Avivah Werner

Category: Healthy Living

  • Home from the hospital

    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:

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    Dd18 and ds13 together, enjoying the view.

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    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.)

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    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.

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

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    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

  • Craniosacral work for baby, Mozart for brain development

    Today I spent the first part of my day in Tzfat, where I had two appointments.  Since I already had one appointment scheduled in the city, I thought it would be good to maximize my time in the area and found a craniosacral therapist there to treat the baby, so that was my second appointment.

    I think that craniosacral therapy is valuable, particularly for a newborn who has recently had to fit through the birth canal and probably experienced some kind of pressure on the skull that causes misalignment.  There are a number of potential issues that can be positively impacted by doing craniosacral adjustments, including colic, difficulty in sleeping or feeding, and birth trauma.  The main downside of this therapy is that it’s not something that is covered by health insurance, but then again, it seems that most of what I find most valuable relating to health care isn’t!

    Another thing I had wanted to do this morning was to meet up with someone in the area giving away classical music cassettes.  I’ve been doing hours of research on Down syndrome every day beginning when the baby was two days old, and one thing that I came across was the importance of music therapy in stimulating the brain.  Mozart and Bach were particularly recommended.

    I started looking into purchasing some classical music (you should see the list of things I think would be valuable to buy for this baby!) but was delighted to see a posting a short time later by someone in Tzfat giving away lots of classical cassettes.  A neighbor had given me a cd/cassette player around Pesach time, so I have a way to play the cassettes.  I emailed to ask if she had any Mozart or Bach, and sure enough, she did!  I told her why I wanted them and she very generously put aside 11 cassettes for me, 6 Mozart and 5 Bach!  That was such an amazing thing!  I’m looking forward to using them next week after Tisha B’Av.

    And on a different note, traveling to Tzfat made me once again appreciative that the baby was in the NICU in Nahariya rather than the Tzfat hospital that I was in labor at.  The ride there is along a winding road and so nauseating that I don’t know how I would have managed it every day.  I took dd11 and ds10 with me today, thinking they would enjoy walking around the Old City of Tzfat while I was taking care of my appointments.  Poor ds10 tends to get carsick, and threw up on the way there and the way back.  We were all very happy to get home.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Supplements for female hair restoration

    About eight weeks ago, one of my daughters started experiencing sudden and dramatic hair loss.  After a few days she mentioned it to me so I got her started on some vitamins; I thought it might be a seasonal change or something about the water here, but I wasn’t concerned.  When it was continuing a few days after that, I took a look.  As soon as I saw her scalp, I got a sick feeling in my stomach because the loss was much more visible than I was expecting to see – in a week and a half she had lost half of her hair – and I immediately made an appointment with a naturopath.

    The naturopath made some suggestions for dietary adjustments (not really different from how we were already eating), some suggestions for supplements (that I had already given dd), and some suggestions for relaxation.  Hair loss like this is generally connected to stress, and when we got home from our appointment I gave dd some of my relaxation cds to listen to at night.  I also got busy online doing more research and looking for answers because I wasn’t confident that the suggestions we received were enough, since I had already been implementing prior to the appointment and the hair loss hadn’t slowed down.

    I also took dd to the pediatrician, who didn’t bother looking at her scalp and told her she shouldn’t feel stressed.  Then she chastised her for not speaking Hebrew more fluently (though she didn’t even hear her say anything – she only heard me ask dd if she understood a medical term that was being used and that dd said no) and started lecturing her about needing to read books in Hebrew to her younger siblings to improve her Hebrew.  Dd and I afterwards were like, was that supposed to be helpful?  Whatever.  All I needed from her was a recommendation for blood work so we smiled and left once we had that.  It’s a good thing I wasn’t relying on her help to resolve the situation, because I would have been shopping for wigs given another couple of weeks of things continuing as they were.

    Despite our efforts, the hair loss got worse before it got better.  Dd had a great attitude about it and we tried to stay positive and optimistic that her hair would start growing back soon.  Dd religiously followed the protocol given to her by the naturopath, along with my additions, and after about a month from when her hair first started falling out,there was a visible change.  One day she told me, “Mommy, look at my hairline – all these are new hairs!”  All over her head she had new hairs filling in where the scalp had been visible before.  When she said that I got a huge lump in my throat and almost started crying; I had been really worried.  It was then that I told her I had been afraid she was going to lose all of her hair, and she shared that she had been worried about the same thing.

    Obviously I’m not a doctor and not making promises that what worked for us will work for anyone else, but I’ll share what we did.  (Those with an asterisk in front were recommended by the naturopath.)

    • vitamin D – 2000 IU
    • *vitamin C – 1-2000 mg
    • *vitamin B complex – 500 mg
    • *vitamin B12 – 1200 mg
    • *zinc – 60 mg x 2 daily
    • cod liver oil – 1 teaspoon
    • homeopathic cell salts – silica 6x, 4 pills several times a day
    • liquid activated silicon – 10 drops

    There were some other things I suggested dd do, like scalp massage, hanging upside down for a few minutes in the evening to stimulate blood flow to the scalp and the use of rosemary oil but she didn’t do any of those.

    After seeing dd’s hair growing back, the naturopath told me that in situations like this, it’s not called hair loss but alopecia.  I’m really glad I didn’t know that beforehand, because I know only enough about alopecia that hearing the term would have worried me even more.  Thankfully this is now a situation that has been resolved!

    Avivah

  • Cellular memory – emotional imprinting on unborn child

    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

    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.)