The Poo Diaries Part 4: Fibre!

As our beloved Poo Diaries is coming to a close (one more entry following this), I am finally at the place that I think many people might have started on a similar journey. But, as I have mentioned previously, we found that fibre won’t heal a gut in crisis. If the issue is gut motility, then gut motility will remain the issue until it’s addressed specifically and in the appropriate way. Once we had healed Evies gut, we have been able to maintain that health and regularity with fibre awareness. 

So what is fibre? The definition of fibre is actually “Intrinsic plant cell wall polysaccharides” which, in people speak, means the skin of fruit and vegetables. So no, there is no fibre in breast milk, meat, dairy or eggs and if you’re living souly of off these elements (which, let’s face it, a lot of “fussy” toddlers are) then there in could very well lie your problem. Why? Because fibre is that which isn’t digested by the body. Thus, it moves through our gut, from one end to the other, bulking and softening stools and pushing everything else in there along with it on its way out the door, if you know what I mean. You can find more info on fibre here – I don’t really want to weigh you down with the details. All I’m trying to say is: you need fibre to poo, too much or too little can be an issue, and here are some recipes and tips on how to get more fibre into your little one (or yourself, or your nana). 

Number 1: Prunes 

Not prune juice that often has added sugar and preservatives. Just plain old prunes. The only additive free brand of prunes we found was brand called ‘Verity. But, if you can find organic, preservative free prunes somewhere then snap them up!
Because prunes are dehydrated, they do need to be soaked overnight in water to be effective. They can then be de-seeded, blended, and added to all kinds of sneaky foods. When Evie was severely constipated (before we realised we needed to heal her gut first) we were adding prunes to everything with some brief success. Foods such as porridge, baked beans and yoghurt are all good prune smugglers. Even if you’re adding miniscule amounts to each meal, it will add up and make a world of difference. Furthermore, prunes are a good source of iron – they’re not just an ugly face, you know!

Number 2: Apples 
Back in the day, before I knew what I know, I would read forums about constipation in babies and people would say “avoid constipating foods such as apples”, but then another would say “stewed apples work amazingly well for constipation”. And the confusion is here: stewed apples without skin = bad, stewed apples with skin = good. If you peel an apple, you are removing 75% of its fibre and leaving behind what is mainly sugar, thus constipation ensues. So another ‘add me to everything’ fibre solution is, in fact apples that are stewed whole, with the skin on. You just need to place your apple sin a sauce pan, fill up half way with water, place a lid on, and cook for about 15 minutes. Then turn the heat off and leave to sit for another 20. 

All you need to do once they are cooked, is remove the stalks and seeds, then blend them. Apples are more palatable than prunes, but we found that putting prunes and apple puree together in Evies porridge every morning was a recipe for success. You can also make apple yoghurt with this puree by just adding plain yoghurt and honey.

Number 3: Fibre rich meals
These are much easier to do than some might think. It just means leaving the skin on all your veggies, eating more beans, lentils, having porridge for breakfast and sprinkling LSA on everything! I have put a few of these toddler & baby friendly fibre rich recipes up on my Facebook page of late, but I’m re-posting them here so that they are all in one easily accessible place, and will add to them over time.

Potato Veggienaise!

What you need:

1 tablespoon oil
1 small carrot (skin on!) finely diced
1/3 of a medium brown onion, finely diced
1/4 cup red lentils, cooked via packet instructions
3/4 cup diced tomatoes
1 cup water
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon flax meal
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

How to:
1. Heat oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add onion & carrot and cook until tender (about 5 minutes).
2. Add bay leaf, water, lentils, oregano, flax & tomatoes and bring to the boil.
3. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered for about 20 minutes, or until the majority of the liquid is absorbed and carrots are soft. Stir often.
4. Stir through Parmesan. Remove bay leaf.
5. Blend all, half or none, depending on your little ones chewing abilities & Serve with mashed potato.

*You can cook your potato with the skin on and then blend it instead of mashing, for extra fibre!         

Brown Rice Pudding! 

You will need:
1 cup long grain brown rice, cooked to absorption method
3 cups almond milk
2 teaspoons cinnamon
A pinch of salt
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 green apple, finely chopped
1/4 cup currants
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

How to:
1. Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat and stir frequently until mixture reaches desired thickness (about 30 minutes). That's it! Blend all, half or none depending on your little ones chewing abilities!
Evie’s all-time favourite: Vegetable soup! 

You will need:
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 small carrot, diced
½ a celery stalk, diced
1 potato, diced
½ a swede, peeled and diced
½ a large zucchini, diced
¼ cup raw buckwheat, rinsed
¼ cup red lentils, rinsed
375mL Water
375mL vegetable or chicken stock

How to:
1. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a medium pot. Add garlic, carrot and celery and cook for about 5 minutes, or until just tender.
2. Add all other ingredients and bring to the boil.
3. Cover and simmer on low for 20 minutes.
4. Allow to cool before serving.

I know that some kids won’t eat a vegetable soup, or a vegetable, even. Luckily, Evie is not one of those kids. Of course that kind of thing can be worked on over time. But if all Evie would eat was nutella on toast, then you best believe that nutella would have been laced with prunes! Or, if she would only eat chocolate custard, then that custard would have been smuggling apple puree! (I do not condone this kind of food for growing bodies and brains - but sometimes our circumstances are what they are and we just have to work with what we have!). Luckily, Ive never had that issue – but that’s just an example of how things can be worked with!

And so ends part 4 of our journey. I will be back with the final instalment just as soon as I get a chance!

Angela

[Recipe] Chocolate & apricot muesli bars

I have been meaning to conjure up a muesli bar recipe for a while now. My Dad recently went to see my naturopath and was thoroughly told off for his after work snack-attacks. And so, my Mum and I concluded that the answer to this would be to produce a healthier, but still tasty alternative that might stave off his hunger until dinner time. So, I was on the case. I usually research a load of recipes and then pick and choose different elements from each in order to create my own, as was the case here. A lot of the recipes I found required an array of expensive and exotic ingredients which arent really my style. So instead, I have (hopefully) stream lined a recipe that can be easily made, with a mixture of easily accessible and everyday ingredients. The mixture of oats (grain), nuts and seeds makes a complete protein (all 16 essential fatty acids), and thus should hopefully be 'filling' enough to stop one from reaching for a packet of scotch fingers in the hungry haze. 

*NOW I will start by saying that the muesli bars shown in the picture are raw, except for the chocolate on top. This is because I used my Mum's Thermomix to melt to coconut oil and honey together at 37 degrees, for 50 seconds on speed 3. But I don't personally own a Thermomix, and if you don't either, then all is not lost. Just boil some water, place it in a bowl, then put your honey and coconut oil in another, heat-proof bowl, on top and stir until melted and combined.

Anyway, on with the recipe! 

You will need:

1 cup raw almonds 

3/4 cup oats 

1/4 cup chia seeds 

3/4 cup pepitas 

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/3 cup raw honey 

3/4 cup coconut oil 

60g Lindt 70% dark chocolate, chopped (or raw chocolate of your choosing)

3/4 cup organic/additive free dried apricots, chopped 

How to: 

1. Place your oats, nuts, seeds and salt in the bowl of a blender and blitz until the mix becomes a rough meal. Place this mix in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

                

2. Next, melt together your honey and coconut oil by placing them both in a heat proof bowl, above another bowl of some just boiled water and stirring until melted and combined. 

3. Pour your honey & oil mixture over your oat mix and combine well (you might need to use your fingers a little!) 

4. Line a medium, rectangle pyrex dish (or any rectangle container, roughly 15cm x 20cm) with baking paper. Pour your combined mixture over the baking paper and press down with your fingers and/or the back of a spoon to pack firmly into the dish,  flatten and smooth out. 

5. Sprinkle over your chocolate and apricots, then use the back of a spoon to press them into the mixture (so that they will stick in place when the mixture sets). 

6. Place in the freezer for 20 minutes, until set. Cut into bars of your preferred size and store in the fridge. 

There is, of course, no reason why you couldn't mix your chocolate and apricots into the mixture instead of setting it on top - but i like the intensity of the flavours that having a whole layer of this deliciousness brings! 

I hope you enjoy these as much as we have! 

Angela 

[Colic & Constipation] The Poo Diaries Part 3: Fix

                I told myself, I told everybody, in fact “WE’VE TRIED PROBIOTICS” Shut up, about the probiotics. “They don’t help” I would say, through a sigh, to whichever practitioner happened to be in my grasp at the time. When you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in over a year, often being wrenched from your sleep every 45 minutes to feed, sooth or massage a thrashing, kicking, screeching, arching, grunting and irritable infant, you have little patience for, or faith in, things that don’t work immediately. You want the cure now, yesterday, 9 months ago even.
You see, I knew good and well antibiotics kill off the good bacteria in the gut, and Evie was given IV antibiotics immediately following her birth, so probiotics were the first place I had looked for answers. What I didn’t know at the time, however, was the crucial role that probiotics play specifically in gut motility and that the gut takes time to heal. It’s not a one dose miracle, and if you can find the patience, the faith and the memory power to remember several daily doses through the sleepless fog, they might just be the oil strike you have been waiting for.
So what makes me so sure that probiotics can be effective in healing the gut and restore motility, that when sluggish, causes colic, constipation, reflux & excessive vomiting? Research my friends, research. Meticulous, obsessive, relentless, desperate, prop your eyelids open with toothpicks and pray for answers, research. And I can’t take all of the credit of course, a few of the people we saw about Evie’s gut issues did suggest probiotics, but they never bothered to explain to me (maybe because they didn’t know, exactly) WHY they were so important and how long they might take to have the desired effect, the fact that she needed more than the recommended dose on the bottle, which is prescribed for maintenance, and not repair. And I needed more than that. For example, you can tell me oxygen is good and I might believe you and think “That’s good, I must look into that”. But if you tell me HEY OXYGEN IS GOOD BECAUSE YOU CAN NOT, AND WILL NOT, SURVIVE WITHOUT IT – I might start to take oxygen a little more seriously. People try to sell you things all the time in this world that we live in, anyone can make anyone believe that they need any product if they are good enough at persuasion. But as a nurse, I’m a hard sell, I want to see evidenced based, peer reviewed research, so that’s what I went to find.

                So, babies are born with a sterile gut ^{[1], [2]}. They then acquire their gut’s microflora – throughout the birth process and then from breast milk (if breast fed) and the environment (formula, environmental germs etc) ^{[1], [3]}. However, when babies are either born via caesarean section, or receive antibiotics following birth, their gut flora is altered for at least 6 months (the longest period of study), and possibly permanently, if left untreated ^[1]. The reason that babies whom receive antibiotics following their birth suffer from gut-flora-annihilation is obvious; antibiotics don’t discriminate, they kill both good and bad bacteria, leaving the host depleted. But babies born via caesarean section also receive antibiotics, albeit prior to their birth. Mothers undergoing a caesarean section are routinely given a preventative dose of intravenous antibiotics prior to their birth. This is typically the antibiotic ampicillin. Ampicillin easily crosses the placenta and both Mum and baby will have equal amounts in their systems after one hour of administration ^[1]. 
So how did my search for answers about colic & constipation bring me to probiotic treatment? Because
                “Bacteria inhabiting the human intestine participate in the maintenance or gut
                sensory and motor functions , including the promotion of intestinal propulsive activity…
                Intestinal motility represents one of the major control systems of gut microflora…” ^[4]

So, when my daughter was given IV antibiotics immediately following her birth, her sterile gut was bombarded with bacteria killers that would make achieving a healthy balance all the more difficult in her tiny still-developing little system, from the get go. That balance is crucial to keeping the gut moving, pushing gas and solids in the right direction. Cue 15 months of sleeplessness thanks to our good friend’s colic and constipation.

*I will note here that this study of infants whom were normal vaginal births, without antibiotic administration. One third was formula fed, one third was breast fed, and one third was a formula fed control group whom received no probiotics. This study showed that whilst adding probiotics to the one formula fed group gave them a similar gut health to those whom were breast fed, it actually made no difference to reported gastrointestinal symptoms within the 6 months. This is possibly due to the fact that pretty much all babies struggle with gas, their muscles aren’t as co-ordinated as an adults, their tummy is getting used to being used and they generally all struggle to some degree (albeit much more mildly if not given antibiotics, the problem still exists). Suggestions to deal with normal infant gas can be found here.

You see, you can give as much fibre, laxatives and water as you like – if gut motility is sluggish, your fighting a losing battle. Furthermore, laxatives are not, and nor should they be, a long term option. Why wouldn’t you want to fix the underlying problem? Why would you just want to cover it up and hope it goes away? So, we started Evie on probiotics 3 x a day for 2 days, until her poo turned to green diarrhoea and the gas from this was so intense that the colic came back… Too much. So we pulled it back to just twice a day, and within 7 days she was doing big, soft poos everyday**, napping again during the day, waking less frequently at night and I was so happy I could cry.

Hallelujah!

As for how long she will be on them, I will wait for the current bottle to run out and then see how she goes. I will know immediately if her gut isn't done healing and will quickly get her back on them at the first sign of any kind of upset in the future (including sickness or eczema etc).

                By now you might be thinking, that’s great for you lady, but my child has never had antibiotics and was not a caesarean birth! To which I would say: it doesn’t matter. The real point here is the crucial role that probiotics can play in enhancing gut motility. Furthermore, there are numerous factors that can throw out a child’s gut balance including, but certainly not limited to; the diet of the pregnant and breastfeeding mother ^[5] , the diet of the child^[1]  and being formula fed^[1].

For us, I feel as though probiotics played the key role in getting back on track. But they were, in fact one of many steps! So stay tuned for parts 4 & 5 of The Poo Diaries, coming up in the following weeks!
For those that are interested, I also found a great study (one of many, no doubt) that suggests the use of probiotics in infants can prevent the development of allergies, click here to view.

**When I say doing big soft poos everyday, this was aside from when she was withholding due to the fact that, after 15 months of constipation, she was now too afraid to go and doing her darndest to hold it all in, which I will address in a later blog (parts 4 & 5)! 

[Baby and toddler constipation] The Poo Diaries Part 2: Flush

Now this may seem like a blindingly obvious step to take, but it’s one that took me a while to fully comprehend and accept. It’s not enough to simply numb the pain of a broken leg and give the patient crutches. You must realign the bone and put a cast on it before crutches will be of any real use. What I’m eluding to here is: We had to get, whatever was in Evie’s gut (wreaking havoc), out before anything else would have a chance at being therapeutic. Because constipation leads to constipation leads to constipation. Allow me to explain;

Evie was constipated, so she couldn’t sleep at night.

When she didn’t sleep at night and was having gut pain, she had no patience for, or interest in, solid food.

Because she refused to eat solid food she was hungry.

Because she was hungry she would fill up on breast milk.

Because she would fill up on breast milk, she definitely wasn’t going to eat solid food.

Because she wasn’t eating solid food she wasn’t getting any fibre.

Because she wasn’t getting any fibre she was constipated.

Because she was constipated, she couldn’t sleep at night.

When she didn’t sleep at night and was having gut pain, she had no patience for, or interest in, solid food.

And so on, and so forth (not forgetting that she was also  withholding poo because it hurt), until I am pulling my hair out in hysterical, bloody clumps (I exaggerate).

SO. How did we do this? Well its different for a baby whom isn’t yet on solids than it is for a toddler or child who is. So we will proceed with how we treated this (or would, looking back and knowing what we know now)

In the land before solids

                When Evie wasn’t eating solid food yet, it was hard to believe that she could actually be constipated. She went 9 days without pooing once but in my sleepless daze I didn’t even realise that until I stopped to think and remember when the last time she went was. “They” say that breastfed babies are fine to poo as little as every 10 days – which could well be the case. They are not fine, however, if they are arching, scrunching, sleepless and screaming little bundles during this time. For these babies, of whom Evie was one, it’s not ok to poo every 10 days, clearly.

For one so young we obviously couldn’t give parachoc, coloxyl or suppositories as the issue here clearly wasn’t the consistency of the poo (breastfed = liquid), it was the fact that it was getting trapped and stalled because gut motility was sluggish and babies struggle to coordinate the muscles in order to un-trap wind and adjust to the right angle for elimination, in the way that a constipated adult with a gut ache might.

Given this, what used to work for us to release wind and poo were 4 things; homeopathics, massage, pressure and warmth. I will be forever grateful for Jimmy’s uncle, a pharmacist, who slipped a bottle of Brauer’s ‘Colic relief’ into the hamper from his family at my baby shower. This stuff worked wonders for Evie and I can highly recommend it.

Warmth is pretty easy and effective also. I used to just rub my palms together and place then on Evies belly, skin to skin. But you could also use a rolled up warm towel or a warm bath to apply gentle heat to the tummy to provide both an analgesic and pressure-releasing effect. 

Massage is kind of difficult to explain in writing, so I’ve attached a sweet little video here that you might find useful – the techniques shown are gold, but it doesn’t need to be so specific ie. ‘3 minutes of this’ or ’10 times of that’ – just go with what you baby will tolerate and use your instincts to tell you when it’s time to stop.

As for pressure, I would simply hug Evie into my chest, so her belly was against my boobs, with her head on my shoulder, so that the curve of my bust would apply a gentle pressure on her abdomen. I would then walk around 'bouncing' with her like this and, I kid you not, you would have thought someone was firing a machine gun at times, it was that effective at releasing wind! If Jimmy (or someone otherwise less endowed than a breast feeding mother) wanted/needed to use this technique, we would simply roll up one of her muslin wraps, place it just under their shoulder and lay Evie over it so that the wrap was under her belly (fake boobs, really!). 

One more thing, which Evie doesn’t really allow me to do very often, is baby reflexology: This is great for teething, gut ache and general well being. They say that if the baby actually needs to reflexology, the pressure point on the foot will be tender, which explains why Evie won’t allow me to do it any more! 

 Solids, infinity, and beyond  
                I have found that flushing out my toddler’s gut is easier than doing the same for a baby in many ways, but also harder at the same time. The reason being that there are many a product available for short term, immediate or emergency use for evacuating the bowel – but the price you pay is the mother-guilt of using, administering, and subjecting your child to the taste of, these western pharmaceutical interventions. I love a natural prevention cure or answer, believe me, I do. But sometimes I believe that modern problems require modern solutions – which I will elaborate on later. But it would be great to be able to tip toe around a finicky elimination diet for months with a smile on my sleepless, frazzled face. But I can’t do that – because this life, this world, won’t slow down so I can take the scenic route. And I could not, and would not, watch my daughter suffer and squirm for a minute longer than she needed to and I won’t apologise for that. Enter ‘Parachoc’ and/or glycerin suppositories.

As mentioned previously, it would be very difficult to heal the cause of this particular issue without first treating the symptoms that play a massive role in continuing and feeding such a vicious cycle. I found that we needed to dispel the irritant that was causing pain, discomfort, lack of sleep and refusal of food so that we could fast track to an au-naturale avenue of treatment and maintenance. So – we did try glycerine suppositories, to no avail. I was adamant not to use parachoc for the reasons previously listed but then I had to talk some sense into myself. We were not going to use it for a year, or even a week. We gave 3 “flush” doses over 36 hours, as advised by our pharmacist, and that was it. Once we had given the Parachoc we could move forward.
My only advice here (until now I would like to think I have just been telling our story, what worked for us) would be; don’t be afraid of taking what you might consider to be “drastic” intervention. I think sometimes, particularly in natural parenting circles, we deny our children modern intervention for what we believe in the greater good – but we don’t consider that we wouldn’t necessarily deny ourselves with the same stubbornness. I know if I’ve had a headache that’s not going away – I will take panadol. But I will go to the ends of the earth to avoid doing similar for my daughter, for fear that the side effects aren’t worth the relief. I guess it’s about finding a happy medium that makes sense, and sits right with you and your family. 

[Baby and Toddler constipation] The Poo Diaries Part 1: Our story

         My daughter was not born constipated. I know this, because she aspirated meconium during her birth. So there was, in fact a time in her life that she was actually able to eliminate without assistance. Albeit brief and ever so fleeting – that time did exist. 
My beautiful girl spent the first 6 days of her life in the neonatal unit being treated, firstly for the aspiration, and then for jaundice. Somewhere in the middle of those 6 days she was allowed to come back to our room to stay with is, but she needed to sleep on, and spend as much time as possible on, a biliblanket to treat the jaundice. I was so happy to finally have my baby to myself that I spent the next 12 hours pacing our room with my squirmy bundle, ignoring the pain of fresh stitches, the aching bruises and my violently contracting uterus, in order to continually help her get back to sleep. “If you’re struggling you can send her back down stairs, it’s no problem at all” the midwives kept telling me. “Maybe not a problem for YOU! But I’ve just got her back and I’m not ‘sending’ her anywhere!” I thought silently and ever-so bitterly back to them. You see, I knew she wasn’t hungry because she was on a 3 hourly feeding schedule (medically prescribed) that would see me almost force feeding her a ‘top up’ of expressed breast milk after 20 minutes on each boob! In any case she would scream at the breast and refuse to latch on unless she was good and ready. And it didnt seem like pain, as she was so easily soothed by physical contact. It was somewhere in between the two, my instincts told me. It was discomfort. She reminded me of one of those dolls who’s eyelids have weights in them so they close when placed horizontally, and open automatically when held up vertically. Only, she was the reverse. As soon as I tried to lay her down her eyes would pop right open, followed by her mouth to let out her screams of protest, that incidentally cut into my chest like a hot knife to butter.
Alas, I didn’t know any better. This was my first baby and I assumed that maybe this is what babies do. This is what all of those parents harp on about, the sleeplessness, the lack of answers and the feelings of guilt and self-doubt. That was until later that night, or possibly at about 3am the next morning. We were being looked after by a midwife on the night shift that I didn’t particularly like. She scolded me for nursing Evie sitting up in bed, and made me move to a chair next to the bed to do the exact same thing, although with slightly more pressure on my bruising and stitches. She heard Evie’s cries and came bursting through the door “Is everything alright?”  “Yes.” I told her. “She’s been like this all day. I just think she hates sleeping on that blue blanket, I can’t seem to get her to stay there, or stay asleep!” my voice was definitely quivering at this point. She smiled smugly and put her hands out, motioning for me to hand the baby over “Its sounds like trapped wind to me. When was the last time she pood?” “I don’t know.” I told her, honestly. “She’s been downstairs until today and the nurses have changed some of her nappies”. She nodded with a look on her face that told me it didn’t matter what I said, she already knew what the problem was and she also knew how to fix it. She then proceeded to lay my  still-screaming bundle down on the bed, stripped off her nappy and clothes and began to massage her tummy with a pressure that made us, as new parents, wince. She bent her little knees into her chest a few times, and then massaged a bit more, in a clockwise direction, finally stopping to pause on the lower right quadrant of Evie’s belly and pressing down even harder.  I could barely watch and had to choke back furious questions that were bubbling in my throat, ready to lash this lady. And then, all of a sudden a burst of air and poo came spraying out onto the towel so intelligently placed under Evie’s little bottom. “There” she said, handing me back my wailing little heart. “Try to nurse her now”. So, I did. Evie latched on straight away, fell asleep, and then finally slept for a good few hours after that, on that stupid blanket inside her bassinet.
The next morning, one of the neonatal nurses came to take some of Evies blood to assess how well the jaundice treatment had been going. Needless to say, the results weren’t satisfactory and we had to admit that we had been unable to keep her on the blanket for any extended period of time. This did mean that she went back downstairs to the unit where she was placed under lights for a more intensive therapy instead. It wasn’t the ideal situation. I was heartbroken, in fact. But what came of this (I’m a big believer in everything happening for a reason) was that golden massaging technique that I would end up using several times a day, every day, for the next 8 months.
Don’t be fooled – nothing changed after 8 months except for the fact that Evie no longer allowed me to massage her tummy anymore. She was fed up, and I don’t blame her. But nothing else seemed to work. We had tried homeopathics, naturopathics, chiropractic, probiotics, magnesium, elimination diets, coloxyl and infacol. We’d trawled forums and asked friends, grandparents, the child health nurse and the GP. No one had any answers for us except for “Sometimes shit happens. Or, doesn’t happen in this case, and it’s very common” (that is literally a word-for-word quote from our GP.). He told us to try parachoc and simply use it for a full year, as by then the problem should have resolved itself. I read the parachoc disclosure statement and decided that I was not desperate enough to subject my daughter to a full year of “Malabsorption of water soluble vitamins, anal leakage and itching”. So, stalemate it was.
And of course, starting Evie on solids made everything worse. And we started her early because we thought that maybe this constipation was all in our heads. Maybe she was just hungry and that’s why she couldn’t sleep and we had just let the idea that the midwife put in our heads about ‘trapped wind’ run away with us? Nope. We hadn’t. We were right, it was constipation all along (but we questioned ourselves – and everything, because that’s what good parents do!).
Months 9-14 were much the same. Only after 12 months we had the added stress of her refusal to eat anything, ever. It was fine and dandy to let her refuse meals when she was under 12 months (food before one if just for fun, after all!) but now that window had passed and we could no longer get by thinking that if we could just hang in there, this was just going to clear itself up and no damage would be done.
Exhausted and desperate, I turned to a new naturopath who educated me about antinutrients, oils and the power of fibre - all very useful and even successful for the first few days. But in our particular case, we needed more than fibre. The food Evie was having wasnt exactly absent of fibre, it just wasnt 100% fibre like the suggested meal plan. So I knew that there was more to the issue than a lack of fibre. And it certainly wasn't dehydration as my breast fed baby happily sucked back a few sippy cups full of pure water every day.
So I set off on my own, following my intuition into a land of research articles. It was these, comboned with the naturopath's wisdom that seem to have brought my daughter and her little belly to a happy place. I know that constipation is the number-one problem that toddlers present with, and that’s why I am sharing this information in the coming posts. I KNOW how hard this seemingly trivial issue can be on a family, and if sharing this knowledge can help anyone, who may not have access to the same resources, in anyway, then I am more than happy to do so.  So, stay tuned because there is a light at the end of this particular tunnel that, for once, is not a train.

To Whom It May Concern

                I am not in the business of seeking other mother’s out to judge them on their decisions to make myself feel better about my own short comings. I am in the process of figuring this mothering thing out, doing the best I can for my family based on what I know, exposing what I don’t know and sharing my experiences along the way. Motherhood is not a competition. I repeat: MOTHERHOOD IS NOT A COMPETITION. Because, to borrow some slang from my x-box addicted other half, when it comes to the tricky business of parenting, we’re all “noobs” here.
For some reason, women are so quick to jump down one another’s throats for all kinds of reasons. In my experience, when a woman says to another “This is how I do it”, the other only hears “You’re doing it wrong”. We take advice for criticism and criticism for advice. And it’s got to have something to do with the fact that we have so much emotionally invested here – it’s our children, for goodness sake. The thought that we may be doing something, anything, to their detriment is confronting, and frightening, whether we knew better at the time or not.
 I’ll give you an example: Breast milk is better for babies than formula. This is a fact, inarguable and supported by a solid scientific foundation. So, maybe if you’re armed with this information, you may be more inclined to give breast feeding a chance (if you weren’t otherwise planning on it). However, instead of taking this information for what it is: (information), women who have chosen to bottle feed assume that this is a ploy to make them “feel bad” and become hostile toward the messenger. But the fact of the matter is; I can’t make you feel anything. You decide what you feel and when you decide to feel it. What’s really going on here is that you feel guilty for not being able to breast feed (for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter at this point) and you become angry at me because you don’t like to feel guilty or sad: ignorance is bliss. You also make the assumption that I am trying to convey that I am better than you because I breast fed and you didn’t. You don’t stop to consider that I could be a terrible human being in every conceivable way except for the fact that I chose to breast feed and I’m just damn lucky that it worked out for me. You might volunteer with the homeless and I spend my spare time getting my eye brows shaped and tinted. In fact, the very fact that you even feel guilty about not being able to breast feed your child speaks wonders of your character as both a mother and a human being. You want what’s best for your baby and you feel sad when you can’t provide that 100% of the time. You have a conscience, and a heart and you love your children in the same way that I love mine.
I just wish that women would let their love for their children bring them closer together more often instead of the way it seems to continually rip them apart. I post advice and information on my Facebook page and on my blog in the genuine hope that if there is anyone out there in the same situation, who might not have tried what worked for me, that this information can reach them and provide them with some relief. Why? Because I see my daughter in the face of every child on earth, knowing that her little soul could just as easily have landed in any other family. There is no real difference between my child or anyone else’s, they are all just as worthy of love, nourishment, nurturing, happiness and respect.
My Facebook page and blog are a direct reflection of every one of my struggles as a mother, partner and human being. This is me finding my way, and nothing more.  Sometimes I am lucky enough to find answers, and I feel compelled to pass them on because I believe that blessings are like candles; if you don’t use your flame to ignite other people’s candles then there will be no fire left to reignite yours when it burns out.  What goes around comes around, and I have a duty to create a magical life for my daughter, and I can’t do that in the dark.
So I suppose my message is this: if what I’m posting offends you, consider the reason why. Science and facts are not designed to offend, only to educate. I would never judge anyone for doing the best they could with what they knew at the time. I do not, however, make any excuses for people who know better and refuse to do better. If you fall into this category then there is no place for you here.  And yes, sometimes there is no exact scientific answer. In that case, if what worked for me doesn’t work for you, that doesn’t make me wrong and you right, or vice versa – that just makes us different in that particular way. My aim here is not to be an internet troll, rather, to somehow create a virtual village where we can all support one another in the way that nature intended, but that western society does not otherwise accommodate.
Needless to say, I will not engage in nonsensical arguments with the disgruntled and I will take no responsibility for their own misinterpretation. They say that other people only ever try to bring you down because you are above them. But I think other people try to bring you down because the wounded are weak and there is strength in numbers. If this applies to you please know in advance that I’ll not be joining you in the basement, because that’s not the kind of example I want to set for my daughter.

Sincerely
Angela

Taking back Bavarian

When we were little, the ultimate in dessert luxury for us was a Sara-Lee Chocolate Bavarian (from the frozen dessert section at the supermarket). We (my 3 brothers and I) often wouldn't even allow it to defrost before hacking at it with a carving knife and chiseling away at it with our forks. It was, of course, much better if you let it defrost so it was soft and creamy. But even still, I never liked the top white layer of cream. I found it to be watery & always suffering from freezer burn. So I'd peel off the white top and eat the chocolate & biscuit layers together first (yes, I still ate the top - it resembled ice dream & I was a relatively sugar-free child!).

Anyway - now that I'm a Mum myself, I'm all too aware of the utter shit that goes into such processed delicacies and try my best to avoid them when and if I can (I'm a work in progress myself!). So I've been experimenting with all kinds of 'cheesefakes', bean cakes & gluten free-grain free etcetera. I hadn't planned on the following recipe turning out in this way... But I can't argue with its taste & texture. It it what it is. And its the closest thing to those bottom two layers of that frozen chocolate childhood memory as my taste buds have been in a very long time.  

It's not completely raw because of the maple syrup but otherwise, you're golden. And yes, maple syrup has fructose so its not sugar free - I don't care. Dessert - sweetness, even, is not intended to be an everyday indulgence, that is becoming painfully clear. Maple syrup is still better than agave, table sugar, stevia and has a lower glycemic index than honey. It's also additive, gluten & grain free as well as vegan, so over all, it's winning! 

(Mini) Chocolate Bavarian-style fake, featuring raspberries  

You will need: 

Baking paper

A 10cm round springform cake tin 

1/2 cup frozen raspberries 

1/3 cup cacao powder 

2 ripe Hass avocados

1/2 cup pure maple syrup 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons coconut oil 

A pinch of sea salt

For the base;

1/2 cup pitted dates 

1/2 cup pecans 

How to: 

1. Line your cake tin with baking paper and set aside 

2. Blend your pecans & dates until they resemble a rough, sticky sand. Press this

Mixture into the bottom of your tin. 

3. Next, blend all of your remaining EXCEPT your raspberries, until smooth and creamy. 

4. Fold in your raspberries & pour this mix in the tin, on top of your base. 

5. Refrigerate for 2 hours (or freeze until set). 

Viola!

With love

Angela  

www.facebook.com/theoroginaloccupation 

Orange and Poppyseed muffins (whole, dairy free)

I know, believe me, I know. Gluten, grains and sugar = bad these days. But I am not strictly paleo or gluten free. I don’t actually believe in following any kind of fad to the letter. Yes, there are messages in each that we can take with us as we go. Take the Atkins diet for example, eating good fats to lose fat – brilliant! But Mr Atkins did die of a heart attack.  And in any case, how can we assume that just because we are the same species that we are all exactly the same at a cellular level, because we’re not. We have different genders, lifestyle factors, blood types and DNA, even. Our ancestors grew up in different parts of the world, eating only the food available to them in that time and their bodies grew accustomed to such foods and thrived on them. Then, suddenly, here in today’s society we have access to foods from all over the world, out of season and, perhaps, out of place.
Which brings me back to my mantra, the only thing I know for sure; that we are supposed to eat food, only food, in its whole form and nothing to excess.
And while we’re at it, we can get smart and make food work for us. One such example of how to do this is by completing protein. That is, using a combination of nuts, seeds, legumes and grains to get all of the fatty acids necessary to sustain our bodies for longer, make us feel fuller, and fuel our systems more efficiently. As in the case with the following recipe. I have used wholemeal wheat flour, mixed with poppy seeds and orange in its whole form (I have also used rapadura sugar in place of agave, but that’s a whole other blog). So, yes, these have gluten in them, but they are undeniably closer to nature than those that are made with commercial gluten free (white rice) flours, and will be more sustaining than those made with nut meal (as the nut protein is incomplete on its own). I will experiment with this more over the coming months and no doubt come up with a grain free protein muffin, but for now, this is what I had in my cupboard, I’m eating gluten anyways and I like something sweet with my afternoon tea – so these just make sense to me.


 Orange & poppyseed muffins (complete protein, dairy free)

You will need:
2 cups wholemeal self raising flour
1 Tblsp poppy seeds
1 cup rapadura sugar
¾ cup almond milk
2 eggs
½ cup grapeseed oil
Rind and flesh of 1 orange

How to:
1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. Line a muffin tray with 9 paper cases.
2. Combine flour, poppy seeds, orange rind and sugar in a mixing bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, milk and grapeseed oil.
4. Take the flesh of your orange and blend/macerate it using a small food processor or bar mix.
5. Add wet ingredients and orange to your flour mixture and mix well.
6. Divide mixture evenly among your cases. 
7. Bake for 25 minutes.

Food, inglorious food.

I have a confession to make. Sometimes, when a meal is approaching, I feel as though I’d rather hide under a rock for the rest of my life then have to decide what to eat. I have been blessed with a ‘type A’ personality, so if I can’t do something right, I feel as though I don’t want to do it at all. I’d rather miss a meal completely than live with the annoyance of having eaten “the wrong thing”. But what the hell is the “wrong thing” to eat anyway? You’d think that with all of the research I’ve been doing lately that I may have come up with a good answer – but I have, in fact, come up with nothing but a headache.
One thing I can say for sure about food is that ignorance really is bliss - because the mental convulsions I have experienced at times when planning my next meal are not enjoyable, necessary or normal. In my "professional opinion", I seem to be overdosing on too much of a good thing.
I’ve also realised that there is a lot of money to be made out there with fads, because if you can give people just the right amount of isolated information on a certain way of eating, you can convince them that you have the key to unlocking skinny. Oops! I mean, healthy… and they will buy your book and chant your name – at least until the next one comes along. But by then you’re laughing all the way to the bank, so, who cares? If fads really worked then you could follow them all and be a supernova of health and well being, right? Wrong. You’d be freaking starving. I know this – because I am. And I will tell you why. Not just for your sake (sorry) but for my own, I decided to write down all of the information and research I have been collecting in my quest to heal the damage that has already been done, and prevent any further assault on my body – the body that feeds my child and the body that brought her into the world. Also I’d like to wring the most out of this life and set my daughter on the path to a beautiful life of her own (one day, let’s not go nuts. I haven’t even sobbed hysterically outside of an unsuspecting preschool yet).
So what have I found out? Everything, and nothing at all. I’ll start at the top and let you in on an example of the conversations I have with myself. Mind you don’t trip over the multiple personalities here. And, yes, they’ve got to stop.

Dinner time
Let’s organise some of the contents of your head, shall we? Because it truly is a mess, woman. And you’ve only got yourself to blame. You need to decipher all of this information that has accumulated in here and make some hard and fast decisions about what makes sense and what does not. Because you can’t keep panicking every time you’re next meal rolls around because a) You’re going to give Evie bizarre food phobias and b) You’re being ridiculous. So let’s have a look and see what we can come up with, shall we?

OK, first of all, Sarah Wilson and the Paleo movement (these are two separate entities) are freaking out about fructose – and, seemingly, with good reason. Our bodies convert it to fat and store it around our precious organs for a rainy day (a survival process that probably suited our ancestors who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from and couldn’t just walk ten steps to the fridge).

So it’s settled then, no table sugar, no agave, no honey, no maple syrup and no fruit.

Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar book suggests one dines on bacon and cheese instead of sugary counterparts.

But bacon is filled with additives, chemicals: nitrites! For the love of god, woman, what are you thinking? You can’t disregard pre-existing health information simply to make your point. Jeesh.

Alright then. Well, the paleos are all about the regular meat?

But the vegetarians say that eating meat is cruel, unnatural and can lead to anxiety and depression as we absorb the cellular memories of grief, rage and terror of the mistreated animals whose flesh lay on our plate. So, maybe just don’t eat any meat, to be safe.

How about the cheese then, dairy?

No, no, no, no, no! Haven’t you been listening to the vegans? Dairy is acidic in our bodies, you idiot. Cow’s milk is made for baby cows, not adult humans! Humans do not need milk beyond infancy and certainly not the milk of another species. Not to mention the fact that it’s laced with feces, blood and antibiotics. Forget dairy. Forget cheese and cream and yoghurt. Forget you ever knew they existed, it’s the only way.

OK then… So we’re NOT eating: additives, fructose, meat or dairy.

Oh, and don’t forget gluten, gluten  is Satan.

So there go most grains.

But don’t think you can eat white rice instead because that, my friend, is an anti-nutrient. And don’t even think about running into the arms of brown rice because that’s still a grain, and if the inflammation alone doesn't kill you, the Ayurvedics and Paleos will - for your treason.

Oh! Heres something I can eat: nuts and seeds! Yes!

But only if they’re activated… and I assume you have a $400 dehydrator sitting out the back for this exact purpose?

Who doesn’t?

But don’t eat too many because they will carve up your gut lining and you will get diverticulitis and a few extra chins for your troubles.

Moving on… How about vegetables?

Yes! Wonderful! There’s nothing wrong with vegetables. But they must be organic. And don’t even think about cooking them, you’ll kill the nutrients. Unless you’ve got potatoes – you absolutely must cook potatoes because the toxins inside a raw potato will kill you, and everyone you love. So cook your potatoes, but then don’t eat them, because they’re too high in carbs.

So, I can eat raw vegetables and activated nuts and seeds (that are worth their weight in gold).

But are you getting any protein?

Some, from the nuts and seeds but this is incomplete protein, and as I’m banned from eating grains I will need to round them out with legumes instead.

Legumes are also loaded with toxins in their natural state so make sure you cook the crap out of them. But when doing this, remember that not all of the toxins are able to be cooked off, so, for the love of god, do not eat them!

So I suppose that just leaves me with some vegetables and a nut or seed occasionally.

But don’t forget this excludes peanuts, because peanuts are actually a legume.

I guess I can jazz this thing up and have some sweet vegetable juices?

No. No you can’t, you idiot, because juicing vegetables strips all of the fibre. What the hell are you thinking?! 

Well, glad we’ve sorted this out. See you again at breakfast.


And you know what? After all of that, I have a real aversion to cold food, especially in Winter – so choking down raw vegetables really isn’t my idea of sensible nourishment. So what do I do? I skip the meal (most often this occurs at lunch time) or I just eat something that completely goes against what all of my knowledge tells me is right and then I feel as though I have failed. How the hell do you fail at lunch, pray tell? This attitude is ridiculous and unhealthy and I’m not playing this game anymore.
So I started to ask myself, if Evie came to me and said “Mummy, what should I eat to stay healthy?”, what would I tell her? Would I want her to be afraid of food? Would I want her to have feelings of failure if she was unable to meet a million ridiculous criteria? Of course not. And as I nurture my daughter – I should be nurturing myself. Because when the self-nurturing stops, everything stops. I am no use to anyone muttering in a crumpled, anorexic heap in the kitchen floor.
So, how to be sensible, sane and stay healthy? Well here’s a summarised, pointed version of what Id like to think I would tell Evie one day if she came to me in distress about what she should or should not eat:
1. A lot of personal trainers will tell you that “Food is just fuel. It’s not supposed to be comforting, fun or delicious.”  But to that I say: bullshit. If that were indeed true, then there would only be one, perfect, tasteless food source on the planet that gave us all of our nutritional needs. But that’s not the case. We have flavour and herbs and tastebuds! So there’s got to be something in that, right? And maybe foods have certain amounts of toxins so that we know when to stop, when to move on from the place of that food source and continue along your journey. I mean, if you only ate one thing (ANY thing) for the rest of your days, they would surely be numbered. We’re not supposed to eat too much of anything, and we’re supposed to keep moving – that is obvious.

2. Secondly, I think that there is no debating the harm of ingesting additives/chemicals/synthetics because they are not food. Try not to eat things that are not food, whether that be wood, rocks, dirt or preservatives. Its not food. That makes sense and seems reasonable to me: Only eat food.

3. So if we’re only eating food, we need to remember how and why food works in our bodies. That is, food, in its natural state, comes with everything that our bodies need to digest/absorb/eat it. All of the enzymes and nutrients needed to breakdown that food are BYO. That’s why it’s not advisable to eat too much (if any) food that has been altered. White rice, for example (originally brown rice), has all of the goodness sucked out of it so that it is easier to store, transport, cook & eat. So white rice is no longer packing its own nutrients. But our bodies still need nutrients to break it down. So where do those nutrients come from when we eat white rice? Our bodies own stores. Our emergency back up for when we’ve had a bad day (or week). And the more we eat, the weaker, sicker and more depleted we become.
“But can’t I just eat vegetables with my rice to add nutrients?”
No Evie, baby. Because broccoli’s nutrients are for the digestion of broccoli, they don’t pack extras or spares.

4. So; real food is important. And wholefood is important. But please, don’t beat yourself up for being imperfect with your diet. Imperfection is human. You are going to have a frozen coke at the movies every now and then. You are going to go out to dinner and eat white rice with your Thai food. And, sometimes, when you just can’t face the kitchen – you’re going to order pizza with all of its white flour, additives and god-knows-which-animal-this-really-came-from meats on top. And that’s ok. There is no point in being physically healthy if you are mentally miserable and making yourself sick trying to eat perfectly 100% of the time.

5. And last, but definitely not least – supplement! Because, even the healthiest of diets cant make up for the fact that our soil is depleted of nutrients. To build up your stores for a rainy day – get your self a GOOD QUALITY multi vitamin. And if there are certain foods that you hate, but that have the monopoly on a particular nutrient (red meat & iron, for example) take those, too. And don’t forget that sometimes our body just doesn’t process things as it should/could (for a myriad of reasons, both psychological and physical) so we may need to boost a particular supplement for this reason, also (mood instability & omegas, for example). This also means that you can treat yourself every now and then, have fun, live life and you don’t have to worry about getting sick in the aftermath.

So, that’s what I know- and some of what I don’t. I suppose the answer is that there is no answer. Not just one, anyways. All we can do is try out best to eat real, whole food and enjoy it along the way. If that’s not good enough for the nutritional messiahs out there, then I guess I’m just going to have to build a church of my own. Amen.

Confessions of a human being

I do maintain that mothering and all that entails, is my job, my occupation, my bread and butter and I love it. But don’t assume that in this case “pleasure in the job equals perfection in the work” because it’s absolutely impossible to be perfect as a mother, or as a human being, for that matter. Yes, I bake these muffins, cakes and other creations on a weekly basis. But that is just one snapshot of an entire week that is filled with mess, mistakes and mayhem. I suppose I just want everyone out there, especially the new mothers, to know that such a keen focus on health and nutrition doesn’t mean that this is another perfect element of my perfect life. While I’m baking muffins, the dishes lay dirty in the sink. While I’m researching gentle parenting methods, my dirty washing pile grows higher. And, while I’m on my hands and knees, pretending to be a crocodile and crawling after my hysterically giggling baby girl, somewhere, in the distance, there is a mouldy bathroom wall that isn’t being scrubbed. So, please, don’t think for a second that clean eating and natural parenting are “added extras” that only the brave can tackle on top of everything else.
What it comes down to is a shift in priorities. I do these things ‘instead-of’, rather than ‘as-well-as’. And, even still I find myself grappling with what looks good in a picture and what really matters. Because I KNOW what is right, but I can’t even be perfect with my imperfection. God knows, I long to be that woman who can let go of her inhibitions and invite friends over to a sink full of dishes, sticky floors and be confident that my worth is not measured by how clean my house is. I can talk the talk, alright. I can tell you that what matters is that my daughter is nourished from the inside out, emotionally and physically. I can tell you that my partner comes home to a happy family who aren’t warped under the weight of the pressure of struggling to be super human and cram in play, and good food and love in between the vacuum and the dish cloth.  And, I can tell you that friends who would come to your house and judge you on its cleanliness alone are not true friends, so you should just let go and live and be and do the best you can. I can say the words, of course I can. But you will still find me before we have guests over, tidying and huffing around in a state of panic and disillusionment about what the word ‘friend’ means in the first place.
Before I became ‘Mum’, I worked as a psychiatric nurse. It was part of my job to assist my patients in carrying out tasks set by their psychiatrists and psychologists. One such task was called ‘shame attacking’ – whereby patients can build their self-esteem and relinquish irrational feelings of shame by running straight at it, so to speak. For example, one might feel that they can’t join in a conversation because they believe that they don’t have anything worthy of contributing, no one would want to hear what they have to say or want to listen to them. And so, the therapist would set them the task of contributing a relevant personal experience to the therapy group so that they can confront their fears head-on and perhaps realise that they were, indeed, unfounded.
It’s funny, because even though I have all of this knowledge in my head about how to change my thinking when it becomes distorted, I still struggle to put it into practice. I log onto Instagram and see this band of mothers who post their “Outfit of the day (#ootd)” in full make-up  as they are headed out the door to shop, or lunch or work. And I think to myself, what the hell is wrong with me? Some days I don’t even get out of my pyjamas, can’t even fathom the thought of leaving the house and, with a teething, squirmy and curious one year old, I certainly don’t “lunch”! I ask myself why they can do it, and I can’t. I feel as though I'm not making enough of an effort, I feel as though I am somehow defective because I just can’t seem to keep a clean house, happy baby, with gourmet meals on the table all in a perfectly chosen, ironed outfit and a full face of make-up.  And then I remember that people lie. They show us only the parts of their lives that are aesthetically beautiful and we make the assumption that this represents them in their entirety. The other women at mothers group smile at their newborns, don’t get frustrated when they cry, are wearing clothes without spew on them and boast about they are loving every sleepless minute. And it’s because in a world full of media who portray new motherhood to be moment after endless moment of slow motioned, soft focussed bliss, we confuse these stories with reality. So, if we aren't always enjoying it, if we just want one moment of peace, if we didn't realise how hard it would be, if we feel a startling rage bubbling up inside of us when its 4 am and we haven’t slept in 36 hours – then we are bad mothers, unworthy mothers and unlovable human beings. Bullshit.
And so, in my efforts to quash this bullshit façade that seems to be floating around in mothering communities of all kinds, I’d like to share some shame with you. I'm giving it away to you, in the hope that you can then pass it along to someone else and the cycle will continue so that we can all be a little lighter, a little more human and a little more real at the end of the day. Our lives as mothers could be so much easier if only we allowed ourselves and each other to be human as messy, "ugly" or confronting as it may be.
The disclosure is that a messy house does not make me a bad mother, bad partner, or bad human being – it makes me a human who is doing my best, trying my hardest to give my daughter a happy, magical and healthy childhood and prioritising my life sensibly, and you know what? I think that’s good enough.

Part of my Kitchen, in its natural state. 

(Baby) Food for thought

             

As a first time mum of a 4 month old, I questioned myself, my abilities and my instincts, constantly. Sometimes things just didn’t feel right for no other reason but my intuition telling me so. But I was terrified to trust myself. I didn’t want to take the chance of making the wrong decision based on “a funny feeling” and end up being responsible for “doing it wrong”. It was much easier to seek and take advice. So instead of daring to carve my own path in this seemingly perfect earth, I found myself continuously following well-meaning advisors down the rabbit hole into what I hoped would only be Wonderland. But it wasn’t wonderland. It was never wonderland. Not even once, and starting Evie on solids was no exception to this rule.
After a solid (mind the pun) month or so of furious and continuous breast feeding, sleepless days, restlessness and hourly feeds overnight, pumping, topping up and tearing my hair out in bloody clumps (I exaggerate), I turned to my support network for answers and the general consensus was:  “she’s hungry”.  Surely not? She was only 4 months old! Everything I had read stressed the benefits of waiting until babies are 6 months before starting solids, and the damage that can ensue if this caution was not heeded.  It felt wrong. The idea of starting my baby on solids ‘early’ sat heavy on my chest in a way that I would liken to a feeling of guilt. But what did I know? I was a novice and I was delirious with lack of sleep. Maybe I was blinded by the need to do everything by the natural parenting bible? I decided that I couldn’t live with the thought of my daughter possibly being hungry because I refused to supplement her breast milk based only on my minimal experience and anxiousness. So after a few days of agonising over the decision and discussing it with Papa Bear, I expressed some milk, blended it with avocado, sat my tiny daughter in her bumbo on the kitchen table (she was still too little to balance in a high chair) and spooned this mixture into her confused but trusting little mouth. And it didn’t change a thing. She wasn’t hungry. I realised months later that she was actually tired and trying to put herself to sleep by comfort sucking, hence the constant “feeding”, irritability and wakefulness. But that’s another story for another time (blog).
Do I regret going against my instincts and starting my baby on solids earlier than I should have? No. Although it didn’t change anything about the situation that we were in, it taught me that I probably know more than I give myself credit form and I was doing the best I knew how to do at the time. It is through experience, both good and bad, but particularly bad, that we learn and grow and move forward in this life. But, I digress.  The point im heading toward here is that our journey to and through solid food hasn’t been an easy one from the beginning. It has, however, landed me in a place where I now feel confident and competent making and feeding Evie because many mistakes, means many lessons learned, and here are some of them:

Plastic bad, glass good
It seems every baby aisle in every store that we walk into as parents is plastered with “BPA free!” advertising. BPA, or Bisephenol-A, is an estrogenic chemical that leaches into food from plastics, particularly when heat is applied. If you know a little bit about pathophysiology, you may know that estrogenic chemicals (chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body) can cause any number of diseases from cancer, through to developmental abnormalities (particularly of the sexual organs) and infertility.
Whilst it’s great that all of the plastic producers have cottoned on to the fact that we know BPA is bad for us and will stop us from buying their product, what’s not so great is that the focus on BPA directs attention away from all of the other estrogenic chemicals that still remain in the plastics we consume (studies have shown that 95% of plastics still contain estrogenic chemicals that can and will leach into our foods during use). It seems that BPA is the ‘sacrificial lamb’, if you will, thrown under the bus so that the others may continue to be sold to us with a false innocence.
Estrogenic chemicals will begin to leach out of plastics particularly when heat is applied, that is in the dishwasher, microwave or even over a pot of simmering water. That’s why it is very important that if you do use plastics when feeding your children, and yourself, for that matter, (for cold foods, dry foods or spoons etc) they are washed by hand and not placed in the dishwasher where extreme water temperature and harsh chemicals with denature the plastic and bleed chemicals into whatever they may come into contact with thereafter. It is also important to avoid the use of microwavable plastics to heat food (use glass, instead) as once again the extreme temperature and radiation will cause the plastics to begin leaching (if they aren’t already).
Also of concern are disposable plastics (water bottles and ‘take and toss’ containers)  that are not intended to be used more than once – these do not have to meet the same standards as multiple-use plastics. As such, they develop miro-cracks through which chemicals leach very easily – hot or not.
We heat all of Evie’s food using two glass bowls, one filled with hot water, then placed underneath another with whatever food I am preparing to heat. It does require a little more planning ahead to get food ready on time, and it can be frustrating waiting for food to warm up whilst you have a baby who is grizzly and impatiently waiting for their dinner, but the benefits far outweigh the price for this method. If our children are born perfect and healthy into this world, we have a responsibility to keep them that way, even if it means that dinner is a little late sometimes.
When I talk of heating food, it is also important to mention heating of formula and/or expressed breast milk. The same rules apply. There are quite a few brands of glass bottles available and it would be well worth the effort to seek them out. It is here, however, that I will make a confession: I am human and I’m my desperate attempts to get Evie to take a bottle of expressed breast milk, I tried every brand, teat and shape known to mankind – even those made of plastic. I had convinced myself that if only I could get her used to the idea of a bottle, then I could switch back over to glass once the first hurdle had been jumped. It never did happen, however, because to this day she still refuses a bottle of any kind. Cest la vie.

Rice cereal is bullshit
Do you really think that rice cereal is what nature intended to be babies first food? Do you honestly believe that once upon a time our foremothers noticed their babies were still crying in hunger after being breast fed so they leisurely went and picked some rice grains, started a fire, boiled up the rice, waited for it to cool, mashed it up with rocks and then finally fed it to their still-screaming, and now suffering, babies? Of course not. They would have instinctively sought to ease their babies hunger as quickly and easily as possible, and in a way that met their increased nutritional demands. They would have grabbed a piece of soft fruit, made it into mush with their teeth and promptly fed it straight to their waiting babies then and there. Not to mention the fact that rice cereal legally has to be iron-fortified as it doesn’t contain enough nutrition in its natural state to meet babies increased demands for nutrients. Do you think that our foremothers had access to iron-fortified grains? Babies don’t even produce the enzymes that break down grains until they get their molars in. Not many 6 month olds have their molars now, do they?

Baby led weaning
I know baby led weaning is all the rage on the natural parenting scene, but it didn’t work for us. I do like some of the concepts behind baby led weaning, that babies are encouraged to play with their foods, explore the textures and pick at their parents foods at will in order to explore and develop their pallets. However, babies all develop teeth and the ability to chew at various times. Thus, when I would give Evie ‘spears of vegetables such as broccoli’ (as recommended by a baby led weaning web page) she had no idea what to do with them. She would bite into them initially, but with only her four front teeth, she was unable to grind the food into a swallowable consistency.  It is important to note here that anthropologists suggest that in hunter gatherer societies, mothers would pre chew their babies foods for them and feed via ‘kiss feeding’ (similar to how a mother bird feeds her baby, only without the vomit). This method of feeding had many benefits for babies because the enzymes in their mothers saliva would begin the digestive process for them. In modern society it could be suggested that we premasticate our babies food by cooking and blending it – and research actually suggests that babies benefit most from beginning their solids journey on cooked foods rather than raw (some enzymes are broken down somewhat by the cooking process, thus digestion is easier).

Portion sizes
At one point in time, I became fixated on the amount of food that Evie was, or was not, eating. I think in the back of my mind I had convinced myself that “if only she would just have a few more mouthfuls, she will sleep through the night” and “If she doesn’t eat this, she’s going to start losing weight!” And then I discovered the beautiful, painless truth: babies under one year (especially breast fed babies) only need to eat as much as they will eat, and every baby is different. A meal for one 10 month old may be a whole bowl and the same meal for another 10 month old may be 2 teaspoons. Babies should never be forced to eat, bribed to eat or punished for not eating an amount set by anyone but themselves. Babies are much more attuned to their sense of hunger than we, as adults who can suppress the discomfort of overeating for the sake of taste, pleasure and emotional comfort, are. Forcing babies to eat more than they are willing will only create negative associations with food and a whole lot of unnecessary stress and heart ache for everyone involved.

Jars, pouches & cans There are many additive free, sugar free, organic baby foods available in super markets today, which is great if you are in a rush, travelling, unwell, living in a third world country, or otherwise physically unable to make your baby fresh food at home for a short period of time. However, don’t be fooled. How healthy do you honestly think meat and vegetables that are able to sit at room temperature for months on end can really be? Pre-packaged organic and/or additive/preservative free baby foods are made ‘sterile’ using intense heat to kill any and all bacteria, then sealed air tight to prevent oxidation. The problem with using intense heat to kill bacteria is that it also greatly diminishes the nutritional value of the food. Enzymes are destroyed by intense heat, as are delicate nutrients such as vitamin C. I’m not suggesting that your babies will get no nutrition whatsoever from packaged foods, but they are not getting nearly as much as they would be if the food they were eating was fresh. Furthermore, making baby food at home gets your baby used to the kinds of foods and flavours that your family eats *assuming you are stewing and puréeing fruits and veggies that you have in the house already, which will hold you in great stead when everybody is finally eating from the same pot!

After starting Evie on solids, my next hurdle was what, on God’s green earth, to make for her. It has been a long and winding road figuring this one out, let me assure you. But I got there in the end. So I will leave you with one of the recipes that is her favourite for lunch or dinner – if you would like to see some more you can visit me on facebook at www.facebook.com/theoriginaloccupation

Sweet potato & Carrot Mash 
1 teaspoon grapeseed oil
1/2 a large sweet potato, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1/8 of a brown onion, diced
3/4 cup water
1 teaspoon fresh oregano, chopped

1. Heat oil in a small fry pan, with lid
2. Add onion and carrot and cook until soft (about 5 minutes)
3. Add sweet potato and water, bring to the boil
4. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for approximately 10 minutes (until potato is soft)
5. Add oregano - blend and serve