Harrison is a Big Brother

We are a family of four now, our newest little Kozling growing inside my womb for the next few months before we meet him or her earth side. We are elated to be adding to our family, and the miracle of growing a tiny being will never be lost on me.

Since my recent posts have shifted to be about our family’s more natural lifestyle, I have decided to continue on that topic and write about how we are going about this pregnancy, which is essentially identical to how we went about my pregnancy with Harrison. Read: very hands off.

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When I first became pregnant with Harrison, I would tell anyone who would listen “do this, not that, when you are pregnant.” “Do this, not that, when you are in labor.” “You definitely do NOT want to do that!!” As I went through pregnancy I realized in hindsight how uncaring and unkind I had been in those (one-sided) conversations. And as Harrison has been growing up, I’ve become more and more aware of ALL OF THE MOM-SHAMING that goes on in our world. I’ve since learned (tried to learn) to tame my words, and to not tell people what to do. We all have our own version of what works for us, and what we hope for in pregnancy and labor and birth, and this blog post encompasses what I’m doing to try and achieve my hope, my ideal pregnancy, labor, and birth. The lifestyle I live is a passion of mine and so yes I will keep talking about it. Because it works for me and I want to share it with the world. And I'm doing my best to share it in such a way that makes it clear I have no judgment for those who choose differently. This is me doing me. You do you.

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We had the most wonderful set of midwives for my pregnancy and birth with Harrison, and we are so happy to be able to work with one of them again for this pregnancy, along with her new colleague. We are once again planning for a home birth, in the same one-bedroom apartment we’ve been living in for over four years now. If you’ve read my birth story with Harrison, you may recall we ended up transferring to the hospital after close to 48 hours of labor- once it became overwhelmingly clear that my body needed intervention to open up past 7 centimeters. And while our time at the hospital was generally positive, we are hopeful that we can actually stay at home this time and that Harrison will be with us to welcome his sibling into the world.

Working with midwives and planning for a home birth are very conscious decisions for us- we know (and have experienced) that the closer we get to the medical model of birth, the more interventions will be asked of us or coerced on us. We believe that pregnancy and birth are fundamentally natural processes and we thoroughly appreciate going through them with a team of individuals who are like minded. Our midwives provide us with plenty of scientific and evidence-based information about all the choices we have during this process, and we are supported in the choices that we make based off the information.

So what are the choices we are making?

We are not doing any ultrasounds. This includes turning down the option to hear our baby’s heartbeat with a doppler. We believe that the safety of these options is overstated and that they are overused. Here are two blog posts on the subject from sources I trust: here and here. (This coming from the person who turns the WiFi off at night, uses a radiation-blocking cellphone case, and has never gone through the x-ray scanner at the airport. I do my best to walk my talk.) We felt it was definitely unnecessary to have an ultrasound done to confirm our pregnancy when the baby was just a few weeks gestation- a urine and blood test had already confirmed it. Later in pregnancy our midwives are able to determine our baby’s health and position based on palpating my stomach and keeping track of my fundal height, and eventually feeling the baby and gauging the amount of amniotic fluid. We are perfectly happy to wait until around 20 weeks (give or take) to hear the baby’s heartbeat through a fetoscope (like a stethoscope, but specifically designed to hear a baby’s heartbeat in the womb). I trust inherently in my body, and hearing the heartbeat (or not hearing it, for that matter) would not and does not change the course of my pregnancy. If we wanted to find out the gender of our baby, we could do a blood test rather than an ultrasound. But we enjoyed the surprise when Harrison was born, and we are happily anticipating that moment again with our newest little one.

We are forgoing all invasive tests. An amniocentesis is definitely out of the picture as we see it unnecessarily dangerous. We will also forgo internal checks that can become routine towards the end of pregnancy; I don’t need to know if I’m one centimeter dilated at 39 weeks, it would just make me anxious and it would lead to more checks. Once I’m in labor, one or two checks are fine if seen to be necessary. Really it’s pretty easy to tell how far someone has progressed through labor when she is unmedicated. Any time you have an internal check you increase the risk of introducing foreign bacteria into the very environment your baby will be passing through.

I made my stance on vaccines clear in my last post, but to reiterate- we are declining all vaccines. The standard vaccines offered to pregnant women are the Tdap and the Influenza vaccine. Unfortunately these are routinely given without informed consent- has any care provider ever taken out the insert of either of those vaccines and shown their pregnant patients the lines that read “safety and effectiveness of this vaccine has not been tested in pregnant women”? There is also casual evidence to suggest the flu vaccine can cause miscarriages or early labor. I hesitate to write that because, as stated in the inserts, no safety studies have been done so there is no “scientific” evidence either way, and so I have no studies to cite. But the stories are out there in droves.

And I totally am not doing the glucose test that every pregnant woman seems to dread. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in that drink? There is no way I will ever allow those ingredients in my body, ESPECIALLY when I have a baby growing in me and relying on me for all of his or her nutritional needs. I have the option of declining testing for gestational diabetes altogether, or I can track my levels with an in home blood prick for a set amount of days, or I can eat a specific number of specific organic jellybeans in lieu of the drink. We declined testing altogether when I was pregnant with Harrison, due to my overall good health. I imagine we will decline it again this pregnancy, but we haven’t discussed it yet.

What are we doing then?

Non-invasive tests are fine by us if it’s helpful information. Blood tests for my vitamin/mineral levels are great information. Urine tests are non-invasive and provide helpful information as well. I am keeping myself as healthy as possible through diet and exercise. First trimester was rough this time around (after being mostly a breeze with Harrison), and I lived on carbs, cheese, and refined sugar for far longer than I care to admit. I’m currently in the blessed bliss that is second trimester, and my diet has gotten much better. I’m taking a few extra supplements- this very clean prenatal vitamin, Blood Builder due to low iron (not as clean as I'd prefer, but it is a decent option), continuing with this cod liver oil, magnesium (as well as using this magnesium lotion to help avoid leg cramps), and this probiotic specifically formulated for healthy flora in the birth canal. I’m eating fermented foods (a far better source of probiotics than any pill), drinking raw milk, “eating” chicken liver (read: freezing it and then swallowing pill-sized pieces), and including plenty of healthy fats in my diet. I generally walk a minimum of three miles per day, and I’m actively aware of my posture and movements throughout the day while I’m playing with Harrison. I’m doing my best to drink plenty of water, which is my primary source of hydration. 

Additionally I am seeing a chiropractor throughout the course of my pregnancy- a chiropractor who has specific interest in and extensive experience working with pregnant women and who does craniosacral therapy as well. This is beneficial in so many ways; keeping my body aligned so I am carrying this baby the best way possible, helping my spine and pelvis adapt to the many changes my body is going through, and generally helping my body AND mind feel GOOD. It is also so beneficial to help my baby stay in the best position for birth as he or she continues to grow and especially when I approach the later weeks. I was feeling so rough before my first chiropractor appointment this pregnancy and simply felt like gold afterwards. I treasure the appointments I have with my chiropractor and know without a doubt it is some of the best self-care I can implement.

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So ... off we go on another adventure!

Kozeluh family of 4, picture taken a few weeks ago on my birthday.

Our Family and Vaccines

Shortly into my pregnancy with Harrison, Jeremy and I were faced with the beginnings of the decision whether or not to have him receive any vaccinations, like any other parent. The first form of this decision came when I was provided information about receiving the flu shot while Harrison was still in my womb (after all, anything I received, he would receive as well.) It ended up being a very simple decision, and I declined. The package insert on the flu vaccines clearly states that they have never been tested on pregnant or nursing women. Decision made. Here are the package inserts from four variations of the flu vaccine: 1, 2, this particular insert specifically states that the safety and effectiveness has never been tested on pregnant or nursing women and pregnant women who receive it should be added to a particular registry, presumably so that reactions can be tracked since the product hasn't been tested for that demographic before being put on the market: 3, 4.

I don’t remember if the Tdap was offered to me while I was pregnant, but I know that if I had been meeting with an OB in a general hospital setting, it definitely would have been, and I would have turned that down as well. My body was working so hard to grow a tiny human, and I didn’t want anything getting in the way of my body’s natural health. Not to mention that section 8 of the Adacel insert clearly states “It is not known whether Adacel vaccine can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman or can affect reproduction capacity. Adacel vaccine should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.” (5) The same goes for BOOSTRIX (6), and both inserts mention a registry to add the names of pregnant receivers to. Putting something unnatural into my body that has not been properly tested for my demographic, and/or has not withstood the test of time, was not and is not something that I am comfortable with.

So anyway, enough about me. What about my newborn baby?

Declining the vitamin K shot at birth was an easy decision- that injection has a black box warning (7), explicitly stating that it has caused "severe reactions, including fatalities." Harrison did, however, receive a few oral doses of vitamin K on a schedule prescribed by our midwives, who continued their in-home care through 6 weeks post-partum. Having that support was instrumental in the confidence we had in Harrison's overall health- vaccines or not. (For what it's worth, we also declined the eye ointment, erythromycin, that is standard for newborns, since it is given to prevent the transmission of an STD from mother to baby and we had no worries about that. We also easily declined the standard Hepatitis B shot since the only ways Hep B can be transmitted are through shared needles or sex.)

Jeremy and I initially decided to wait on making a solid vaccine decision until Harrison was 18 months old. That age was based on my mistaken knowledge that the blood-brain barrier closes right around that time, and so in my mind and in my early thoughts, that meant the vaccine ingredients wouldn’t have access to Harrison’s brain if he received them after he turned 18 months old. In that year and a half of waiting/researching, I found differing information that the blood-brain barrier is closed at birth or that it closes at three years. So admittedly I was mistaken, but thanks to that mistake I was granted more time to search and research and I learned about two tricky ingredients that are in many vaccines- Polysorbate 20 and Polysorbate 80. These ingredients purposefully OPEN the blood-brain barrier and allow for the flow of other ingredients into the brain (8). That was more than enough to give me pause. What were we allowing into the brains of our healthy children?

The CDC has a handy PDF that lists the ingredients in vaccines (9). I was surprised, in perusing that list, to find ingredients like aluminum, MSG, formaldehyde, and monkey kidney cells, to name a few. 

I stopped using aluminum to cook with years ago, and stopped using deodorant with aluminum years before that. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin. (10) It builds up in the body and can cause inflammation and can take years and years and years to filter out, if it does at all. (11, also in 10) Inflammation anywhere in the body can lead to an entire host of issues. (12) High levels of aluminum have been found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. (13) Additionally, it is interesting to note that the FDA has mandated that the highest amount of aluminum allowed in IV bags is 25mcg per liter (14), yet vaccines have anywhere between 125-850mcg of aluminum in one dose. One example is Pediarix (15), one of the options for Dtap, which is given “as early as 6 weeks old.” You can scroll down to line 405 to see that it contains 0.85mg of aluminum, or 850mcg. That said, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of having even trace amounts of aluminum injected into my baby and giving it full access to his body, including his brain. (16)

MSG is something else I already purposefully avoid in my day-to-day life, so why would I give it access to the bloodstream of my child? MSG is also a known neurotoxin and thankfully it has gotten a bad rap, finally, over the past little while. The glutamate in MSG is an excitotoxin. Here is a study that states “glutamate excitotoxicity has been implicated widely in the pathogenesis of a range of neurological diseases including Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease.” In this study it was successfully used to kill off stem cell neurons. (17) Here is some information about what can happen in the brain when neurons die: 18.

Also of note in that study- the stem cell line used was derived from human embryos. Science is full of moral questions-  what should be allowed or acceptable and what should not. It can be tricky, especially as I believe our culture today is so far from any type of conservatism that it seems as though anything goes, and if you disagree you are ostracized. I’m not here to argue about stem cell research. I simply bring it up to lead to the next two vaccine ingredients I found to be questionable- WI-38 (19), MRC-5 (20). 

These are cell lines derived from aborted fetal cells. 

And there's where I draw a firm line. 

I am pro-life and this is something I cannot stand for. The Vatican has hesitantly decided it is okay (21), but the Vatican is not my God. And for the argument that these particular abortions happened so many years ago that it no longer matters? Don’t even get me started on that, and realize that regardless, there are continually more of these cells being developed the same way. Most recently, there is Wal Vax 2, developed in China as a hopeful replacement for the rapidly declining MRC-5.  Wal Vax 2 comes from one of nine aborted babies purposefully born alive in the sac and dismembered alive in order to harvest their organs while there was still life in them. (22) That's one case, and you can check out the Canadian Journal of Medical Science, Vol. 30, pg 231-245 if you want to read some gut-wrenching accounts of early gestation human embryos arriving in labs with their hearts still beating. If the future of our world is on the backs of the unborn who aren’t given a chance to live in it, count me out.

Questionable morality aside, no tests have been done on the safety of fragmented DNA being injected into our bodies, and there is plenty of anecdotal information about the negative effects these ingredients have on us. Some hold the argument that since they are the host material for growing the virus or bacteria used to make the vaccine they don't end up in the actual vaccine. This argument is invalid, as stated on the CDC's website. "Vaccines also may contain very small amounts of the culture material used to grow the virus or bacteria used in the vaccine." (23) 

Additional culture materials used to grow viruses and bacteria for vaccines, and consequently ending up in the vaccines themselves, include monkey kidney cells, bovine serum, Vero cells (from the African green monkey), chicken eggs, human albumin, insect cells, canine kidney cells, and mouse brains, to name a few. (24) While I'm on the topic, do some research in to the SV40 virus, which is an emerging pathogen that is associated with three different cancers and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Did you know that up to 30 million adults and children in the United States may have been exposed to SV40 from 1955-1963 due to contaminated polio vaccines? These vaccines were grown on kidney cells from rhesus monkeys, and these monkeys are often naturally infected with the SV40 virus. The Institute of Medicine concluded that “the biological evidence is of moderate strength that SV40 exposure from the polio vaccine is related to SV40 infection in humans.” (25) Moderately-strengthned evidence is enough to give me pause and wonder what else could be accidentally passed through vaccines via the culture material they were grown on.

And since I am on the topic of the role that animal ingredients play in vaccines, any hardcore vegans or animal rights activists need to also look up the link between vaccine-making and the blood of horseshoe crabs. One image of the process will chill you to the bone, it’s certainly one I’ve not been able to get out of my mind.

After coming across all of the above information, I had to keep looking. As a resident in California, not vaccinating is a HUGE deal. There are plenty of us who do not, but for that decision, our children are currently denied the right to an education in public or private school. (26) This is abhorrently ridiculous, but not the purpose of this blog post. It was just one more consideration in our research journey.

This one's for you, California. Proudly displayed outside the city hall in Culver City.

With further research, I learned about the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that was established in 1986 through the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, passed by Congress. This Act was put in to place when vaccine makers were being sued by parents for vaccine injury and the parents were WINNING these lawsuits. It was established so that vaccine makers have ZERO liability for the vaccines they produce. Zero. In an age where McDonald’s is liable for its scalding hot coffee, or an airline can be sued for an itinerary mixup that was the patron’s fault (27), vaccine makers cannot be touched. That really feels ridiculous, especially combined with the Supreme Court’s agreement that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.” (28)

When vaccine injuries occur, the NVICP takes care of legal assessment and determines payouts (29). The money from these payouts comes from the vaccine tax- that is, $0.75 cents per vaccine administered to anyone in the United States goes into a fund to compensate families who have experienced vaccine injury (and then pressed on for years through legal battles to get their due- money that may ease some burdens, but they never get their whole children back.) So did you catch that? It is the consumers of vaccines who compensate for vaccine injury- every time have a vaccine administered, you are paying $0.75 towards that pool of money because vaccine makers have no liability for their product. Having zero liability for a product as widespread as vaccines seems very dangerous to me. There are vaccines out there that have been "fast-tracked," that is to say, they were regarded as safe long before their trial period was over, and so immediately put on the market. Gardasil is one of those vaccines (30), and it is one of the most hotly debated- Japan, France, and India have either withdrawn their recommendation for the vaccine, banned it, and/or filed criminal lawsuits about it. If Merck, the creator of the Gardasil vaccine, could be held liable for its product, would it have still made the decision to fast track the vaccine?

I find the ingredients in vaccines truly troubling, and have seen or read about far too many reactions- however "small" or large they are. My brother recently reacted to doses of MMR and DPT- two vaccines that his school claimed were mandatory (they were not, Pennsylvania has the option of personal, medical, and religious exemptions), and used bullying tactics for weeks to ensure he received both vaccines. Both injection sites got very red, hot, and hard for about three days. He was very fatigued and collapsed on the floor after coming home from school the next day after track practice- his body had become very inflamed overnight as he slept, so when he went to school in the morning my parents had no idea how bad it was. This is my brother who is incredibly physically tough and rarely complains about pain. He was sick on and off for three weeks after those vaccines and slept constantly. Additionally, I have a friend whose first child reacted with eczema almost immediately after the second round of shots (4 months old) and had a fever. After continuing to vaccinate on schedule, food allergies started cropping up at 1.5 years- first to dairy, then to some nuts. Their second child had only one shot- Dtap at 9 months old- and developed a huge welt at the injection site. This family at that point decided to stop vaccinating because they became far more fearful of vaccine reactions than they were of the illnesses the vaccines were meant to prevent.

Every vaccine insert provides a list of potential reactions, check it out next time you're at a well-baby visit, or better yet check it out online before you go. These reactions range from fevers to seizures to anaphylaxis to inconsolable crying to Guillain-Barre syndrome to fainting to headaches to injection site pain and/or swelling to asthma to nausea to joint pain to coming down with the disease the vaccine was created to prevent to Pancreatitis to Vasculitis to arthritis to myalgia to encephalitis, to SIDS (yes, death) and on and on and on- vaccine reactions are real. (Too many references to link to, I just looked up numerous vaccine inserts for typical childhood vaccines and wrote verbatim what was listed under the "adverse reactions" sections. Typically this is section six of the inserts.)

We all know that there is an ever-growing schedule of childhood vaccines to be given at birth, 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, et cetera until 18 years old. This is actually a huge issue, because the schedule assumes that every child is at the same level of health, the same level of development, and has the same exact capabilities to process each vaccine. This schedule doesn't take into account family history of autoimmune diseases or vaccine reactions, and it doesn't take into account gene mutations that cause the body's detoxification system to function less than optimally. There is plenty of information out there about the MTHFR gene and the havoc vaccines can especially wreak on a person with this gene mutation. Vaccines are not a one size fit all procedure, much as we are told that they are.

Harrison was born in great health and has stayed healthy. He's never taken conventional medicine, and he has had an illness only a small handful of times in his two years of life. The very first time he was sick he was nine months old. It was after a trip to the emergency room to drain an abscess- and I attribute the low grade fever and lethargy he experienced over the course of the next twelve hours to the stress of the ER visit coupled with likely picking up the illness there. Another time he was sick he had chicken pox- caught from his cousins who were visiting from Northern Ireland, and I was ecstatic that he got it so early. It was so mild it didn't even bother him, and he is now almost guaranteed to have lifelong immunity to it. He was also sick just the other weekend, with the highest fever I've ever seen in him- 101.7- and some intestinal distress and lots of fatigue. Breastfeeding and rest got him right back on track after two days. His immune system is perfectly strong enough on its own to fight off illness, and we have a network of care providers we trust implicitly should anything more serious ever come up.

There are so many more arguments for and against vaccines, and this post could go on and on. If you have any questions about anything I haven't written about above, please ask. My sources and knowledge expand past what I've written above, I have just tried to keep it concise (and yes it's still gone on a bit long). It is worth noting that I could write an entire blog post about why we are NOT fearful of the diseases that vaccines have been made to prevent, and that was obviously one more consideration in this family decision. It is also worth noting that if Harrison (or Jer or I) are sick, we let people know before hanging out with them, much like any decent human should do. We can't get people sick any more than anyone who is fully vaccinated can. If we are sick, of course we can potentially get others sick. If we aren't sick, we aren't spreading disease. On the flip side, the argument could actually be put forth that someone who is recently vaccinated with a live virus vaccine AND someone who has not been vaccinated can be an asymptomatic carrier of the disease- unknowingly spreading it to others. (31)

All of the above information accounts for a few years of research on my part. I intend to continually learn and educate myself about vaccines; making a decision to not vaccinate any member of our family was a large-scale decision, and I want to always be armed with knowledge that supports this decision- for my benefit and for the benefit of those around me. I used to be concerned about telling people my thoughts on vaccination, but as I've learned more and more and have become more solid in this decision that we've made as a family, I've realized that I WANT people to know. And I want questions about it, and productive conversation. I purposefully cited sources only from the CDC, FDA, and scientific papers for this post. I have stated the facts as they are stated on these websites. My sources are linked accordingly throughout this post, but a comprehensive list of the sources is listed below.

1: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM263239.pdf#page13

2: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM305089.pdf#page15

3: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM335392.pdf

4: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM123694.pdf

5: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/biologicsbloodvaccines/vaccines/approvedproducts/ucm142764.pdf

6: https://gsksource.com/pharma/content/dam/GlaxoSmithKline/US/en/Prescribing_Information/Boostrix/pdf/BOOSTRIX.PDF

7: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2003/012223Orig1s039Lbl.pdf

8: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21348312/

9: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf

10: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21568886/

11: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23609067/

12: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/publish/news/mindinstitute/12807

13: http://info.cmsri.org/the-driven-researcher-blog/aluminum-readily-apparent-in-alzheimers-disease-brain-tissuehttp://info.cmsri.org/the-driven-researcher-blog/aluminum-readily-apparent-in-alzheimers-disease-brain-tissue

14: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=201.323

15: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM241874.pdf

16: https://www.nature.com/articles/jes200964

17: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3725411/

18: https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Life-and-Death-Neuron#Death

19: https://www.atcc.org/products/all/CCL-75.aspx

20: https://www.atcc.org/products/all/CCL-171.aspx

21: http://www.immunize.org/talking-about-vaccines/vaticandocument.htm

22: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526020/

23: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/additives.htm

24. https://vaccines.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005206

25. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC452549/

26. http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB277

27. http://time.com/2912187/man-sues-british-airways-for-sending-him-to-grenada-instead-of-granada/

28. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf

29. https://www.justice.gov/civil/vicp

30. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/57f7/bfb8859ca960c1a77cc29ae14aaccdd96960.pdf

31. https://www.nvic.org/cmstemplates/nvic/pdf/live-virus-vaccines-and-vaccine-shedding.pdf

A Health Journey

It’s always interesting to have people over to our apartment for the first time. The inevitable “What’s that?” is asked in regard to the gallons of kombucha that are in the process of brewing, or mason jars full of sauerkraut. They look almost in awe of the homemade sourdough that hangs out on the counter throughout the week. And those three things, ten years ago, would have seemed so strange to me. In fact I know I hadn’t yet heard of kombucha, and my only interactions with sauerkraut and sourdough were very commercial products, far from the beneficial and nourishing food that sits on my countertops. And those are just three things, right on the surface, easily pointed out. What would 20-year-old Bekah think also of avoiding conventional medicine, bedsharing with my 2-year-old, breastfeeding past the typical American weaning age, making many of my own beauty and body-care products, eating butter like slices of cheese, consuming minimal to zero refined sugar, having regular chiropractic care as one of the most important health defenses, making copious amounts of bone broth (and turning very carnivorous), deciding against circumcision for Harrison or any future boys we have, not going to “well-baby” visits with my child, or staying far away from vaccinations in any member of our family?

In terms of this decidedly not mainstream lifestyle, how did I even get here? 20-year-old Bekah would have had that question, and so many people who know me in this present day have asked. Truth be told, there is no glaring answer. It started with food and it's led to everything else and it’s taken ten years to make these changes. They’ve primarily happened one at a time, with plenty of space in between to make them such a part of my lifestyle that I don’t even think about them, it’s just who I am today.

Who was 20-year-old Bekah? A typical college student. Going to class or avoiding it, depending on the day. A different color hair each month (or so it seemed). Painfully introverted but surrounded by a community of friends who loved me for who I was. Slightly rebellious against the strict rules at my college. Took Tylenol or Ibuprofen for menstrual cramps. Ate all my meals at the cafeteria- lived on pasta or sandwiches with loads of lunch meat. Became a vegetarian the end of senior year though rarely thought about the food I was putting in my body.

I became a vegetarian initially to save money- I was grocery shopping for myself during the last semester of college. Back at my parent's house my Mom was in the process of changing the way she ate and fed our family, and it was due to her influence that I decided that if I wasn't buying organic meat, I wasn't going to buy it at all. I had no intentions to stick with it. (But yet I stuck with it for 10 years.) I lived off of frozen Kashi bowls and canned soup that semester, and I still remember the “No Chicken Soup” throwing me for a loop with its pieces of “chicken.” I just wanted vegetable soup. To this day I can’t stand tofu, and for good reason anyway, it does the body no good whatsoever.

Living on my own a year after graduation was a time for learning. I was figuring out what it meant to cook for one (or two, as Jer and I were dating and we had dinner together most nights), and I ate a lot of organic food, in the name of health, that was definitely not healthy. Sugar-laden yogurt, processed pizza pockets, pre-packaged vegetables with unnecessary additives. I thought I was doing alright. At this point I was also still popping Tylenol for every menstrual cramp, but had started to learn the wonders of homeopathy for impending sickness in the form of Boiron’s Cold Calm. I’m sure I also discovered Oscillococcinum sometime around then, and I’ve certainly never looked back (don’t tell past-me that Oscillococcinum is NOT vegetarian.) 

I moved to Los Angeles, watched Forks Over Knives (a vegan documentary), and decided it was all true and I needed to cut out allllllll animal products. I tried and didn’t last more than a few days. I didn’t know how to survive without dairy. (And I’m glad I didn’t. I recently listened to this podcast and it was SO enlightening, so informative, and it just makes so much sense. Great info on why the vegan diet is not good for our bodies long term, and great info on why eating dairy and/or meat is necessary for the health and nourishment of our bodies, the health of our environment, and the only hopeful option for feeding the whole world. Take a half hour and listen!)

Jer and I got married in 2013 and little by little I became more domestic, primarily with cooking (I'm still seemingly incapable of decorating our home in a pleasing aesthetic, oh well.) I did a lot of meal-planning and started cooking from scratch more often than not. Cooking from scratch with real foods led me to start considering what else I was putting in and on my body. If I was so concerned about toxins in the produce at the grocery store, what about the ingredients in my shampoo, or makeup, or body lotion? What about the plastics surrounding us that leach BPA and BPS into our food? I am very thankful that I never considered using any sort of contraceptive that chemically altered my body's natural rhythm, instead I learned about my body through the Fertility Awareness Method (and have used it to positive effect, even now almost five years later). I stopped using Tylenol- the last conventional medicine in my cabinets- and cleaning up my diet over the years has meant that my body produces no symptoms for "needing" it anyway. I made small changes regarding all of those things in that time, and over the years it has turned in to using some homemade makeup; brushing my teeth with homemade toothpowder; no deodorant (occasionally coconut oil) (and no, I don't smell, diet has helped with that also); a kitchen full of glassware, stainless steel, and cast iron; a medicine cabinet stocked with items like activated charcoal, elderberry syrup, gemmotherapy tinctures, arnica montana, vitamin C, and colloidal silver, to name a few; baking soda followed by apple cider vinegar to wash my hair; and I have dipped my toe into the world of essential oils but I'm not quite there yet, aside from diluted Frankincense to aid with fading a deep scar in Harrison's cheek.

Fast forward to August 2015 when I learned I was pregnant (thanks to everything I learned from the fertility awareness method), and I began considering even more what living a healthy lifestyle meant. I was in good health and took care of myself fairly well throughout those nine months, though I also still had plenty of Doritos, and other processed foods and refined sugar. I broke my vegetarianism and ate a little bit of chicken during my pregnancy, took fermented cod liver oil, and took desiccated liver capsules for a few months (probably not enough to be beneficial.) Looking back on my pregnancy, there's much that I would change in terms of how I cared for myself, and I have those notes tucked away for any future pregnancies. Being pregnant brought on many questions about how Jeremy and I wanted to care for our baby after its arrival, and these questions caused my journey into healthy living to travel much more quickly than the previous meandering years.

Little Harrison, once he was born, rocked our world. Of course we only wanted the best for him, and his arrival put me on a fast track for figuring out what lifestyle I really thought was beneficial. I came across this blog post that had so much curious advice, and the biggest take away was information about the Weston A. Price Foundation's nutrition guidelines for pregnant and breastfeeding women. This was the first time I heard about WAP, and now three years later I have just become a member. The information that the Weston A. Price foundation has to offer (the linked post is only the tip of the iceberg) has truly changed my perspective on food and nutrition, and I appreciate that it is backed my both scientific knowledge and anecdotal evidence from generations upon generations upon generations past.

While I am still a long (long, long, long) way away from following the WAP guidelines for pregnant and nursing women, over the past few months I have started eating more and more meat, to the point that I can't call myself any sort of vegetarian anymore. Chicken and turkey are something, but I have indulged in bacon, hot dogs, and ground beef at this point (of course I'm very careful about sourcing it well). We drink raw milk daily and take at least a half a teaspoon of fermented cod liver oil each day (Harrison included- Harrison especially!) I sooo sooo miss being able to walk out to my parent's backyard in the morning to gather fresh, pastured eggs for breakfast, but we buy the best we are able to find here, and eat them with runny yolks (Jeremy eats them raw for the most part). I eat slabs of butter in crazy amounts on sourdough bread, and Harrison loves to eat it straight (and maybe I've done that too). I cooked chicken liver for the first time the other day (fed it to Jer and Harrison, I'm not quite there yet), and I'm just about ready to to start buying it in bulk instead of relying on what is inside the whole chickens I purchase. Of course kombucha and sauerkraut are consumed in large amounts in our household, and I am about to start making milk kefir. We avoid sugar almost 100% at this point, and there are plenty of nourishing alternatives so we won't be going back (ok so occasionally it's still a nice treat, but it's so much easier for me to stay away from mindlessly eating it now). 

The information in these two podcasts (here and here) as well as Kelly Brogan's book, caused Jeremy and me to make a dramatic shift in the way we look at food and the way we consider every bite that we eat. These days I am ALL ABOUT GUT HEALTH. Everything I put into my body does something good or bad to my gut, and every system in my body requires a healthy gut to function correctly. All physical and mental health relies on gut health. I cannot understate that, I cannot understate how much I fully believe that. I can't look at a sick person anymore- minor cold, major short-term illness, lifelong autoimmune disease, whatever it is- and not wonder about their gut health and if they have tried altering their diet to relieve symptoms and heal their body from the inside out. The GAPS diet can turn physical and mental illness around, and the AIP diet can be a major help, while pharmaceuticals will mostly just cover symptoms and make life tolerable at best, all while damaging the gut further. This is my current soapbox. This may be my forever soapbox.

Do you know what else damages a healthy gut? Vaccines. Is that why we have chosen to forgo vaccines in our family? Not initially, but it's absolutely one of the many factors now. Our journey to that decision is four years in the making and requires its very own blog post, to be published in the next few days once my thoughts are coherently gathered together and my sources are linked. I'll leave you with this- the very first reason why we decided against vaccinations for our growing family was that we hadn't researched them enough. We knew that administering a vaccine could never be undone, and if we decided they were beneficial, waiting on them was not going to be harmful.

Ooooh this post is getting so long. So many things I still haven't touched on, but here's a blog post I read before I was pregnant that opened my eyes to the world of breastfeeding and bed-sharing and a type of attachment parenting that felt so right for our future family- and has become a large part of the way we've raised Harrison and it's worked so well for us. Our style of parenting is not something that was modeled to us, and I am thankful that I was able to learn of this perspective before Harrison was even conceived. 

And the circumcision debate! Oi, I think that one requires its own blog post as well. We didn't know Harrison's gender until a few moments after he was born, but obviously we did some research to have a decision about circumcision made before that moment. We decided against it initially because we just thought it was unnecessary. We didn't give much more thought to it. But now. But now you guys. I am armored with far more information I had in those late months of pregnancy and early months of caring for Harrison, even through his first year or more, and I am so sad that it is considered a routine and acceptable procedure in such tiny little beings who have no say in the matter. More on that in a later post, but like with vaccinations, circumcision can never be undone. If it's decided that it is beneficial or necessary, waiting on it is not going to be harmful. Research first. In all things. Maybe that's my soapbox. 

So here we are. Here I am. 20 year old Bekah is probably a bit flabbergasted at who 30 year old Bekah has become, but the 10 years it took to get here have made this lifestyle seem so normal. It is normal. It is my normal. Who knows where I'll be at 40? Earthing? Taking steps to avoid all the radiation in our environment? (Well I do have this phone case, to start.) Taking the plunge into essential oils? Owning a goat farm and selling milk and kefir and cheese and sauerkraut and kombucha at farmers markets (life dream you guys!) Who knows. We'll see where this journey continues to take me. I'm always open to learning about the best ways to maintain whole body health using what nature has provided for us. In this world that is ever the opposite, I want to continue to take it all in and pass it down to Harrison and his children and generations after that. Someone needs to.

What's Going On

A friend of mine has occasionally written posts that hit on a lot of goings-ons without all the detail, and I always enjoy them. Took the idea for this post, I hope you don’t mind, Hannah! A quick glimpse of life these days ...

Locking the cupboard at work that houses all the spices. So far Harrison has dumped an entire container of gourmet smoked sea salt flakes and has eaten ground cayenne.
Dumping the vacuum full of gourmet smoked sea salt flakes. Will they be missed? (Hi Beth and Andrew, if you ever see this.)
Baking a variation of these low-guilt cookies.
Going to the Farmers Market every Sunday.
Cooking bone broth and bacon. Who even am I?
Eating bacon and alllllll the meat. Seriously who even am I? Ground turkey meat sauce over spaghetti squash is a current favorite.
Wearing so many clothes I don’t feel good in. I need a wardrobe makeover.
Joining the Weston A. Price Foundation and so excited about it.
Going on dates with Jer, consistently. Why did it take us this long?
Decorating our apartment. After four years of living here, and almost five years of marriage, I’ve realized we can make our living space a home. Walls can be painted, towels can be coordinated, our bedroom doesn’t need to be a dumping space for everything that doesn’t have a place to go.
Sewing the curtains I trimmed with kitchen shears and then threw in the wash. Ok so I haven’t sewed them yet and there are hundreds of loose threads hanging off of them.
Drinking homemade kombucha, obviously. And lots of full-fat raw milk.
Reading The Whole Brain Child, finished it a few days ago and resonated with everything I learned from it. Started and finished The Handmaid’s Tale in two sittings last Saturday. Can’t remember the last time I’ve done that, and it was glorious. Working my way through Celebration of Discipline and discussing it with friends bi-weekly.
Walking all around Culver City, maintaining my “two baby dog lady” persona during the workweek.
Watching The Last Jedi. Finally. And I happily avoided spoilers. And I started The Handmaid’s Tale the day after I read the book.
Looking at all the barefoot shoes on a variety of websites and can’t make up my mind. I bought these and am happy with them, but I also want a pair of closed-toe shoes that do not look like running shoes.
Playing at the park with Harrison and Edith. Can’t stay cooped up inside with two children all day.
Wishing we weren’t on the opposite coast of my family.
Enjoying my slow entrance back in to running.
Loving these shirts Becki sent to Harrison and me, I love the shirts and I love that they were sent just because.
Needing a best girl friend. Life has been lonely, not gonna lie.
Wanting a good haircut. I was considering chopping it to my shoulders but I’m not so sure anymore. What can I do that is easily maintainable and works well for thick hair that has tight waves in the bottom layers?
Feeling some feels about my baby turning two in just over a month.
Listening to the Wise Traditions podcast, one or two episodes every day. I'm realizing more and more that these are my people.
Learning so much about gut health and the amazing ways the body can heal itself, physically AND mentally.
Thinking about my new learned ideas of what healthy is. All day long. Changes are abounding.
Traveling internationally with Jer and Harrison in September!
Taking Harrison to the bathroom every 45 minutes - 1 hour.
Hoping he starts self-initiating more consistently.
Riding my skateboard. Finally! Took it out on Sunday for the first time and had a blast, excited to get more confident with it.

"Early" Potty Training

On February 16th at 4pm I took Harrison's diaper off. While I did, I explained to him (as I had occasionally during the week previous), that we were now all done with diapers, and he wasn't going to wear them anymore. He had a hint of understanding- he seemed at first slightly sad, or concerned. He looked at his diaper all wrapped up on top of the changing table next to him and picked it up to study it. He's never been interested in looking at his dirty diapers before. I asked him if he wanted to throw it away, so he got down and took it to the trash can to drop it in. He gave it one last look, picked it back up for a brief moment, and then walked out of the bathroom play, buck naked. He was 21.5 months old.

It's been 10 days and he hasn't had a diaper on him since. (For better or worse!)

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Why February 16th? It was a Friday, and I had a half day of work. The following Monday Jeremy had off work. So Harrison got a good three and half days at home to start learning potty independence before we went back to our typical schedule. This was crucial to get a beneficial start.

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On that first afternoon/evening, Harrison wore no clothes and I stuck close to him the entire time. It was not a day to get distracted by my phone or wash dishes while he played independently. I kept a direct eye on him and kept him occupied with plenty of games and books and toys. When he did play independently, I sat out of the way but stayed close enough to continually observe. Anytime he started to pee, I moved him to his tiny potty and explained that pee goes in the potty, not on the floor. I had a spray bottle of 50/50 vinegar/water and a roll of paper towels nearby for the misses. As was expected, we had our fair share of misses. You can't potty train without misses. You just can't. At bedtime he wore long sleeves and pants as usual, but no diaper underneath. We explained to him that if he needed to pee, we would help him push down his pants and move him to his little potty that was right next to the bed. We made sure he peed just before he fell asleep, and then we woke him up a few hours later, around 11, and got him to pee again, half asleep. He woke up on his own two more times that night (as is very typical of him), and we got him to pee each time before I nursed him back to sleep. It was an exhausting night for all of us, and we had a small miss in the early hours of the morning, but the small consolation prize was that he slept until 9am! Learning new skills = sleep!

That next day Harrison gave us a lot of resistance and it was a loooooong day. He was still buck naked and we just stuck with him and moved him to the potty as we were able to. It felt very difficult and left me wondering why we started in the first place. He fought going on the potty, he fought nap time, he fought bedtime. He screamed and cried and choked on his tears and brought me to tears a few times, I felt so lost. That night was a lot of the same, though he stayed dry until 7am after refusing to sit on his potty two times throughout the night. Less sleep than the night before, and we felt slightly defeated.

Day three brought more misses. We mixed things up a bit and took him for a short walk outside, his first time with daytime pants on diaper-less. We visited an apartment open house (why?!) and as you can imagine the direction this story is going ... he left a large puddle for me to clean up, and I had to run home to get the spray bottle and paper towels. Oops. During nap time I re-read a few sections of the book we were using and realized that we were hovering too much and prompting too much, making it very, very stressful on Harrison (and us). The book also mentions days two and three are typically the most difficult in terms of resistance, and it gave some tools for how to handle it. We backed off on prompting and hovering, gave Harrison some small activities to keep him busy while on the potty, and had a lot of success the rest of the day.

That night was another frustrating night of resistance, but yet another night of him staying dry even while refusing to sit on the potty.

Day four brought mixed success, but increasing resistance as the day went on. He had a very rough evening, everything was off- not just potty training. He refused to sit at the dinner table, he refused to let us brush his teeth, he was angry as we helped him with his pajamas, he screamed for the potty as Jer was trying to get him to go to bed, but screamed for the bed as soon as he was on the potty. The whole thing was emotionally draining for all of us. I was a wreck the next morning, day five, and it was the first day he was coming back to work with me. I spent the day partially in tears, cleaning up more misses than I could keep track of, and dealing with the general goings-ons of an almost 2-year-old and an almost 1-year-old and an excitable dog.

BUT. But, but but.

At the end of the workday I made sure to let Harrison know that I needed him to pee before we got in the car to go home. The time came, and I locked us in the bathroom, distraction-free, and he fought me for a bit. We chatted, we played with some toys, we sang some songs, we counted to 20, etc etc etc. He wouldn't sit and wouldn't sit and wouldn't sit. Until then he did. He signed "potty" and sat and peed. Without any effort on my part. He just did it. What?

Looking back, that was the turning point, towards the end of day five. Something clicked, he changed his mind about all the resistance, he realized I wasn't messing around, he knew this was the new normal, and he complied- happily. We had an easy evening together, the three of us. We had an enjoyable family dinner, we played some games, he used the potty without issue whenever we prompted, and he went to bed simply. Our toddler was back. And he was ready to use the potty.

The days after that have been enjoyable, and we are back to our usual routines. Harrison is commando all day- we will start using underwear in a few weeks when he's (hopefully) forgotten the muscle memory of "something is tight around my bum, I guess I'm allowed to relieve myself in it." We've been averaging one or two misses per day, mostly at times that I realize in hindsight I should have thought to prompt him. He is not doing much self-prompting at this time, but he is better at holding it than he used to be. I have a good idea of when to prompt him, and I keep in the back of my mind how much liquid he's had to gauge when he may need to go again. We always get the "easy" catches: first thing in the morning, and during times of transition- leaving to go for a walk, coming back home from a walk or whatnot, before/after nap time, before bedtime. Overnights typically have one or two wakes to pee/nurse, and he easily falls back asleep. We've only had one nighttime miss in the past five days. He has stayed consistently dry every single nap (knock on wood) throughout the entire process.

Takeaways-

I am so glad we did this now. There's going to be resistance to the process at any age, and we've already gotten past the hump. I am not naive to the fact that there will be some regression at times, and I'll still be cleaning up misses for a while. But he is coming up on 22 months old, and putting his pee/poo in the potty has been fully normalized to him already. I am very proud of that for him.

Did elimination communication help? Yes, and no. EC and potty training are two separate processes. And we did EC casually and part-time, and we were unfortunately in the midst of an EC regression when we started potty training. However, EC DID help to normalize using the potty, and I think the biggest help is that it normalized pooping on the potty. We always had better success with poo rather than with pee during our EC journey. We've caught probably 80% of poos on the potty since he was around 6 months old. I am forever grateful that we are not dealing with a toddler who is afraid to poop on the potty, or flat out refuses too, or screams for a diaper to poop in, or poops in the corner of the house. It's been so normalized to Harrison from so early on that we have had zero issues with it. Praise be!

Ideas like "getting him used to the potty first" or wearing training pants or using sticker charts to celebrate success or bribing with any number of things. I'm so happy we didn't have that mindset. The method we used makes some great points about the detriment of many of those options and strongly urges against them. I believe we have had a better outcome due to avoiding all of that.

The process of potty training over the past ten days has helped Jeremy and I to have some good and tough discussions about our parenting style and setting boundaries. It's helped me to firm up some of my slippery ideas of being very laid back about Harrison's wants. It's helped us to find some firm boundaries that can be set to help Harrison be more confident in his surroundings. It's helped me to continue to learn a better balance of being laid back and being firm, without being shameful or unkind. This is the first thing that Jeremy and I have actively taught Harrison, and the first thing that Harrison has actively learned from us. The beginning of it was SO hard, and being on the other side of that difficulty is SO rewarding.

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We went out to eat on Saturday and we went out for ice cream on Sunday. I wasn't even concerned about Harrison being diaper-free. And he proved I had no reason to be. We got to each location and held him over the big potty to relieve himself, and he did, and we went on with our business, hanging out with friends and eating delicious food. The normalcy of that gives me a sense of awe, and admittedly a bit of a pat on my back as well. I'm just very happy about it. And now I want to shout from the hills that everyone can do this.

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We used the method in Jamie Glowacki's book "Oh Crap! Potty Training." I recommend it 100%. Clearly we've had good success with it, but aside from that I also appreciate her outlook on parenting, and setting limits, and her no-nonsense attitude about some aspects of potty training, and her SHAME-FREE approach to it all. Her method is broken down simply in the book, and there is a large section dedicated to "troubleshooting," if you will. I was re-reading and re-reading and re-reading it throughout the first few days of potty training. (We're borrowing a copy from the library and I have so far renewed it three times!) I also found so much support and solidarity in a Facebook group of parents who are using the same method. Also, FYI, you don't have to do daytime and nighttime training at the same time, that was personal preference for Jeremy and me. And I am very glad we did it that way, I think it's one more way we've set Harrison up for success, even as it is a bit more work for us.

*I will repeat, we are not "done" potty training yet, by any stretch. I know that. Harrison is barely self-prompting, and we are only 10 days in so I am fully aware that there will be PLENTY more misses. I don't leave the house without at least three extra pairs of pants and socks for him, and quite a few hand towels, at the very least. We go to work with the vinegar spray bottle and a huge roll of paper towels, just in case. And he sleeps on the bed on top of a wool pad and a folded over fleece blanket. We are prepared for the worst while continuing to give Harrison tools to set him up for success each day and night. And each day gets a little bit better, and our collective confidence continues to grow.

Family bed, set up for potty training success.
Maybe the next post will be about sharing our bed with our toddler and three cats.
Oh hey, Oscar!