Infant Oral Thrush Natural Treatment Protocol

 

I love when I can help families heal health challenges naturally.

Often I will get moms or grandmothers in the store asking about how to treat infant oral thrush holistically.

My protocol is as follows:

• 2 sprays/or full droppers of colloidal silver twice daily in baby's mouth, cleanse nipples before each nursing with silver also. Buy it here.
• Secondary nipple cleanse with lavender essential oil in extra virgin olive oil or grape seed oil, let absorb before nursing. Buy it here.
• High quality probiotics given both to baby (powder) and to apply onto nipples before nursing, twice daily in between colloidal silver treatments. Buy it here.

This treatment protocol is about 90% effective. It is 100% effective if the mother also balances out her food regime (refined sugar free, low fructose, high vegetable (ideally juicing), high quality fat and carbohydrates).

There is no need for harsh, suppressive pharmaceuticals. Most parents notice once a drug is removed, the thrush simply returns with a vengeance and the immune system has been further compromised by it.

Primarily, it is wise to support the body naturally to help the innate healing abilities do their fine work. Suppressive medicine is there as the last ditch effort, not the first step.

Positive Toddler Direction

Hi. Thanks for visiting. I haven't written in a while. I have been a busy mother and very introspective this winter. Conceptualizing, planning, maybe brooding a little, but inward and reflecting on where I have been and where I am going. Who am I as this new being, this "mother" from maiden transformation?

My daughter is going on 15 months and her personality is really starting to shine. One thing I am learning as a mother is that, well, sometimes (many times!) your long or short patience is tested. Some healthy rules to be disciplined with can prevent any negative behaviour being emulated by our babes.

One simple rule that I am really working on is that of the positive direction rather than the "no, don't do that" negative conditioning. It's a challenge sometimes, to be certain, however practice makes (almost) perfect.

I learned from a few resources that children pay very little attention to the word "no" and instead listen to the command in the sentence. So "don't pick your nose" becomes "pick your nose!" Great idea mom, already on it (or in it)!

So instead of saying "no, don't hit the cat," I try to say "Gentle petting of the cat please." Or "Don't flush the toilet," becomes "Let go of the lever please." Easy to say and hard to do but it is possible!

Attempt to simply correct yourself if you start in on the "no" or negative form. Even if you say it all, correct yourself and take a moment to think about it, if you can! Toddlers can be quick!

And then, sometimes, eating pizza upside down needs no correction.

I wonder does this trick work on men?

I Have Become, Yummy Mummy.

It all started when my friend and mother of three came up to me and showed me a cloth pocket diaper that she liked. She said she wanted more of them in a specific pattern, camouflage I believe it was, for her young son. So, being the helper that I am, I went searching online to see if I could find what she wanted. Well I did. So we ordered a bunch together and the rest is history. Yummy Mummy Emporium was born. https://www.facebook.com/YummyMummyEmporium

I really liked the idea of moving my little girl away from the bulky all in one diapers she was wearing toward these slim fitting, colourful and designer pocket diapers. Oh yeah mama! Since I was practicing elimination communication this was a much simpler and quicker way to remove the diaper and get her over the toilet or potty, especially once I put her in the leg warmers rather than dealing with yet another layer, like a pant or cover.

Many other mothers wanted these items, naturally I just kept ordering more and more of them. They want amber necklaces, I order amber necklaces. They want legwarmers with ruffles, I buy legwarmers with ruffles. Now I am looking into Hazelwood necklaces and baby shoosies and hair flowers and oh my!

My favourite creation at the moment is my tie dyed legwarmers. They are a lot of work but I love that I have found something to sustain my baby and I that is creative and helps the planet too (by encouraging cloth diapering). I plan on homeschooling Anwyn so I need to be able to stay at home and work...it's all falling into place. Now if I could just figure out where I am going to live! Stay tuned.

Feel free to visit Yummy Mummy on Facebook, press that button called "like" and say hello.  https://www.facebook.com/YummyMummyEmporium

Love, Yummy Mummy

Quelling The Baby Blues

I'm tired. I don't totally feel like writing but sometimes one just needs a little push and then momentum takes over.

I have written before that I was a very colicky baby and tortured my parents for over a year with it. As a healer and having studied naturopathic medicine (a 4 year program and University needed as a prerequisite), I have prepared for it with Anwyn and watched her closely to see why she gets it. I have used various remedies and found what works to clear it. I have changed the foods I eat to attempt to prevent it.

Here's a short summary of what I have learned.

Dr. Jack Newman, as much as I love his work to help new mothers get breastfeeding right, seems to think that gas is all about the latch. An improper latch causes air to get into the stomach somehow and there you go. I think he is partially correct.

I think mothers: women who are actually breastfeeding their babies, can attest, again and again, that they go out and eat such and such a food and wham, their little sweet angel has turned into a screaming demon child from hell. It's not rocket science. I know it's not any latch issue. My baby can now nurse while doing yoga all over my body. She knows how to nurse, in fact she was the one who really taught me how to breastfeed.

My own experience is that, yes indeed, improperly digested food from mom causes gas, bloating and other digestive discomforts otherwise known as colic. I think improperly digested metabolites can get into the breast milk and affect the baby negatively.

Baby's guts are still forming and have a whole bunch of environmental learning to do.  The first thing to help them along is to birth vaginally so that the proper bacteria can transfer into the mouth and then into the gut. It also seems most wise to introduce foods gradually, starting with the most easy to digest and natural forms of foods and work up from there. The most natural and easiest thing for a baby to digest would be mother's milk from a mother eating her best primal diet and digesting well. The next would be certain fruits and then slightly cooked vegetables, as organic and local as possible, ideally with some breast milk mixed in for extra enzymes. Grains are the more challenging to digest and should be the last introduced, even after meats. Pulses also need to be tested and introduced slowly.

Foods ideally should not be introduced at all until post 6 months when the baby is able to hold his or her head and body upright combined with showing interest in food from your plate. Really, there is a whole lifetime of eating which takes lots of energy for the body to deal with and assimilate, so why the rush? Breastfeed as long as possible, pump if you must, get milk from a bank if you must or have a wetnurse. I have a good friend who nursed her son exclusively until after 1 year. He is as healthy as can be.

Then there is question if the evolved human really should be eating much food at all, when one is breathing properly, getting energy from the sun and drinking the correct vibration of water, food is almost negligible (read Hira Ratan Manek's story at http://solarhealing.com/about/), however I digress.

So for Anwyn the foods that challenged her when I ate them were milk (not cheese or yogurt, just milk), wheat, white sugar (the rare time I would have any), onion, garlic, broccoli, cabbage (oh cabbage) and all other sulfur family foods. If I took a digestive enzyme before eating any of these foods her discomfort was greatly reduced or completely avoided.

Treatment for her if she had colic was first some probiotic (I use Genestra), then homeopathic Sulfur 30CH (I find the sulfur connection fascinating), then if that didn't clear up fast enough I would make fennel or dill weed or seed tea and give her some to drink. Oh and the bouncing...the. bouncing. My poor wrists.

Homeopathy, the herbal approach and helping out the gut flora really work wonderfully together. I also would apply castor oil to her belly, especially if she was more or less constipated. Giving her Cod Liver Oil (from Genestra) I do regularly to aid in her brain development and to reduce any inflammation. Daily massage with grape seed oil is also a great practice for many reasons and I also give her some water with a pinch of Himalayan crystal salt in it to help her with minerals (and she often eats earth from the garden). A hot water bottle applied to the abdomen can also give some relief, especially if combined with an oil upon the skin, like the above mentioned. Even a warm shower or bath (hydrotherapy) would provide some relief.

I hope some of this info will assist you with your sweetie. Remember to take it easy on their developing gut, in later postings I will talk more about food and digestion.

How To Take A Dump.

I live quite remotely. The area is 600 acres backing onto Crown land. The house is at the end of a dirt road. There is no airplane noise other than the neighbour's dad who flies over in his little plane every so often. There are no sirens, no construction noises, and a very low background EMF (electromagnetic field) level. It's heaven.

I came out here to birth Anwyn. I refused to birth her in the big city. She deserves wide open spaces and to learn about her own energy; unencumbered by unstable neighbours, a constant barrage of advertizing, cigarette smoke, traffic noise and other pollutants.

It's a different way of life. For example, we use a well or fill up from the local spring for water. There is no local transit. There is no garbage or recycling pick up. One must organize such waste and trek to the local dump for drop off.

When Anwyn was born she was 5 lbs 8 ounces: right at the lower end cut off for weight. Any lower and we would have been told we had to take her to the hospital. They would have had to take me fighting and screaming, against my will, so it's a good thing. The cloth diapers I had been lovingly given by a very sweet and giving friend of mine were ginormous compared to this wee body. I was new to cloth diapering and I tried using the Chinese style and the prefolds but only had diaper pins and those just freaked me out. We had to use disposables at the beginning until she grew into the cloth. So I used the most green and Eco-friendly diapers I could find.

The piles of soiled diapers would fill up a plastic shopping bag and then go out to the old outhouse that was converted into our trash storage area. By the time we actually made a trip to the dump, quite a number of bags had accumulated.

People who have trash pickup have the luxury of not seeing where their waste ends up. Out here going to the dump is a ritual of sorts and can be quite an event. It wasn't until I brought this load of diapers to the landfill that I really caught the scope of this particular waste item.

The reality of the sheer volume of diaper garbage happening around the globe hit me like the scent of a mound of month old nappies. Our babes come into this world and we let them be such huge polluters right out of the gate? I just imagined how much waste I would be making if I continued to use disposables until she was potty trained. That was huge and that was just ONE baby.

It takes over 500 years for a diaper to decompose, and that's in the right conditions. Yes, that's right. 500 years. What on earth are we doing? When you see it in it's environment and in it's scale, you honestly never want to use a disposable diaper again. When you witness the huge black bears eating these diapers, plopped down in the middle of a vulture infested area which used to be a forest, it's hard to believe we are doing this as a species. I find it impossible to be okay with this amount of waste. Waste that can simply be avoided. Plus, it's money saved.

After about 2 months the girl grew enough to make the switch to cloth full time. I started with the Chinese style, folding the cloth and just putting it into the cover... on it goes. I felt much better doing a little bit of extra laundry. I also saved buying packs of diapers at $20 a shot. I sunned them and they naturally bleached. I used vinegar and a little natural detergent to clean them and they worked very well, very few leaks. Every now and again I had to strip them, washing them a second time with no soap. I made the mistake of build up once and she got ammonia burn on her bum: all blistered! I'll never do that again. Like breastfeeding, it took some trial and error, some tweaking, and some research and 'the system' got figured out.

THEN I starting finding out more about cloth diapers, other makes, styles and designs. I found a company I liked and I started buying wholesale and selling to my friends. I loved playing with the colours and outfits to match. I also loved encouraging other moms to save money and stop feeding a wasteful legacy. Holy crap (pun!) cloth diapering became fun! I wanted to start a home-based business anyway and so I set it up online (https://www.facebook.com/YummyMummyEmporium). I found it a great option for a stay-at-home mom who does it all. Especially a single mommy like me. I plan on selling lots of natural products this way and helping moms as much as I am able.

I can't imagine diapering any other way now. Also, now that I know about newborn cloth diaper sizes, I would only recommend disposables for the first few weeks because the learning curve can be steep (especially for a first baby). As I am doing elimination communication with Anwyn, I find the pocket diapers very helpful. I can just unsnap them and not worry about the insert falling out while I hold her over the toilet or potty. Plus they are so nice to look at I don't need any other covering. 

If you need any convincing, come visit me and I will take you to the dump.

Boobs & Poop, Milk & Beer.

I was a very colicky baby, as I have been informed all too many times by my parents. I totally tortured my mother. "Back then" they didn't tell my parents anything about babies medically or about baby rearing, etc., so they had no idea what was going on. My mother brought me back from the hospital (the place where births should almost NEVER happen) and I just kept screaming. They though I was dying. Sorry mom! However, it could have been the fact that they never assisted my mother in breast feeding, so she was unaware that milk can take anywhere from 3-7! days to "come in". They instead fed me formula, far less superior to the perfect design of breast milk, and well, I had screamingly horrible intestinal pains because my body couldn't digest it. It IS amazing I am still alive.

The breastfeeding mom is my hero now. Now that I know that it does take patience, diligence and awareness to set up breastfeeding initially and that the mother knows instinctively and/or consciously how much good she is doing for her baby's immune system and overall health and wellness...for life. Plus, you have to give yourself to your baby wholly and completely. You carry their food and if you nurse on demand like I have for the past 8 months (and not pumping, storing, rewarming, etc) your time is in their hands (well, mouth) literally.

Mastering the latch is key to a happy breastfeeding experience, free of trauma and disappointment. I just kept working away at my latch, reading Dr. Jack Newman's info (http://www.nbci.ca/) again and again, and since I had midwives for my home water birth with Anwyn, one came to me for many post-partum visits and assisted me with latch and answered any questions I had.

Anwyn received all of my precious colostrum however my milk took those entire 7 days before it started flowing, despite all the suckling, massaging, etc. Jay and I both were very upset. Those days felt like an eternity. I had all sorts of emotions accompanying this screaming, hungry baby. I felt inadequate, I felt mad at God/Shakti/The MultiVerse for this cruelty. Why would evolution do this to us? Was this wait natural? Was these some real reason for it? And please don't tell me baby's suffer for "Eve's garden mistake" or some other ignorant B.S. I would imagine there is some medical and vibrational reason for it, but as knowledgeable as we think we have become, it seems there is so very much we just don't know. Now I can understand what happened with my mother if I took 7 days for milk flow, she must have thought she had duds!

Thank goodness for our neighbour with two children, she had extra milk in the freezer from one of her children that she gave to me to give to Anwyn. It helped bridge the gap and at least satisfied her enough to sleep and calm down. The midwife was hinting at formula and I just said no way! As much as I had to fight the tapes of 'bad mommy' I knew in the long run I was doing a good thing, so I stayed true and it all worked itself out.

Once my let-down reflex got rolling it was such a joy to hear her gulp and to see her poops change. The joy of poop! If you are a parent, you totally know what I mean.

My boobs grew too! Bonus, well sort of. Really one boob grew bigger than the other. Oh.
Well then! I surrender my body to this child so that she will grow healthy and strong and with love in her heart and she will carry this with her to share this love with others...that was, and still is, my mantra.

I also did not have an over-active let down reflex nor did I ever leak. For some mothers, this is an extra challenge, but one I have not experienced. Except for the beginning, I have had no pain, cracking, bleeding, infections or the like. Only twice did I have the beginning of a blocked duct happening and I got on it right away with homeopathics, herbals for my immune system, extra rest, massage in the shower and changing suckling positions and it cleared up very quickly. Both times it happened I was very stressed regarding the relationship with Anwyn's dad.

As well, due to relationship stress as well as financial concerns my milk was low and Anwyn got quite angry, especially when the 'easy milk' was gone. I resorted to herbals (galactogogues) and non-alcoholic beer (it's the hops that does the trick) to increase my supply. I used fennel, fenugreek, blessed thistle, oat straw, nettle and raspberry leaf and cut out mint and garlic. I just always had a big pot of it going on the stove, strained, added some honey and drank many cups per day. I also took in more spirulina, known to assist supply. They all worked very well and once I did this for a few months, my amounts were established and I no longer needed any exogenous stimulus. More info here: http://www.canadianbreastfeedingfoundation.org/induced/herbs.shtml. I never needed to use domperidone or the like.

Even so, Anwyn was very gassy, which I half expected. I had to cut out many things from my diet to assist her: wheat, milk (not all dairy, just milk), garlic, onion and anything sulphuric (cabbage, broccoli, etc) and I started to take digestive enzymes. When she was in pain we would give her probiotics, fennel or dill weed or seed tea, homeopathics like carbo veg or sulphur (I find the sulphur connection fascinating!), castor oil rubbed on the belly, a warm shower with mommy and skin to skin with a grapeseed oil massage before and/or afterward. I never resorted to enemas or anything synthetic. The bouncing though...oh the bouncing. Our wrists paid that price. I remember once reaching over to pick her up and I literally thought my wrist was going to fall apart! She is over most of the gas now but if I eat wheat now she still gets a bout. That's no problem, gluten is not healthy to eat anyway so I steer clear and I feel better for it.

As I have been attachment parenting Anwyn, it's been a labour of love and in her case, really paying off. For the first 4 months we almost never put her down! And now at almost 8 months she wants to be put down and she already plays independently and is a very happy, calm baby.

She started reaching for my plate right at 6 months. I had planned exclusive breast feeding until that time, as is recommended by WHO and other groups. I started to do baby-led weaning with her so she would learn about her gag reflex, how not to choke and how much is too much into her mouth, so I started to give her slices of watermelon, whole bananas and cooled, cooked sweet potato. She did very well with all of them. I started to notice that chunks of food would just come through into the cloth diaper (I will talk about diapering in another, upcoming post) and I really started to doubt this method. How on earth is she digesting any of this food? Yet I did want her to control what she was eating herself (i.e. I didn't want to spoon feed her). So I spoon fed her organic apple sauce and showed her how to use the spoon herself, which she did quite well with (messy of course!). Now she is eating a lot of foods and again, the food issue will have dedicated posts to their discussion.

She is still breastfeeding consistently (the other nice thing about breastfeeding for many, not all, moms is no menstruation! Bonus!) so I wasn't, and still am not, worried about the nutrition factor.

One thing is certain, she is growing and she will be tall. As of today she is 15.13 lbs and almost 29 inches long. She gets chunky and then long, chunky then long. If you trust nature and yourself it's amazing to see how life flourishes.

Hyperspeed Reunions and BreakUps (and Still No Dinner)

I haven't posted in a while. Why? Well a lot has been going on. The relationship between Jay and I has completely dissolved. I find myself a single mother. There were challenges between us all along, we really just tried to push through the mess for the sake of Anwyn, well at least I tried. I realized though that I had been involved in an abusive relationship. I didn't realize the trap I was in until finally I had had enough and refused to let him move back in (it's part of his pattern of hold it in, blow up, freak out, leave, then move out, act 'normal', move back in). He got mean then, really mean. I now lock my doors and have had to deal with threats and harassment. I don't want to give this anymore energy but I did want to touch on it, since this blog is quite a bit more personal than any other blogs I have created.

Another thing is Anwyn's baby book is missing. It happened right after I returned from visiting my parents. Ah yes, we are reunited which I am glad for. It is nice that Anwyn will at least know some grandparents, if not her father, who is no longer showing interest in her. He is really hurting inside to be sure. I knew he had come into the house whilst I was away as somethings were moved and the shower had been used. Also a huge bottle of colloidal silver was mysteriously missing. However, since his visit (technically a break and enter!) I have not been able to find her book, which deeply saddens me. Jay swears he did not take it. I don't know if I totally believe him but there is nothing I can do other than continue in another book and pray it re-materializes. This is where I write all of her milestones and quirks, the joys and the lessons, the raw truth for her to read later, when she is older.

Anyway, tonight I had to think clearly, as Jay decided to go to a lawyer to attempt to extort me for money. I know, strange. He's the one who is in the position to be making child support payments and instead he is trying to get money out of me for a car that we had to buy because he crashed our first one. How on earth do I get involved with such situations!? So I took a double dose of l-glutamine (1000mg) and 500mg of GABA (to help me calm down) when I returned from grocery shopping. These two neurotransmitters/amino acids are related, I figure the GABA can turn down the l-glutamine, if need be. (Note: If you do take them, always take B6 with amino acids in order to properly metabolize them.)

Well, Anwyn napped from 6-7:15 pm and then she was UP, alert, practicing her standing and other activities, squealing, rolling around, putting her face right up to mine, smiling away. This girl's brain was ON! She would not get to sleep until 10pm, to my chagrin. I guess the cat litter box and the full compost will have to wait. However, I realized that the l-glutamine (and perhaps the combo with GABA) must have affected her. After all, they are amino acids used to heal the gut "brain" and brain proper and support the musculature (in fact Candace Pert who discovered the receptor for GABA noted it was found in every cell of the body). Tonight Anwyn stood up in her pak-n-play and remained standing. I could see her working up a sweat (it is very hot here in Ontario but her sweat was more from her workout) and making faces to stay standing for as long as she could. She just pushed right through it all. L-glutamine and GABA at work here? Hmmm.

I find it so interesting the ripple effects of events, the letter from the lawyer, my need to have clear thinking to respond, all trickled down to a wide awake baby and a mom who had no dinner.

These amino acids are used successfully in ADD/ADHD children and adults. Jay is adult ADD and his brother also has it. Perhaps my use of it and Anwyn getting some through the breast milk is helping her gene function at this young age to prevent a later onset of ADD. One thing is for sure, she was hyper! However she was focused, alert, interested and definitely fun. Can I say cute?!

Here is a great article on treating ADD/ADHD naturally with amino acids and other natural compounds. http://www.vrp.com/amino-acids/add-and-adhd-natural-control-of-add-and-adhd