When my husband and I decided to have our first baby, we did a 60 day cleanse before conceiving in order to ensure the best chances to have a healthy baby.
At the time, we were living in Manly Beach in Sydney Australia, and we were in the process of learning the ‘pie business’ in order to open an Aussie pie shop in Whistler, Canada the following year. You might think that cleansing while working is a savoury pie shop would be challenging with those steamy little chicken, veggie, and meat pies baking all day long… but we had a goal that was worth the sacrifice.
With anything in life, how to reach your goal is to make sure your goal is more important to you than the things you will have to give up to acheive it. For me, having a healthy baby was the most important thing and I was willing to give up things I loved in the short term in order to make sure I reached my goal… including smoking the occasional cigarette (I have never gone back to that), sugar (my biggest challenge), wheat (rice substitutes really nicely for most things), red meat, dairy, alcohol and all processed foods.
My guide to help me achieve it was Francesca Naish’s book “The Natural Way to Better Babies”, which has much of the same information as another book by the same authors “Healthy Parents, Healthy Babies”. I can honestly say that reading that book was a turning point in my life in terms of leading a healthy life. It’s basically a couple’s guide to the most natural pre-conception health care and focuses on cleansing the body of toxins through diet and lifestlye in order to give your unborn baby the most fertile and healthy environment in which to thrive. I truly believe it the best book available on the topic and I learned not only a ton about nutrition for my baby in it, but for myself and life in general as well. I would recommend it to anyone trying to conceive or even anyone just wanting a good source for common sense lifestyle and nutritional cleansing. It really sums up everything you could ever learn about natural health care in order to conceive, and well beyond.
A quick synopsis of I learned from the book is:
- What foods to avoid (and more importantly, why) and what foods to eat as much as you want of (and exactly how they benefit you). The cleanse in the book is not about dieting… it’s about avoiding the bad stuff and enjoying the good stuff and giving you an education on why it’s important.
- The specific nutrients you need and that a growing baby need… but it goes into much more detail than the simplistic ‘eat healthy and take folic acid’ approach. Anyone who reads this book, comes away with an incredible amount of knowledge on the topic of nutrition.
- How to calculate the EXACT moment that you are ovulating by taking your temperature daily. I was amazed at how your temperature can be such an exact art!
- Healthy lifestyle habits to adopt and ones to avoid, and other environmental factors that have more of an effect on fertility than you would like to know.
- Common sense truths about having a baby that should have been passed down from generation to generation but seems to have gotten lost along the way. I don’t know about you… but my mom really didn’t tell me anything. (It’s not her fault… her mom didn’t tell her either!) But this is empowering information that will eliminate your fears and give you the confidence in yourself to enjoy the most incredible experience in the world.
My daughter, on the other hand, made the decision herself to join the family 3 years later. There was no cleansing or preparing involved the second time. The result? A very wonderful little girl who is as determined as they come and knows exactly how things should be. But for the first two years of her life, she had eczema all over her tummy and was rather miserable. Luckily, we started her on her health quest early, and eliminated as many toxins from her life as possible, as well as corn which turned out to be the underlying cause of the eczema. (and something most people substitute for wheat)
Having a healthy baby is a meaningful life goal. But after you have had children, you will have other goals you want to achieve. And if you have been a stay at home mom for awhile like I was… you are eventually going to get to the point where you want something meaning for yourself, as well as for your children. After all, the best thing you can do for your children really is to live by example.
So in honouring your desire to be a good mother… be good to yourself and go for your own meaningful life goals.
To Your Empowered Success,
PS Want to know what products I use now to keep my family full of nutrition and free of unnecessary toxins? Click here
PSS Want to work together and make money from home so you can enjoy time freedom with your beaurtiful and deserving kids? Click here
December 5, 2011
Healthy Families