Time for Gratitude - Information

Today I want to talk a little about learning about health, medicine, and nutrition.

I have been on a journey for the past couple years learning about – well – how our bodies work. I am constantly discovering new things and I am just so grateful that there are so many resources out there that make it easy to gather this knowledge.

It all started when I was pregnant with Porter in 2009. As you all know I gave birth to him in our home. For any of you that have given birth – particularly at home – you know that it’s SO important for you to understand what your body is doing and what your baby needs to do to be born. It’s also important to understand what you can do to avoid issues if at all possible. One of the things that stuck out to me during prenatals is that my midwife really encouraged me to up the protein in my diet. She said that was the way to avoid pre-eclampsia. Understanding that I needed to focus on protein and also ensure I was getting plenty of fruits and veggies (that part I already knew – ha!), exercise, etc, helped me have a super-healthy pregnancy. Because of my nutrition and understanding of my pregnancy and the birth process, I also had a beautiful homebirth that was indescribably peaceful and wonderful.

So, that began my research and hunger for knowledge in how our bodies work during pregnancy and birth. What I have discovered is that it’s not just about pregnancy, birth (natural birth in particular), but more about how our bodies work as a whole…whether pregnant, giving birth, or not. As I continue to make connections with things, we have been making small changes with the way our family eats, receives medical care, and frankly…just how we live.

For instance, some of the changes have been relatively small things…like switching to raw milk (very recently, by the way, and yes – we LOVE it!), I brew homemade kombucha, I make our seasoning mixes now (like ranch, taco, and onion soup mix) so that I know what’s in them (and frankly, they are SO tasty!!), we use essential oils as much as possible, I made herbal detangler the other day for Vienna’s long hair, and if you have read this blog at all, you know that we cloth diaper, I breastfed both kids past a year, and so on. There are definitely more things to do and I look forward to continuing to learn more. I mean, seriously – our diets are definitely not great still, but we are working on it, and I’m just thankful that we are so blessed with such a plethora of information that is so easily obtainable and that will help us implement even more things so we can live the lives God intended for us.

For those of you that contribute to the plethora with blogs, links on facebook, and other outlets of information – THANK YOU!! You help make so many lives better! J

~Evie