to be here, I do appreciate being able to spend time with just one child without anything else that I need to do. It’s actually almost relaxing.

The nurse has just come in and said he needs to have another xray (at 9 pm!), so off we go!

Avivah

Homemade goat milk formula for babies

Healthy Living, nutrition

Last week after a visit to the doctor it became apparent that Yirmiyahu isn’t gaining enough weight just with nursing.  I have a  theory about why that is – I think it’s because his palate is high and narrow, and he can’t create enough suction to keep the milk in his mouth.  I see there’s a lot of spillage as he nurses and don’t think it’s a milk supply issue, and his sucking is good so I don’t think it’s caused by a weak suck.  Whatever the cause is, I needed to do something to address the lack of weight gain.

The  day after the doctor visit, I had to travel to Tzfat and hoped to buy goat’s milk from a friend, but we weren’t able to connect in time.  Fortunately, she has a neighbor who studies here in Karmiel and she was able to send it with her, and two days later I had two liters of fresh goat’s milk to use.  Until I got the milk from her, I used formula from the store.  His weight was a really big concern to me – at ten weeks old, he was only a pound more than his birth weight (7 lb) – and immediately remedying this was my top priority.

Before I tell you what I did to make my formula, I’ll share why I didn’t want to use store formula.  Firstly, just looking at the ingredient list makes it hard for me to countenance giving this to a baby.  It’s very artificial and processed, and I avoid this kind of food for my entire family; since babies with T21 frequently have digestion issues, finding a healthy alternative is especially valuable. I didn’t want to use cow’s milk (even with homemade formula) because so many kids with T21 have allergies and issues with casein and I’d rather take a proactive stance and avoid this issue rather than wait for a problem to later show up.

Soy formula has its own issues; I read a while back that soy formula isn’t supposed to be sold in Israel anymore but I don’t know if that’s accurate, and since I sent dh to the store to make the formula purchase I wasn’t able to see if it was on the shelf.  I don’t know what the formula alternatives are available for those with milk allergies, but there must be something. I tried coconut milk but it seemed to upset his stomach, and even if it had been okay for him, what I buy here has stabilizers added and I didn’t want to give him something with preservatives.  I tried the broth formula based on Nourishing Traditions and he didn’t get full – he kept drinking and drinking with no satiation.

Then I thought of goat’s milk. It’s high in fat, very digestible and low in allergens.  My adaptation of the recipe in Nourishing Traditions is below:

Homemade Goat Milk Formula

  • 2 c. raw goat’s milk
  • 1 t. cod liver oil
  • 1 t. extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 t. butter oil (I don’t have this yet but plan to add it once I can get it since it works synergistically with the cod liver oil – I hope to have it in about a month)
  • 1 t. organic blackstrap molasses (plan to add this to the next batch)
  • 2 t. extra virgin coconut oil
  • 2 t. powdered nutritional yeast
  • 2 c. filtered water

Mix everything together, and shake well.  Yields 36 oz.

I didn’t add nutritional yeast to the first batch, because I wanted to see how he tolerated the basic mixture.  If there would have been a reaction, it’s easier to narrow down what is causing the issue if there are fewer ingredients to start with.  The nutritional yeast is particularly important when the formula is made with goat’s milk, which is rich in fat but doesn’t have folic acid, but this is something that some children react to so it’s good to be aware of that and pay attention to how your child responds.

Now that I’ve made a batch with nutritional yeast and it’s been tolerated fine, I’ll add in the blackstrap molasses.  I’ve written about blackstrap molasses before; it’s a good source of iron and B vitamins.

I add a vitamin supplement called Nutrivene-D twice a day to his bottles.  I don’t add this in with the  formula because I can better control the amount he gets by adding it to the bottle right before I give it to him – I don’t know in advance how much he’ll drink in the course of a day of the homemade formula and I want to be sure of his dosage. This is a more than just a powdered vitamin supplement; it’s targeted nutritional intervention (TNI) and is formulated specifically with those with T21.  At his body weight he’s supposed to be get 1/2 teaspoon broken up into two different feedings.

I also add probiotics to the first bottle of the day.  Again, I find it easier to control his intake by doing this separate from the formula mixture.  I give Yirmiyahu .05 grams of the 11 strain powdered probiotic for those on the GAPS diet (I happen to have this in the house and it’s a high quality product, but you can use any decent probiotic) – this is equivalent to 13 billion cfus.  I started giving Yirmiyahu probiotics when he was four days old and in the NICU – when I pumped milk at home, I added the probiotics to it and then gave it to them at the hospital to use in his feeding tube.  I took him for cranio sacral work when he was 2.5 weeks old, and the practitioner commented that I must be giving him probiotics – I said I was but asked how she could know that, and she said that by looking at his tongue she didn’t see the signs she would have expected for a baby who had been on high dosages of antibiotics.

I’m still experimenting with how to most efficiently prepare this formula, but what I did with the last batch was to add everything but the water at one time.  When I was ready to prepare a bottle, I added an equal amount of hot water to the amount of formula I was putting in.  This made warming it up very simple, and also quickly melted the coconut and olive oils, which solidify in the fridge.

Yirmiyahu has been taking this for over five days now and is doing great.  Several of my family members are sure he looks as if he’s gained weight; I haven’t yet checked that (I will in a couple more days) but he’s having plenty of wet and dirty diapers again (which he wasn’t having when I was exclusively nursing).  I keep an eye on his stools to see how he’s reacting to what we give him, and this looks like it’s working well for him.  The color of his stools on the other things I tried weren’t right – blackish greenish on the broth, lime green on the coconut milk (sorry to be so graphic but this is how I could tell -along with the consistency – that the other things I tried weren’t being properly digested).  Now they’re yellowish curds again.

The only day that he had broth formula was when I had to travel to Jerusalem for the day.  When I got home, I immediately saw that he looked terrible – peaked. His face was blotchy and pale.  This reverted back to normal within a day of nursing, and the skin on his face is still looking good with goat’s milk.

For those who are wondering, I’m still nursing him.  I nurse him before I give him a bottle so he gets the benefits of mother’s milk as well as of nursing, and then give him homemade goat formula to boost his calories.  He’s drinking huge amounts of this formula, and it’s very gratifying knowing that I’m giving him a high quality nutritionally well-balanced food that is helping his digestive health in both the short and long term rather then harming it.

As far as the cost, I pay 15 shekels for a liter of raw goat’s milk; this works out to approximately $15 a gallon.  It’s not cheap but neither is formula – the cost is pretty similar – and this is definitely a better investment in his health!

Avivah

(This post is part of Fat Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays.)

Mother’s milk for eye and ear infections

Healthy Living, Intentional Spending

Yesterday morning, baby Yirmiyahu woke up with an eye infection – one eye was sealed shut with dried gunk.  He had this several weeks ago as well, and both times I treated it easily, naturally and frugally.

The remedy for an eye infection in a baby is so easy that it’s almost not worth mentioning, except not everyone is aware of this!  You simply put a few drops of mother’s milk in his open eye.  For the first eye infection he had, I had to do this several times, but yesterday just one time was enough to totally clear up the infection.  This works because breast milk has an antibody in it called immunoglobulin A that limits the growth of the bacteria.

Breast milk is very useful in treating the small infections that babies get – you can use it for stuffy noses and ear infections, in addition to eye infections.  (Some use it for cuts and scrapes, but I’ve never done this.)  The approach is the same for all of these – just put some drops of milk in a few times a day, until it clears up.  It doesn’t sting, smell bad, or necessitate a trip to the store to buy a bottle of medicinal drops – you just need to be a nursing mother and voila! – with a few seconds you can easily help your baby feel better.

Avivah

Nursing baby with Down syndrome – not easy but important

Healthy Living, Trisomy 21
Yirmiyahu – (5 wks old)

When Yirmiyahu was born, I wasn’t able to nurse him right away – we were rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, then the nurses kept him in the nursery for hours until I finally saw him.  At that point, he was in the deep sleep that newborns go into a couple of hours after birth, and nothing could induce him to wake up.

That was before that we realized there were medical issues or Down syndrome; then he was transferred to the NICU. For the first week he was there, he was on a feeding tube.  When they told me he was strong enough to start nursing, it was very slow.  Initially he couldn’t get latched on, then once he could latch on, he couldn’t stay latched on for more than a second.  It was very challenging to teach him to latch on and I had to do it again, and again, and again (at five weeks old, he’s getting the hang of it but doesn’t latch on for more than a minute and never does it without my help, so he still needs a lot of assistance with this).

I continued pumping (he had gotten my milk from the first day via the feeding tube) and hoping that he’d get strong enough to nurse fully, but it was very discouraging.  He was such an easy baby, hardly crying at all – the exceptions were when he got a blood test and had a bris, and even then he stopped crying as soon as it was finished.  So you can imagine how hard it was when he would scream and scream as if he were in pain every time I tried to nurse him.

After three weeks, I contacted a local La Leche League leader for help.  I’ve nursed nine babies before this and never needed the assistance of a lactation consultant, but this was a different situation.  Since he was getting most of his nutritive needs via a bottle, I was concerned that he’d have a hard time transitioning to just nursing since the way a baby uses his mouth when nursing or when drinking from a bottle is so different.  I specifically asked about the SNS, supplemental nursing system.  She was eager to help until she heard that he had Down syndrome – then she told me that she didn’t have experience with that and gave me the number of a friend of hers who successfully nursed her daughter (who had DS) for two years.  But I wasn’t interested in traveling to yet another city to meet with her.

Anyway, the LLL leader met me on her way out of the city for Shabbos, and gave me the scaled down equivalent of an SNS – a feeding tube.  I told her I could work out how to use it with the help of the internet, and dh got busy rigging a makeshift SNS system for me (my husband is very good at finding creative solutions!).  When I tried to use that, I came very close to crying or screaming with frustration.  I ended up flinging it off and later put it away in the kitchen cabinet, where it’s never emerged from since.  🙂

A lot of time was being taken up every day with the feeding process: I’d nurse him, pump, then give him a bottle so he’d actually be full.  It was very tiring and time consuming, so much so that it felt close to a full time job sometimes.  At one point, a good friend responded to my exhaustion and told me I wouldn’t be any less of a mother if I just gave him formula. And she’s right, I wouldn’t be.  Breastfeeding isn’t what makes you a good mother; how you parent does.

But even though it was so demanding, I felt like this was something I had to do for him.  Babies with Trisomy 21 have weak facial muscles and this is a big part of why breastfeeding can be so challenging – they often lack the oral strength for nursing (his weak muscle tone in his tongue was responsible for his episodes of apnea when he was in the NICU).  Most babies with T21 develop tongue protrusion, and this practice is encouraged by bottle feeding.  That’s not something I want to encourage.  Nursing can help prevent this from becoming an issue – an excellent article that I read by a well-known speech therapist detailed how some of the features associated with Down syndrome are part of a cascade of consequences that begins with bottle feeding.  It’s called The Oral Motor Myths of Down Syndrome.   Breastfeeding is an oral workout for a baby, since it works the facial muscles, including the tongue.  So I think of every nursing session as oral motor therapy for him.

Nutritionally Yirmiyahu needs the qualities of mother’s milk since his health was compromised when he was born, and also because it’s typical of those with T21 that they have weaker immune systems.  Studies have also shown that breastfed infants have IQs that average 5 – 10 points higher than bottle fed babies.  I’ve never thought of this as a big deal with neurotypical children, but it’s worth the short term discomfort and pressure for me in order to give Yirmiyahu this long term benefit; there’s a lot I can’t control or change about him having Down syndrome but this is something that I can do.

I had pressure from his doctors to stop nursing him and give him formula.  This was because his weight didn’t go up for the first few days after he came home from the hospital.  I wasn’t worried, since I saw he had plenty of wet and dirty diapers, but they were concerned.  But the numbers on the scale were more important than my opinion in this case.  It would have been so, so easy to quit. It’s challenging to be working so hard at something and then to be told that your baby is better off without your efforts.

Yirmiyahu (5 wks)

I’m not yet at the stage of fully nursing; I’m still pumping for about fifty percent of feedings.  When I nurse him, it takes a long, long time, and often he’s still hungry forty five minutes later; in those cases, we give him a bottle afterward.  But we’re getting there and I’m confident that we’ll make the transition to full nursing.  Most mothers with babies who have T21 don’t nurse them, because the experience can be so daunting.  I totally understand them!  The main thing that helped me was remembering why I felt this was important, keeping my eye on my goal.  And the other aspect of this was not giving up.   Sometimes you have to keep on keeping on when you have tough situations to get through, and this is no exception.  Persistence, persistence, persistence!

Avivah