An Apple A Day...

Let me just tell you that I eat more than one apple a day.

Searching for a Pediatrician
   The basic qualifications are that they did the standard med school thing first then went on to complete extra schooling in holistic medicine. Melissa recommended Boulder Holistic Medical Center to us so I went and met with Dr. Berger last Thursday. I wasn't too happy about driving all the way down there only to get 5 minutes of his time so I decided to just email some questions to Mindful Pediatrics and Holistic Pediatric Consulting instead. It turns out neither of them accept insurance, period. Seems like a great way to keep your patient load down. Don't get me wrong. My acupuncturist doesn't accept insurance either but they also charge on a sliding scale according to your income. This is fair. In this case I feel as though they are cutting out the middle man to save me money too. I am ALL about cutting out the middle man but these pediatricians want $220 for a half hour appointment! Then we are left with the extreme hassle of trying to submit our bills to the insurance who in all likelihood will cover little to none of them. There's just nothing in this for me.

   Dr. Berger

• Approves delayed vaccination schedule - pro
• Administers only 1/3rd the current vaccination schedule - pro
• Will try vitamin, nutrient, homeopathic remedies before pharmaceuticals of any kind - pro
• On board with leaving male children intact - pro  
• Follows standard pediatric visit procedure (birth, 2, 4, 6 etc) - pro  
• Seemed super busy...didn't offer up very much of his own info - con 
• There was a paleo diet book in the waiting room!!!!! - pro
• Family practice so Ben and I could go there for primary care too - pro 

31 weeks

 

The V-Word

33 weeks - Durian Fruit?

    When I was born in 1983, I 
received 10 vaccinations. Fair enough but it still crosses my mind that my lifetime of vaccinations may be the cause of the horrendous allergies I suffer from today. Today, the average infant receives 36-38. Despicable. (As usual, most of Europe knows this, just check out their vaccination schedules.) A strong underlying belief in this country when it comes to anything from food to exercise to medicine seems to be that more is better. I strongly disagree. (Even with exercise. There's no reason on Earth that anyone anywhere should spend more than 45 min a day at the gym. I like to keep it to 20-30min max). If we all just used our critical thinking skills when it came to making health care choices we'd actually  have a chance of moving up the health list of affluent nations on which we appear dead last. EMBARRASSING! 

   Medicine has it's place but we aught to be looking to nutrition to solve problems first. I've read countless documents about the detriments of a vitamin deficient diet and how diseases can pretty much always be traced back to lack in one or another. Most Moms really drop the ball here, eating and drinking garbage themselves or not breast feeding at all. (P.S. - even infant formula has GMOs in it these days!) Not me.
   I have given some thought to a delayed vaccination schedule as I do think vaccinations have been helpful preventative aid in the past. We will NEVER, EVER, EVER do all 38 of them though especially as they are filled with some pretty toxic "preservatives". Because of this there is a transparency bill being pushed for right now which will require the ingredient list to be available to parents prior to having their children (or themselves) vaccinated. If this gets passed, you'll see...you will see. However I've found a pre-vaccination vitamin regimen in this article that's pretty interesting (8th paragraph down). I asked Dr. Berger about this and he had no comment on it but sometimes when you've trained and worked inside the box for many, many years it's difficult to see outside of it.
    Hippocrates had it 100% correct when he said, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." Of course these days its increasingly harder to find food that will improve your health rather than hinder it. But GMOs, pesticides and soil deficiencies are a topic for another day. The bottom line is that it IS possible and it IS worth it. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the human body is not that it can allow obese people to live as long as they do in that state but that it has the ability to recover from poor health choices at any time so it really isn't ever too late. But it will cost you time, something most people aren't willing to commit when wanting to change their bodies. When you sleep well, exercise every day and you eat the highest quality, lowest inflammation foods you can get your face on, you are making your body into a heavily armed fortress than can withstand A LOT. 

Just when I thought I couldn't get any bigger...

   In other news, our check up today went well and these 7 (more like 6 since tomorrow is day 1 of week 34.) remaining weeks just can't pass fast enough!!!!! Melissa told me that I should enjoy my uterine babysitter while it lasts and get out and do some things before Jaxen arrives. I'm not sure what this means because right now I physically CAN'T go out and do the things I love anymore. I stopped rock climbing at about 29 or 30 weeks because it became more effort, strain and recovery time than it was worth. (Today was my last jump rope too.) But maybe she was referring to going out to dinner and movies, the stuff I don't really like to do that much anyways. What I would like to do is get a float in before Jaxen arrives but I think I'm out of luck on that too as in June the Colorado River is still pretty high, fast and cold. *SIGH*

OMG. We still don't have a middle name...

ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS OF WORK!!! 
So ready to be done.
Although I don't know what I'm going to do with myself at that point...  

"A child who has always been allowed to move freely develops not only an agile body but also good judgment about what he can and cannot do. Developing goof body image, spatial relations, and a sense of balance helps the child learn not only how to move but also how to fall and how to recover. Children raised this way hardly ever have any serious accidents." 

~ Magda Gerber 

Get Your Free Online Baby Calendar at BabyZone.com
Pregnancy Due Date Countdown at GlitterBell.com

A 50 Mile Hike?

29 weeks

Naaaaaaaah, I didn't do one. But I do know of some ladies who participated in marathons and triathlons while pregnant. Instead, I'll stick to Crossfitting for 20 minutes (just lost my full back squat @ 30 weeks) most days in my basement and eating right which has been a bit of a challenge to get back to after being left with so many desserts and non-paleo snacks post baby shower. Not that I've been anything close to 100% (more like 75%) this pregnancy but my poor poor knees can't take very much more weight, particularly when hiking down hill.

31 weeks

Somewhere along the way I read that giving birth is like hiking 50 miles energy expenditure-wise. AMAZING! This puts it in terms I can really wrap my brain around. I did an 11 mile hike on the Kalalau up and down the ridges of the Napali Coast with 25lbs on my back in a single day. Other than that I don't have much to compare it to, I haven't even done a 14er in a couple years! I can’t imagine doing 50. And to think, they hardly let you eat or drink anything if you're in the hospital...juuuust in case you have to have a c-section because the drugs they gave you to speed up the process totally messed up the natural cascade of hormones that make birth a completely safe and effective method of increasing the population 90% of the time.  When I think of doing a 50 mile hike with all its accompanying painfulness, I sure wouldn't be all drugged up for it. It would ruin the pace, drastically decrease the safety of the activity and it would ruin basking in the full and pure glory of reaching the summit on my our own. That's my birth plan in a nutshell.

Melissa came for another home visit and she is pleased with Jaxen's orientation (not to say he still can't move around before the very end) but he was (R)OA, occiput anterior which is the easiest, fastest, least painful position for birthing. (Lately he's always kicking away at my placenta and stuffing that big ol' bum of his up into my rib cage...ow.) If you, for example, have an occiput posterior baby you get a lot of back labor and it is usually prolonged and difficult. Since he still may move around between now and birthday, I'll be starting OFP exercises and postures around mid-May to make sure he stays OA for birth.

This is great! I feel like I'm learning so much by using a mid-wife where as a doctor would never give you information like this. I belong to a first time Moms Facebook group (over 100 women all due in June) and there is a HUGE chasm of knowledge between the few of us who are using a midwife vs. those who are seeing an OBGYN. In fact, the major perk of waiting until 30 to have a baby is all the time I've had to accumulate all this great information. With information so readily available these days, I can't imagine why anyone would NOT want to stuff their brain until it is explosively full of every type of baby related knowledge that's out there!

<---- Speaking of good information...9 weeks to go! Have you read Magda yet? This is what we're doing. Time to get on board.
  
 

ALSO...Can't wait to put this DVD into use (warning: may be difficult if you don't have a good ear for sound.       ----->

Now that we have most of the necessary baby items, it's time to turn attention to Jaxen's room. So far it's been painted and all the closet organizer features implemented as well as a dresser installed. The scrabble art I made is even now up on the wall! This weekend's project is to get those dinosaurs painted! When that's finished, I'll blog about it with some photos.

See you in two weeks!

And now, my our moment of Zen:

My favorite place on Earth.

  “…If you give a young child a peaceful beginning, the child develops a natural rhythm and then later he can grow more easily into adult life. You have to respect and trust a healthy, normal baby’s inborn capacities, his natural desire to learn. You do not have to do more. What infants need is the opportunity and time to take in and figure out the world around them.”   

~ Magda Gerber