The Leaf Lady

I want to talk about weaning and sleep training Oliver but it's still a sensitive spot for me and I get weapy. Yes, I made this decision to be done with it, but it doesn't make it any easier emotionally. My hormones are changing to a non-lactating woman, my breastfeeding bond is no longer there and I'm learning to cope. It's liberating in some ways but still sad. And here I am talking about it! So I'll stop.

But, mom! I don't want to drink milk from this thing!!!
 

What's been heavy on my mind the past couple months is weighing the pros and cons of doing the Remicade IV infusions for my ulcerative colitis. Here's my list:

PROS:
*Remicade put me in remission and I haven't had a flare up for almost 3 years
*it worked quickly and effectively
*as a result, I haven't had to have a colonoscopy in about 2.5 years (they suck)
*I've always enjoyed Sanford's complimentary meal when I get infused. Usually breakfast for me. Aaaand their excellent selection of newly-released movies. I get to watch the movies I want to watch that Travis refuses to...but only every 8 weeks.

CONS
*Remicade is a chemotherapy - chemotherapy has residual, long-lasting effects
*33% of patients get headaches and migraines (ding ding ding! that's me!)
*many patients also experience fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain (ding ding ding!)
*I am expected to do this treatment indefinitely.  That means forever....until they come up with something better, or determine that Remicade is, in fact, harmful. That seems to happen a lot. The FDA is fickle.

Now, let's say hypothetically, I discontinue use (against doctor's orders...believe me, I tried to talk to my GI doc about it, he wasn't supportive) and I don't have issues for months or years or ever! It's possible! Or, what happens if I regress? and I'm back to the place I was almost 4 years ago? anemic from blood loss, severe cramping, fatigue, on multiple medications, undergoing medical procedures. I don't want to go back to that. But I also don't want to continue in the direction I'm headed now: a lifetime of drugs. I want to be healthy. I want to be natural. I want to be youthful. Vivacious. Clean (yes, I shower almost daily). I want to feel alive and energized and rigorous.

My mom goes to an herbalist/nutritionist and she was able to successfully get her off medication a while ago. I'd never really asked for much info about the procedure because, frankly, I wasn't interested at the time. But since we all know per my post a few weeks ago, that in the past year and a half I have been taking strides towards a healthy, paleo, toxin free lifestyle, I wanted to know more about this "leaf lady". Out of curiosity and speculation, I decided to have a consult with Amy. My cleanse and herbal regime is for a different post because honestly, it's a lot but most of what I am taking and was taking over the past 8 weeks or so has gradually decreased. Amy muscle tested me or some might know it as applied kinesiology. Here's a little info about that because if I try and explain it, I'll sound like a weirdo. http://www.goodhealthinfo.net/herbalists/muscle_testing.htm

Whether you choose to follow this lifestyle or not, it doesn't really matter to me. I realize most people will think I'm off my rocker for pursuing this but the most important people in my life understand it and support my decisions OR know well enough just to let me be with my witch's cauldron.

I'm sure you can see which way I'm leaning in regards to my treatment decision. The true test will be how my body handles my disease and if I can truly rely on what nature has provided for millennia  to treat and heal my inflammation by means of herbs and holistic healing.

In the meantime, here's my vigilant inspiration. It seems he still loves me despite all ....

Mommy Guilt and Weaning...it's all as bad as it sounds.

Every milestone we pass as a family with Oliver seems to be the worst. He's never slept the greatest at night but sometimes he'll grace us with a few weeks of sleeping through the night, or at least a 7-8 hour interval, then he'll regress. He always regresses. I don't know what it is about this regression that seems particularly dreadful but maybe it's because I am usually the only one who can soothe him enough to go back to sleep. This is because I breastfeed. During this regression, I have experienced a myriad of mental breakdowns. Most of them have been silent ones that I keep to myself. But Wednesday morning, I got up to the brutal alarm after hitting snooze way too many times and immediately started crying. I mourned the loss of sleep for the past year and a half. I mourned the loss of my husband and our intimacy due to exhaustion and a needy, whiny, colicky child. I mourned the loss of my feeling of self because my entire being was so focused and at the disposal of my child. I mourned the loss of my youthful luster, now replaced with a haggard 29 year old. I mourned the loss of having more time to myself, with my friends, my husband. Wednesday morning was the morning I cried all the way through my shower, while getting ready (I forgoed mascara that day), and all the way to work. I stopped once I got to work, because, if there's anything Joan from Mad Men taught us, you don't bring your personal stuff to work - you leave that at home. Thanks, Joanie. Truthfully, I've learned a lot more from her than that :) So I did what any adult woman and mother would do...I called my mom and cried on the phone with her too. I told her if she couldn't take her grandson, I would not hesitate to call Grandma J and ship him off to the farm for a week. Either scenario would be fine for me, but that was to prove my desperation for needing to be away from him. I had a list of other people in my arsenal, including his Aunt Amanda, cousin Kelly and his bash brother, Sutton, or a couple of friends. My mom understood my urgency for needing to be away from my son and said she would take him for two nights ... consecutively! A year ago, I would have said no way would I want to be away from my baby for that long! Now? I packed his bags immediately and said, "Ollie, you're going to have a sleepover with gwamuh".



Ollie-man in his vintage Easter outfit

Now this fateful Wednesday morning of sobbing, I came to the decision I did not want to breastfeed anymore. My good friend, Breanna, encouraged me by saying I made it further than most moms make it and I should be proud of myself.  Don't get me wrong, I am. But when your child cries incessantly for 'na's!' 'na na's??!!' and rubs his forehead into your chest and pats his chubby little hand on your breasts, the emotional part of it is excrutiating. I am reassured that while breastmilk has served him well into toddlerhood, he does get his needed nutrients elsewhere and this has been an added bonus at this point. My co-worker reminded me that while we as mothers want to reach a certain goal as a parent, sometimes, our mental well-being is more important and that Oliver will benefit from that too. It is at this time that I realized mentally and emotionally, my heart wasn't in it anymore. Ollie was only feeding once or twice in a 24 hour period anyway, so that makes it a little better I suppose. Now onto sleepover time with Grandma.....He didn't sleep any better for her, he woke up 4 times during the night. Today, my parents had things they had to do so I went to their house to pick him up at 4pm today and had him until 815. This sounds terrible... I picked up my kid for a few hours just to drop him back off. We went to the park and that kept him distracted enough that he wasn't asking for na's. Then shit hit the fan when we tried to have supper with Auntie Bethany. I had to get the food to go and get the heck out of there. After an hour straight of crying, one bath later, and a near-to-tears mommy (again!), my dad (who was the only one home at the time) said, 'just go'. He knew that Oliver wasn't going to calm down for me as long as I was there and not giving him the boob. So I ducked out of there like I was leaving a strip club in the daylight. As I drove home, I called my cousin Kelly, who reiterated it was ok, reminded me not to feel guilty. I also remember my co-worker telling me a few weeks ago that she always took vacations without her kids even when they were young because it's important as a mom to have time away to 'regroup. I am trying to remind myself of this as I type this. It is now night two. My boobs are a little sore but not too bad. They haven't been emptied in almost two whole days. So I guess I'm tearful for a few reasons. One, I am admitting that, as a mother, I can't be around my child right now because I am so fatigued and need some sleep. (GUILT) And number two, my incredible, amazing, difficult, sacrificial journey with breastfeeding is coming to a bittersweet end.


A mother's job is never done. Sometimes I cringe when I say motherhood is a job. Guess what? It frickin is, it's hard-ass work. It takes commitment, will power, compassion, love....the list goes on and on. I guess these two nights, I am taking a brief sabbatical. So tonight, I will mourn another loss but look forward to a happy future. I will mourn the loss of a closeness Oliver and I will never ever have again as we are wrapping up our breastfeeding journey. This weekend I am certain will be worse as he likes to have that closeness for nap time as well as bedtime. Please send positive vibes our way and prayers that we will make it through this chapter and that our family will some day get sleep. In the meantime, I have wonderful family and friends who are more than willing to take Oliver so I can regain some sanity.....whatever shreds there are left.

ok, but should it be this difficult?!

"They never said it was going to be easy."

This rings true for me in almost every facet of my life. The two things that stand out are: my health and being a mother.

This weekend was wonderful because my in-laws came and we accomplished a lot; however, I had a persistent and worsening headache as the weekend progressed. By Sunday it was borderline a migraine and yesterday, I stayed home from work and drew the blinds and laid in silence. I get migraines from my IV infusions I get every 8 weeks for my ulcerative colitis. The infusion is a medicine called Remicade or Infliximab. It is a chemotherapy that put my colitis in remission. I am glad it put me in remission but the side effects are starting to outweigh the benefits I feel as I am plagued with headaches almost daily and general fatigue. It also suppresses the immune system since the medicine is a biologic. This is one of my private battles I go through every day....debating whether I want to continue to do these infusions or get the courage to abandon this form of treatment and pursue holistic healing.

The second is being a mother. I knew it wasn't going to be easy but this child......my beautiful, angelic-looking, gift from God child. He challenges me in ways I didn't know possible. As if having a migraine wasn't enough, he wakes every two hours screaming bloody murder. Why?  I don't know. Probably the fact that he has 14 chompers that broke through his swollen gums in the past 7 months. I suppose that'd piss me off, too. Everyone's got a miracle solution. But, I swear, Oliver is immune to all these. Therefore, we suffer through it. I have to continually tell myself "they never said it was going to be easy". Agreed; however, they never said it was going to be THIS HARD!!!! I often wonder if there is any sanity left for me. I suppose I will one day sleep again but i'll be old and senile at that point, and miss being a young mother with a baby.



These are my confessions.....

In the beginning....there was inspiration and enlightment

I originally started this blog back in January 2012 to document my pregnancy and share my joys and glowing months of growing a human being. What really happened was the worst nine months of my life consumed with vomiting, dehydration and constant nausea. Since I barely had the energy to lift my head, blogging certainly wasn't a priority or even something I thought about after a couple months. So! Having since birthed the parasite....ahem....child 19 months ago and successfully keeping food down since, I have decided to come back from retirement because since having Oliver, I have developed a large interest in eating healthy.... and not just eating healthy but eating CLEAN foods and maintaining a somewhat nutritious lifestyle. This blog is to reveal to you that this is a journey and I most certainly do not perfectly adhere to a certain diet but rather that I am a human being, a mother, a wife, and work full time; therefore, I am TRYING.

I won't get too much into detail now but as aforementioned, my son, Oliver, inspired and motivated me to really research what I was putting in my body because he was getting that, too because I breastfeed. And in those first several months, he was exclusively breastfed. Why would I want his pallet to be fast food or candy or junk food? I wanted him to eat healthy, so that forced me to do the same for his own wellness. As a result, I am gradually pursuing a realistic paleo diet, with the help from social media, blogs, books, and my ever-encouraging mother who researches everything.

I am not a medical professional but believe in our body's ability to overcome and fight disease and illness and common maladies by what the earth has provided since the dawn of time.

So, to start off, I want to thank Oliver, for being my bundle of chunky ginger inspiration, and my mom for always being a hippie :)