Chiropractor and Pregnancy

 20 weeks, half way of my pregnancy experience and I can't believe how fast time has flown by. I am keeping track on this blog if you look under 'Pregnancy and Childbirth' links on the top of the page.
My pregnancy has been really simple and mostly full of ease. I didn't get morning sickness, I was aware in the mornings, however, that I am pregnant and if I didn't eat something soon I may have had some of that toilet hugging that can effect women.  I have been relatively happy and content. Some days my moods just stall, in other words I get no mood at all, just a present sense of existence with no emotion attached. I have moments of irritability and simply find myself on my mat, with my eyes closed and it quickly passes. Thank the almighty for meditation and yoga!
but...
I have had some struggle with my nerves. Specifically my sciatic nerve. After the second month, my sciatic nerve has been aggravating me. It acts up mostly after I exercise, leaving me without much movement or ability to exercise  happily. I have limited my movements to mellow prenatal yoga, walking, some cruiser bike riding and domestic activity around the house, gardening, cleaning, washing dogs, etc..
After each activity I would find myself with a pulsing nerve from my butt to my mid hamstring and any movement after that was irritating.

When the body becomes pregnant and all the muscles soften the hips and spine tend to shift into their places preparing the body for growth and delivery of a baby. The hips often settle in a position that can pinch nerves in the spine or around the hip area, like the sciatic. This can happen from poor sleeping postures and even poor posture while walking or sitting during pregnancy, since the growing body is changing so quickly.

Well, I avoid most intervention like the plague, even alternative medicine if I can help it, so I dealt with this for 2 months longer than I had too. I finally got to a point that sleeping was hard and uncomfortable and getting out of bed in the morning was a challenge. 

OK, I am fixing this. 

I went to a chiropractor recommended by my midwife. She specializes in pregnancy and was shockingly gentle and non aggressive (some chiropractors really know how to jerk the body around). We talked for about 20 minutes. She did some reflex testing on me and then about 4 small gentle adjustments and I felt tonz better. I even walked straighter. I was sore that night but have felt little sciatic nerve irritation since. 

I recommend seeing a chiropractor for nerve issues if you are pregnant and feel the body settling in the wrong place, even postpartum work may be needed if your feeling the body shifting back to the pre pregnancy state too quickly irritating any nerves or muscles.
~t

Going Green-er, Earth Day 2012

I have tried to practice living a greener lifestyle ever since I left college, studying environmental conservation has changed my thinking forever about protecting the Earth and doing my individual part for  the greater of the whole.

It isn't always the easiest and it takes time and awareness but I believe that what I do comes back to me in greater abundance, that is true for all of us.

This year I am living very simply and it has been nice to have the time to ponder my lifestyle and practices that I will be teaching my growing family. I like to give thanks for the Earth and seek even further changes I can make to help out with our planetary health. This year I am making a pledge to cleaning up even more. What I have already done and what I will start doing to help out me, my family, the Earth, and you!

 Here is my list of 20 lifestyle changes I've made other than recycling religiously;

1. Planting a garden every year. No matter where I am or where I go a garden is a reminder of where my food comes from. I plant it with bare feet so the Earth can absorb my energy and produce the best food for my body. Lots of Love and intention helps keep our connection with the Earth.

2. Compost my food scrapes and turn them back into rich healthy soil. An old plastic garbage can works great with some holes in the top.

3.Using canvas or any other reusable shopping bag for groceries, shopping, farmers markets or anything else that they use plastic bags...if I forget my bag I carry my goods to remind me to place them in my car for next time. The habit has stuck and now I leave bags in my car all the time.

4. Carry around my own water bottle. I don't buy bottled water. The plastic from those bottles is a terrible hazard to the environment. Watch water bottle story to learn more about this impact.

5. Turning off the lights when I leave a room, JJ can tell you all about me following behind him and turning off the lights as he leaves rooms as well. I also keep the lights off outside unless I am out there.

6. Changing the lightbulbs to CFLs, saving so much energy and money!

7. Washing my clothes in cold water instead of hot, better for my clothes anyway.

8. Combining my errands for one trip instead of driving needlessly everyday to the same place. Also, Drive the speed limit and coast to the stop signs instead of gassing the car and slamming on your breaks.

9. Ride a bike.  If at all possible, in Tennessee it is NOT very bike friendly, I would like to try to ride my bike more often for errands or to visit a friend if they live close.

10. Support my local CSA or farmers markets. Avoiding produce thats from out of the country.

11. Turn off my computer at night.

12. Hang my clothes outside to dry. Clothes dried in the sun smell soo good.

13. Before buying anything new, check craigslist, KSL, or a thrift store and see if I can find something that needs to be saved instead. Keeping my carbon footprint down by reusing first. Also, donate to thrift stores instead of throwing things away.

14. Make my own household cleaners. Check my tutorials for recipes.

15. Unplug my chargers when not in use.

16. I will use cloth diapers instead of reusable ones for my baby. One cloth diaper per day saves 365 disposable diapers from the landfill. Diapers do not decompose and they simply fill up. How many babies poop once a day? I am going cloth all the way!!

17. Use a Diva Cup for my menstral cycle. I have been using one for a year now and it is amazing, never have I leaked and I can do every sport and swim.

18. Use cloth napkins at dinner, then wash the kitchen with them before placing them in the dirty laundry.

19. Reuse glass jars for flour, honey, syrups, dried beans or anything else instead of plastic bags.

20. Buy food in bulk. Freeze it, continue canning food or place in cold storage.

What will you do to help our planet????

The Magical Skin

So lately I have been very obsessed with what I put on my skin. This includes my clothes, my detergent I wash my clothes in, my belly lotions, my soaps, and even the shampoos that I wash my hair with. The skin is the largest organ on the body and it absorbs everything through its many many pores. I have been thinking so much about the skin of my newly forming baby's body and how everything I use on my skin is being absorbed into my bloodstream and into my precious little Amazing one.

Yes, that is the babies name "Amazing" We simply can't think of another name!

Anyhoo, back to the skin. So I have gutted out all my products and either created my own or found great safe ones that I am going to share.



 Lets start with Shampoo-
I have searched many products for good shampoo and even made my own which is nice but some people will find it hard to get use to because it doesn't lather too much, I'll post a recipe for scaly scalp in my tutorial. The products I have found that are amazing with no sulfates (lathering agent), parabens, preservatives, MEA, DEA, or dyes. All these are useless in shampoos. My ultimate favorite is "DermOrganic" shampoo and conditiner both contain Argan oil which is great for repairing hair and leaving it incredibly shiny. I also found one from sally's beauty supply that is cheap and free from sulfates, parabens, silicones, DEA, MEA, or dyes. The brand is "Zotos- pure elements". "Desert Essence" and "Avalon Organics" and "Nature's Gate" all carry lines of chemical free shampoos and conditioners.
              -Keep in mind you won't do much good avoiding harmful shampoos if your water is full of chlorine and other hard water minerals. So from spriteshowerfilter.com you can find a filter that screws on your showerhead and filters all the chlorine and hard minerals out of your water. Just think about all those lovely relaxing baths you take and how much your skin is soaking in chlorine and hard minerals. Those are all being absorbed into your skin...and for the mommies their babies skin.-

Body Lotion-
Being pregnant I am keeping my belly and boobs and hips nice and lathered all the time to help with elasticity as well as maybe keep away stretch marks some. I have found my favorite and most trusted to be straight up "Coconut Oil" I mix vitamin E and lavender essential oil to the coconut oil in a large container and I lather up twice a day. Smells so good, watch your pets they love this stuff!

Soaps-
I will someday be a pro at making my very own bars of soaps but until I get my goats and borrow their milk these companies have made me smile with their yummy body soaps.
"ZUM Bar" makes wonderful soaps with shea butter, glycerin, and essential oils of many different fragrances. Also, "Bronner's Castile" soap is awesome for making household cleaners and to use as a body wash, it comes in a bar of soap as well. I like the homemade soaps I find at farmers markets and I tend to stock up everytime I go, so step out to your local market and see what the locals are making for soap, usually it will have less than 5 ingredients thats how you know its awesome!

Laundry Detergent-
Best company I have found is "Rockin Green" detergent. It is made with 6 ingredients and they specialize their formula for cloth diapers that go directly on the babies bum. Yes, I will be using cloth diapers so detergent without any harmful chemicals is a must. Check them out at rockingreensoap.com.
But you can make your own too with Borax, castile soap, rosemary, washing soda, distilled water, and essential oils. Check it out in my tutorials.

I hope you love your skin as much as I do and take some time to make small changes to your routine and products. Remember everything that is harmful on you is also very harmful to our environment getting into our ground water and contaminating our water systems and the earth. Take pride in your personal care and it helps care for the planet.
~t

Birthday Weekend!!

What a great birthday weekend. I was sad that I was away from my friends and family but JJ made it so wonderful I stayed fulfilled the whole time. He puts so much effort into taking care of me. I am so blessed.

It started off Sunday night when he presented me with an early birthday present. A hammock. We laid on it all night and watched a movie under the stars. It is so comfortable and we can lay together as a family baby and all and watch the moon rise or gather the suns rays!

The next morning I got to sleep in, which isn't too rare for me these days but still I LOVE it! JJ brought me breakfast in bed. Fruit with almond butter and juice. I ate some in bed then went outside and laid on the hammock for the rest. He took off to the store as I read and relaxed.
He came home and made me an ice cream cake with coconut milk vanilla ice cream and a layer of gingersnap/peanut butter filling with coconut milk chocolate ice cream on bottom. MMMM! The boy can cook!

I cleaned myself up and he took me to downtown Nashville to an art museum to see a fantasy art exhibit...so cool!
We met up with his mom for a chinese dinner and then to a movie "The Hunger Games" lets just say JJ said his hand hurt after the movie, so intense!

The next morning I wrote in my journal and he got all geared up for a day out on the Caney Fork river in a canoe. I packed a lunch and we were off.
Oh, the river was sooo gorgeous. It reminded me of the Yangze river in China. Rocky cliffs of limestone and luscious  green foliage everywhere you look. Everything in Tennessee is so green and beautiful, so much life here. We slowly paddled downstream and enjoyed listening to the sounds of the birds and the trout jumping for bugs. We pulled off the side and had lunch in a green grassy field. We laid next to each other and snuggled for a while.
The weather was perfect and we were the only ones on the river, so private and peaceful. I enjoyed every minute of it. I am loving my adventures here and am thankful that even though I miss home at times, this feels very nice and I do appreciate this experience in my life. Baby's first canoe trip was a joyful success...Thank you JJ for being my sunshine everyday, I Love you more than you'll ever know!

Oh, I can't leave out that for dinner that night we had fast food 'chik-fil-a' oh yeah I ate chicken and I devoured it. Baby likes the fast food. Damnit! She must be her father's child. It was so dangerously tasty. In moderation I suppose, JJ loved it, he even had to snap a photo.
~t

Spring Cleaning Homemade Products

This past week the sun has been so kind to us. We have had perfect weather with just the right amount of rain.  My seeds are planted, outside, and all have already produced shoots above the ground, yippee. I moved indoors to do some spring cleaning, I looked at some of the cleaning products JJ had around his house and I knew I needed to once again create, simplicity.
Pregnancy and toxic house cleaners, don't mix.  In several of my books I have read a thing or two about avoiding certain cleaners while doing the nesting routine. Our skin is our largest organ and we absorb everything into our body from its lovely pores.  Toxic cleaners also put out fumes that we smell and absorb into our lungs and bloodstream and for those who are growing new life, it goes right to their precious growing body.  Everywhere I look there are toxins ready to jump out and get me.  From the basic window cleaner to toilet scrub. Even daily dish soap is filled with the toxic devils that I end up putting in my mouth and swallowing... YUCK!
SO...
I headed to a spring cleaning seminar and got some homemade cleaning advice. Little did I know how easy and CHEAP making your own cleaning products are. Even much cheaper and less ingredients then the green brands you see on the shelves and you can use the same bottle over and over again reducing your carbon footprint, oh what joy to rid that footprint.  I have made RAW all-purpose cleaner that smells awesome (JJ even used it today to take the mildew smell out of his wristwatch, yes he likes the vinyl band watches), I made laundry detergent that is great and makes the clothes soft and bright. I made mouthwash, shampoo for dandruff, disinfectant, window cleaner, carpet deodorizer, etc.
...and now I am going to share them with you!

First off, you need some basic products that you can find and your local grocery store or health food store. Keep in mind that once you buy these staples you can make batches and batches of products saving sooo much money and all are toxic-free...ahh, that just sounds so good to my body!

For your start up shopping list:

-Distilled White Vinegar-baking isle
-Borax, 20 mule team (that says it all)-you can find this in your laundry detergent isle.
-Washing Soda (NOT baking soda) arm and hammer makes one-also in laundry detergent isle.
-Baking Soda (the kind in the orange box, yeah the real stuff)-in the baking isle.
-Bronners Castile Liquid Soap-at health food stores and some natural sections in the grocery store.
-Dish Soap-this goes a long way get a good green brand I have one pictured on the right with 5 ingredients only. The Seventh Generation brands have way too many ingredients, I've found this true for all their products.

-Bar Of Handmade Soap or Fels-Napha-again less ingredients the better, soap should be made with a fat, a fragrance of oil, and maybe some healing herbs all the other stuff is CRAP. You can find homemade soap at any health food store and fels-napha in the laundry detergent isle. (Remember soap goes directly on you skin or in this case on your clothes that go on your skin)
-Hydrogen Peroxide-I use a food grade 35% with no preservatives or impurities and dilute it but a simple 3% over the counter grade in the grocer pharmacy will do fine.
-Lemons-With the fruit, silly.
-Essential oils- I choose peppermint, rosemary, tea tree, lemon, sweet orange, lemongrass, lavender. For reasons i'll discuss later.  Found at health food store. These cost the most but go very far!!
-Funnel, recycled bottle, or any spray bottle and storage containers.



From here we CREATE!!! I will show you how to make many products from these basic ingredients and what they all work best on.

The "DIY Tutorial" up top has all the recipes and methods listed there.

I am separating them in different pages so when I get my blog better organized they will all have their individual links. Thanks for your patience.

~t

Southern Springtime

The middle of march and already Tennessee has wet rainy, 80 degree weather. I am feeling a sort of love for the longer warmer seasons and realizing that my blood is made for warm weather. I have soo much more energy as my vitamin D increases with the suns love and my spirits are much higher, then the difficult winter southern months. 


I am coming to realize that when JJ and I relocate we will have to find ourselves a place with a longer growing season and a short winter. I really would rather have healthy RAW food for my family year round and spend time showing them how to grow food and heal with food and love the earth, that is what motivates me.


 This springtime, I have really enjoyed
 the southern thunder/lightning storms...oh so cool!! 


The sound of rain is like a soothing meditation of a tropical paradise, I just need to close my eyes and I'm there. 


 I am loving that my body is going through this marvelous change in the spring and summer time. This morning I woke up and rolled out my yoga mat outside in the morning sun. As I practiced and breathed I listened to the birds singing songs to each other and I smiled. During my practiced I watched a wild turkey spread out its beautiful plumage for the ladies gathering bugs in the grass nearby, 
I often gazed up at the large tree that I was under and noticed all the lovely blossoms and early buds opening to soak in the sun. While in my own tree pose, I was overcome by this feeling of everything is beginning once again. 

I am surrounded by new life and I too am participating in this new life cycle creating my own new human body, inside my body! WOW, what amazing creatures we animals are to fully be conscious of what it is we can do and what we really are! I had so much gratitude on my mat this morning and I own it to the magical universe and the great Divine energy that fills me, and everyone else who takes the time to recognize them, with these gifts of beauty. I was feeling so fulfilled and proud of myself for loving myself enough to accept all this love and beauty around me that during my ending shavasana pose (laying on my back in full surrender), Sekoya came up to me and licked my face then she laid down beside me with the biggest smile and the highest little puppy moan, oh it was so perfect! I know that whenever I see life for all it's goodness, I am surrounded with so many amazing moments, I can get lost in the mix of temporal chaos just like everyone else, looking outside myself for the perfections of life, but the truth I've found is that the only perfection is inside us and whenever I go there, I instantly see the greatness that is around in the outside temporal world. ~t

First Visit With A Midwife

I finally got myself to go visit a midwife this week. I wasn't sure about seeing one this early, I'm 13 weeks and I feel great. I know that sometimes medical professionals, even midwives can discuss information to their clients and it can create some fear thinking.  I do believe that I am becoming so strong in my mind that it is hard to penetrate these perceptions about pregnancy and birth to me anymore but I almost didn't even want to take any chance. JJ talked me into going to see the BEST midwives in the country who truly practice the same mindset about birth as I, so I made an appointment.

We drove an hour and half to "The Farm" in middle Tennessee. Now The Farm has been around since 1971. It was started by some California hippies who wanted to start a new community living off the land and working together in a new conscious environment. It has about 200 members who live on about 2,000 acres. They run their little community on solar panels. They have a store, a school, a medical clinic with a very popular midwifery school, a huge garden that produces their own soy production company, they even have many other small business that help bring in their revenue.
They have delivered 2,200 babies naturally.  Some breech, twins, etc.

Ina May Gaskin and Pamela Hunt started the midwifery clinic. Ina May Gaskin has written many wonderful and incredibly helpful books on childbirth and breastfeeding that every pregnant woman should read. She is the Gospel when it comes to natural birth. Ina May is so busy that I was only able to meet with Pamela.

I was instantly impressed with her curvy old figure and her long grey hair parted right down the middle and pulled into a low slung bun. She took me in the clinic. It had black and white photos of naked, birthing women all over the walls, beautiful! JJ and I sat on a cozy couch and we talked like friends about my pregnancy. She gave me the basics of a healthy pregnancy and then asked me about my diet. We discussed my diet and she was very proud of how I was eating.  Here is some things she said to continue doing.
-eating green smoothies with kale, spinach, fruit, bee pollen, chia seeds, spirulina, wheat grass powder, and flax seeds. 
-eat protein 3 times a day the size of my fist.  Being a vegetarian, beans, tempeh, eggs, and I occationally eat fish. All which are PERFECT!
-eat good fats, cook everything in olive oil, have avocadoes, nuts, lowfat cottage cheese is good and kefir yogurt but AVOID other dairy, especially milk and butter products because these create LARGE babies. I don't drink milk, I use almond or coconut milk, I don't use butter so no worries there. 
-yoga and meditation are ideal and I do those both almost everyday, sometimes I start practicing yoga and then I end up meditating for the entire hour.
-take 1200mg of calcium daily, 600 mg magnesium daily, and 2000 units of vitamin D daily, Prenatal pills simply don't give enough of those.
-drinking herbal tea of raspberry leaf, dandelion, and nettle is very safe.
-take naps and relax whenever my body asks me to...no problem there, I love relaxing!!


After the visit she walked JJ and I around the grounds to some of the cabins that we could stay and birth in if we decide to birth with them. We aren't sure where we will birth yet, depending on our home (if we have one at that time) I want to birth at home. If we are in limbo I will birth in a cabin on The Farm.

What a great experience. I am so thrilled that I was so close to this magical place. After the appointment we went to the cafe and had organic, vegan chili and tea. MMM MMM GOOD!
~t