Both my boys are playing soccer this season. I have to say that I LOVE having my boys in a sport for several reasons. First of all it gives us incentive to get a head start on the day on Saturday mornings. We’re up bright and early, dressed, and out of the house before 9am. Secondly, we’re in the sun. I’m a big believer that we need to be outdoors as much as possible for the vitamin D, the fresh air, and to earth (its my hippie side and I’ll save that for a different day!). Lastly, it keeps my kids active and having fun. I truly hope that they will carry with them a healthy active lifestyle long after I’ve raised them.

Needless to say, soccer is great. But this season we have a new guest in our soccer field every saturday…the super fun snow cone truck.

Its a great idea. After the kids get all sweaty and tired from their game, they are rewarded with a cold snow cone. Genius! But of course the catch is…the actual snow cone. That syrupy sugary mess that is considered a treat. One of the moms actually told me that her son ate the snow cone and was later literally bouncing off the walls. So of course, parents encounter the never ending predicament.

On the one hand you think:

• I want to reward my child for playing well and he would kill for that snow cone
• kids should be kids and eat treats once in a while.
• This is not something they eat every day.
• My kid is watching all the other kids get snow cones
• I don’t want to be too crazy about eating healthy

On the other hand you know:

• The snow cone is full of sugar and high fructose corn syrup
• The snow cone will probably spoil my child’s appetite for lunch
• These kinds of foods are completely addictive

So what do you do? Do you let the child have it for the sake of the experience, or do you put your foot down and just say no???

The first week, being caught off guard, we caved and bought the snow cone. But by the following Saturday, my husband (being the out of the box thinker that he is) opted for a clever third option. He figured he wanted to have all the positive aspects of the truck…the experience, the reward for playing well, the happy kid…without the negatives – the ingredients. So he thought, I’ll simply buy the ice and pour gatorade on it so my kid gets a healthier alternative… essentially the best of both worlds.

As luck would have it, the snow cone truck also sold Powerade so my husband bought the fruit punch powerade and poured it on the plain ice cone.

The whole thing resulted in happy kids and happy parents.

Well, I have to confess that the whole plan backfired on us when we realized that Powerade also has High Fructose Corn Syrup!!!!! Regardless, I still felt that the idea was worth sharing.

Maybe one day we will have a fun snow cone truck with healthier alternatives…like real fruit pops or some option that is fresh, tasty, colorful and good for you.

But until then you have the choice: be strict, be carefree, or be creative!

Whichever choice you opt for…as long as you choose with love…I’m sure you’ll be just fine!

We had an experience the other day that I really wanted to share. It was Sunday morning and I needed Orlando to go buy some stuff at Whole Foods. Since our food choices tend to be expensive, I am very specific about what we buy where. So when I send Orlando to Whole Foods…it is not to browse. It is to buy items that I know I can’t find at Costco or Winn Dixie (I try to save where I can!).

Anyway, Orlando takes my oldest son Orly with him. When they returned, they both seem excited to show me stuff. Turns out that because it was just the two of them, and they weren’t in a terrible hurry like we usually are, they did actually browse. Or better said…Orly browsed. As they looked for Berries, Orly found a box of Longans. He asked his dad what they were and he had never had them before. Orly then said, “Dad, we should buy these because we’ve never tried them before.” My husband confessed that at first glance he thought to say no to purchasing this unnecessary (not on the list) item…but then he thought about it and remembered how he is always drilling in our kids’ heads that they have to try new foods, over and over like a broken record. Well if that’s his mantra then he certainly wasn’t going to say no to trying a new food when his son suggested it. So the Longans were added to the shopping cart.

A wheatgrass drink called Velu made it home also because there was a distributor giving a presentation and Orly had a shot and insisted that they buy one so the rest of the family could try it. And lastly, my personal favorite….

They were selling this Children’s Planting Bag at the register of Whole Foods as a fundraiser for underprivileged children. Apparently the project is trying to help teach these children to eat healthier foods.

I can’t explain the energy that followed my husband and kid as they walked through the door. They were so excited to share this new stuff they bought. They were dying to try the Longans, Orly couldn’t wait to go plant his seeds, and they were excited to share this with the rest of us.

Sitting there watching them plant their seeds in the pot, it dawned on me that eating has so much to do with planting seeds. Most mothers have heard when they start introducing solids to their babies, that eating is as much social as it is nutritional. Mothers are told not to worry how much of the food actually makes it in the baby’s mouth. Its more about the baby learning to eat with the family, learning to chew, learning about textures, learning to grab the food, learning to use utensils…its quite a process. But the process doesn’t end once the baby knows how to put food in his/her mouth and chew. Actually, it then is really only the beginning. Because eating is more than chewing food. Eating is tied to culture, to emotions, to income levels, to education. What we eat evolves based on age, health, physical status, stress levels, even seasons. And despite how many factors are involved in this process, our society has managed to make eating a “mindless” experience.  Food has become fast and easy. Drive throughs, lunchables, microwavables, packaged bars, frozen pizza, canned fruits and veggies…fast, fast, fast. Hurry up and eat so you can move on to your next important event. Have you ever been asked to journal what you ate all day? How many times does the day pass and you can’t remember what you ate that day?

But to actually STOP. Plant a seed. WAIT for it to grow. And then USE it in your food preparation…wow! what a concept. We don’t have a yard big enough to have the luxury of planting mango trees, avocado trees, and papaya trees…but on this day we planted Swiss Chard and Radish Daikon. And the point was that my children will learn the concept of planting a seed, watching it grow and eating it. We have some dear friends that do have a huge yard and we have had the privilege of taking our sons to their house to pick mangoes and avocados and papayas. To evaluate whether they are ripe or not, to clean them, and to eat them. I think this teaches kids the lesson of being MINDFUL of what food is and where it comes from.  We don’t always have time for this kind of stuff…but we take advantage of it when we do have a moment.

And it made me think of one more thing…I’m often told that I’m so lucky that I don’t have picky eaters. And with everything in life, there is always a little luck involved 🙂

But I truly believe that a big reason that my kids eat well is because we (as a whole) are mindful about food. We have rejected the fast and easy food system as the norm in our home. And our attitude about food is one of openness, exploration, curiosity, excitement. Its not just me trying to get my kids to eat their veggies. My husband and I share this attitude. We practice it in our own lives and our home has adopted that attitude. Which is why my husband came home with the wheat grass drink and the velu bottle. Its why we huddled around our kitchen counter ready to try these new things.

It probably cost us an extra $20 for just these three little items. And the Longans and Velu drink could have been a hit or miss. But truly that didn’t matter at all.  Its really all about the experience.

I used a “tacita de cafe” for us to have shots of the wheatgrass. We all thought it was tasty.

And I LOVED Longans. They will definitely will make it into the shopping cart again in the near future. I am going to research the nutritional info of this tasty fruit and I’ll let you all know!

Orly was so proud of himself for finding this tasty treasure and we definitely thanked him for giving us something new to explore.

So I put this question out there today for you to answer truthfully. What is the food culture in your home? Does your eating philosophy differ from your significant other’s? Are you eating mindlessly? The answers to these questions may help you if you are struggling with what you feed your children, or with your weight or health. And regardless of what the answer is, know that even though this attitude doesn’t change overnight…you can always help plant the seed of change….wait for it to grow…and reap the rewards!

Have a mindful day.

Funny how so many factors influence what we eat and how we eat. One of the factors that put me in a mentality of eating “whole” foods was when I started making my own baby food for Justin. Making baby food seemed completely impossible, complicated, difficult and intimidating to me when I had my first son. And yet by the time I had my second son, making baby food actually opened my world in terms of eating healthy. It just made sense to me. It became easy and uncomplicated and fun even!

And here we are again…. I just started making baby food for my baby boy and I am revisiting the simplicity of whole foods all over again.

On that note, I bought a whole organic chicken to make my very own chicken stock (which I use for most of my baby food purees). I’ve even become confident enough to slice the whole chicken into pieces…this was something I couldn’t do when I started a couple of years ago. Anyway, we don’t eat chicken at home very often mainly because we eat mostly fish, vegetables, and sometimes ground turkey. And the truth is Orlando doesn’t really like handling raw chicken and even finds it somewhat boring. So chicken rarely makes it to the weekly menu. But since I had these nice pieces of organic chicken breast defrosted in the fridge, it motivated Orlando to take advantage of it.

We both love chicken marsala but most chicken marsala recipes entail breading the chicken and pan frying the chicken which includes a considerable amount of oil.

Orlando opted to take a lighter approach and the result was phenomenal!!!!

Our meal consisted of:

• white asparagus
• cauliflower/parsnip mash
• chicken marsala with onions and mushrooms

Directions:

Onions and Mushrooms

1. Chop 1 red onion. Spray a little olive oil and  sauté in pan with a little salt and pepper until caramelized.
2. add 1 box of sliced mushrooms to the pan with the onions. When the mixture is cooked through and starts to dry up add a little bit of marsala wine to deglaze the pan.

Chicken– (we had a little under 1lb of chicken from the whole chicken I sliced up. Orlando pounded it to make the breasts thin pieces – not too thin but definitely not thick.)

1. season the chicken with salt and pepper
2. spray some olive oil on the pan. Sear the chicken for about 4 minutes or until it gets a nice color, then flip to the other side and repeat. Add a shot of marsala wine just to deglaze.
3. add the mushrooms and onions back into the pan to warm through and mix in with the chicken.
4. Cover the pan and take off heat.

Parsnip/Cauliflower Mash

1. peel and chop 4 medium parsnips (make sure to slice off the tops and bottoms)
2. chop 1 head of cauliflower.
3. Boil cauliflower and parsnips for 12 minutes. Strain water out (save water for blending)
4. Place cauliflower and parsnips in blender – you can either add 3/4 of a cup of  boiled water or grassed/organic milk and 2 tbsps of organic/unsalted butter and blend. NOTE: the amount of water/milk depends on the blender and your texture preferences. It is better to add less and add as you go along then add too much and get a soupy consistency. As you blend you will see if you need a little more liquid until you reach your desired consistency.
5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

White Asparagus

1. Toss in olive oil and salt and pepper.
2. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes.

The meal was delicious because the marsala wine had a nice sweetness to it without the heaviness of the breading or frying. The sauce with the mushrooms and onions acted like a gravy for the mash. The whole meal was a success. Enjoy!

This has been an incredibly difficult week for my husband and I. Unfortunately we have witnessed the inexplicable passing of a beautiful 2 year old little girl. As relationships blossom through the years, friends become like family and their kids become a part of you…and to lose a child of a friend feels like a loss of your own.

Being privy to this event made me feel like I simply couldn’t post on my blog. I write about food. Healthy eating. Healthy lifestyle. At a time like this, I thought I had nothing to write about. But something changed. Yesterday we all united in Church to celebrate the life of this little girl. As I sat there listening to the parents of this little girl speak, I was blown away by their strength, their dignity, and their courage during these tragic moments. They gave me peace.

What?

Those most affected by this loss are the ones offering me peace?

Yes.  Because they have inner strength. They are spiritually and emotionally strong individually and as a couple.  That is something worth sharing.

The truth is that if you really break it down…we don’t know when our time will come to leave this Earth. Eating healthy does not guarantee the full ride. Regardless of your lifestyle, no one is immune from pain. People get sick, people have accidents, things happen… we all die.  We simply don’t know what cross we’ll bear and some crosses are harder than others. The saying goes: “When you think you’re going through the worst thing in the world, there is someone else who has it worse than you.”

So now that our dear friends have lost their little one as a result of a pool drowning… the community instinctively draws their loved ones near. Cautious voices whisper: “Put floaties on your kids.” “Don’t lose sight of your kids for one minute.” “We have to be so careful.”

Parents and grandparents want to protect their young so much that after a loss like this one they rather err on the side of ridiculous just to be safe. But the truth is that even with the extra precautions, with the fear, with the hope of protecting your loved ones, accidents will continue to happen. Life will continue to happen. Unfortunately, fear of living will not save you.

The only thing we can do is to have spiritual and emotional strength….like my dear friends have…to deal with the pain.

It is that strength that we need to enjoy the good times when we have them, and bear with the bad times when they arrive.

I can’t imagine going through what my friends are going through. I can’t imagine dealing with their pain, especially considering how hard this has been for me. But I have learned from them. I have seen their faith and I am confident they will get through this and feel happiness again. I have a true admiration for them and their family.

So for today my friends, I propose that if you want to be healthy, begin from within. In order for a healthy diet to mean anything at all, your mind and your soul needs to be healthy also. Seek inner health. It doesn’t really matter what your belief system is, but have a belief system of your own and nourish it. Laugh, listen to music, focus on happy thoughts. Be good to yourself. Value your self and your being. Surround yourself with people that make you better. Be grateful. Be good to others. Meditate. Pray. Breathe.

Never stop sharpening your spiritual and emotional being…because only then will you achieve true health.

Hello everyone.

As I’ve shared in previous posts, school lunches have been challenging for me. For one thing, I have great eaters that become picky eaters when school comes around. Often times, my lunchboxes come home untouched. I’m not too concerned with my kids not eating lunch…after all, I don’t think they’ll starve to death. But it does annoy me that I put time and effort into making them lunch only for them to reject it. I also feel kind of guilty thinking they are staring down some other kid’s lunch thinking…I want that, why does my mom give me this!

Last week I spoke to the kids all week about lunch, (mainly my older one but my little one chimes in every once in a while). Every time we ate something, I would ask them “is this something you’d like to eat for lunch at school?”  I got No’s on almost all soups and meals involving veggies. It has boiled down to pasta and sandwiches. I bought a cute book at pottery barn kids a while ago with lunch ideas and pictures. I’ve been showing the book to the boys and asking them to show me pics of the foods they’re interested in for lunch.  It may seem silly that I’m giving my almost 3 and 5 year olds so much of a say in this process, but I feel its somewhat similar to cooking with the kids. I have found that the more involved they are in the process the more inclined they are in trying new things and eating well.

On Sunday we did a grocery list and they made specific requests like mandarin oranges, and raisins…and then Orly said he wanted a chocolate in his lunchbox and I said okay…and when he realized I was cool with it, he raised the stakes and said…no mommy, I don’t want a chocolate…I want a lollipop.

I took that opportunity to make a little pact with him… I said “Ok Orly, I’ll put some fun stuff in your lunchbox such as a lollipop, but you have to promise to eat the other foods I put in your lunchbox also…do we have a deal?” He agreed.  I got him these lollipops because I like the ingredients as an alternative to regular lollipops and my kids like them.

So here’s the report:

I did a mini trial run. Over the weekend I made a couple of different sandwiches/wraps that I wanted to see if they’d like.

Specifically I did:

AVOCADO/PEAR SANDWICH

So easy.

• 1 slice of ezekiel bread
• spread avocado
• place slices of pear on top

Interesting note: I thought it was so good, but Orly didn’t like it. It occurred to me to put the avocado and pear on top of an ancient grain cracker. He didn’t want to try it but I made him and he really liked it. So I guess he just didn’t like the combo on bread…he preferred it on a cracker. Yay for lunch!

HUMMUS WRAP

• 1 small ezekiel tortilla
• spread avocado on tortilla
• spread hummus on tortilla
• chop red, yellow and orange peppers into small pieces
• raisins

I was pleasantly surprised that the boys liked this wrap. I was not expecting them to like it at all!!!!  Now let’s see if it comes home from school eaten or untouched.

TUNA SANDWICH

• tuna
• mayonnaise
• dijon mustard
• slices of apple
• raisins
• chopped celery
• squeezed lemon

I mixed it all together to make a nice tuna salad and then I put it inside a butter lettuce leaf and then inside a mini pita pocket. I forgot, however, to take a picture of it!!!!! I will definitely post a pic the next time I make it.

The pita pocket actually made the boys’ first actual lunch at school!!! They really liked it.

Note: Orlando made homemade mayonnaise. We had a couple of trial runs because he was using peanut oil as a healthier alternative and it just didn’t work out. Then he made a batch with olive oil that was edible but not fantastic…when we perfect it we’ll post the recipe!

I put a side of mandarin oranges and as promised…their lollipop! It was a success!!!

What are you all putting in your kids’ lunchboxes??? We need lots of ideas!

I sat down in front of my computer this morning determined to start blogging again. It almost feels like getting together with an old friend where you are kind of nervous that you will have nothing in common anymore…but at the same time you have so much to say that you don’t know where to begin. I confess I even went back to my very first blog, (Why this Journey Began), which was from almost a year ago, to read it again and reconnect with my purpose.

So much has been going on in our lives. Running a home with 2 toddlers and a baby and both parents working is a lot to handle. It is easy to go on autopilot simply to survive. At some point I started feeling like I had nothing to write about because to be quite honest we’ve established certain recipes in our lives and it feels like we do a lot of the same most of the time. But after reading my very first post this morning, I realized that I did not create this blog only to post recipes. After all, if you want to find a healthy recipe of any kind you can put in a google search and get hundreds of them in seconds. I created this blog to share ideas and experiences and offer options on changing your lifestyle….along with delicious recipes that we’ve found in our journey.

I had almost forgotten in the robotic state that I had entered, that lifestyle has much more to do with changing your thoughts about food and eating than it does with the actual recipes. So here we are again, summer is ending and routines are picking up again…everyone is trying to reestablish sleep schedules for their children, buying uniforms and backpacks, and gathering the materials necessary to begin another year of school. Even for those that aren’t parents, everyone knows traffic is about to get worse and the relax ambiance of summer is almost over. The month of August in many ways is similar to December and getting ready for the actual New Year.

So I’m feeling that way about my blog. I have so much to share. From what’s been going on with the baby and his weight gain, our Sarasota vacation, school lunches for the boys, the eating psychology conference I attended….the list goes on and on. I’m so excited about it that I want to plop down in front of this computer and just spit everything out. But that would make for an extremely long and confusing post!!!

So for today, I just want to share that I’ve regrouped and reenergized and am ready to blog again.

And because its Sunday and for some of us this is the last week before school starts I wanted to make some recommendations.

TAKE SOME TIME TO PLAN – we all know that to eat healthy we need some level of planning.  Do your groceries, think about your breakfasts, lunches and dinners this week. Pre-cut vegetables and fruits for your smoothies if you know you won’t do it in the morning. Even if planning means thinking about what foods you want to eat this week, it’ll put you in a driver’s seat state of mind.

STOCK UP – Go to the grocery store. Stock up on healthy foods that you know you and your family enjoy.

TRIAL RUN- This is something I intend to do this week. I put Orly in a gymnastics camp for one week this summer and some days he came home with his lunch untouched. I didn’t understand and he told me that there are foods that he and I quote….”likes to eat at home but doesn’t like to eat for lunch.” Not sure what this is about. Maybe he doesn’t like his lunches to look different than the other kids. Maybe he doesn’t like the food because its been sitting out too long. Who knows. So since I believe he deserves a say in what he eats and I want him to enjoy eating healthy….I am dedicating myself this week to doing a trial run of different “lunch” appropriate foods. That way he can say yay or nay and give me an idea what’s going to work for him this year. I’ll keep you posted on how this works.

COMMIT TO ONE CHANGE– Its hard to live a perfectly healthy, balanced life. Some of us eat better than others, some of us exercise more than others, some of us are more spiritual than others. The point is that we can all stand to improve. And we should never be totally complacent in our current situation. So try to make one change this week. Maybe start exercising, maybe commit to one healthy meal every day this week (lunch, breakfast or dinner), maybe you can commit to taking 10 minutes during the day to take deep breaths this week. Whatever you do, make one change (no matter how small) that you think will make a positive impact in your life if you adopt permanently.

Hope these suggestions help you get in the frame of mind for a healthy, powerful, energized week. I’m excited!!!!

Happy Sunday!

Ladies and Gents… Summer is here! It is hot and sunny outside and the beach is delicious! Last Friday I went to the beach with my brother, a girlfriend of mine, and all of our little children.

Clearly we had to prep for food. The process of choosing food for an outing is usually stressful for me, but for some unknown reason,  this time I just knew what to take.

I got a bunch of containers and ziplock bags and packed the following:

• 1 large ziplock of baby spinach and raw broccoli bites
• 1 container of Kosher Petite Dills
• 1 container with all my salad toppings – chopped carrots, chia seeds, hemp seeds, almonds, pistachios, and raisins
• 1 lemon
• 1 container of sliced tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and celtic sea salt
• 1 container of tuna salad (recipe below)
• 1 container of raw mixed nuts – cashews, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, almonds
• 1 ziplock bag with gluten free crackers
• 3 chobani yogurts (1 for each of our kids)

My girlfriend took the most delicious mangoes and water and a big cooler to store all of this stuff.

TUNA SALAD RECIPE

• white solid albacore tuna
• dijon mustard
• lemon
• celery finely chopped
• tomato finely chopped
• apple finely chopped

By the time we arrived at the beach and brought all of our kids and bags and the cooler, it was 12:30pm…lunchtime.

My brother was starving. My girlfriend was too and she took a look at the food that I had brought and seemed disappointed. She told me that she didn’t think it was enough food and maybe we should get some chicken from Publix or something to fill us up because everyone was hungry. That peace that I had when preparing the food immediately dissipated!!!

To make a long story short, we never got the chicken.  I gave the boys yogurt and the tuna on crackers; prepared the salads for the adults with all of my toppings and added the tuna and chopped mango on top with the balsamic vinegar from my tomatoes.

As we began eating the salad, I felt terrible for my friend and my brother. I thought to myself, here I am imposing my healthy food on these people instead of getting something they want. I was a little embarrassed that I had thought this was enough food, and overall I felt I had messed this up. But at the same time I thought the salad was totally delicious. All of a sudden my brother said “Oh my God!!! This is amazing!” My girlfriend said the same and said “wow, I never thought I could get full from this and i’m totally satisfied” WHAT A RELIEF!!!!  They even thanked me for being a positive influence on them 🙂

I went home and talked to Orlando about it and Orlando agreed the food just didn’t seem like beach food. He said when you think of beach food you think of sandwiches and chips…finger foods… not eating salad on a plate with a fork and knife. Maybe I didn’t pack
“beach” appropriate food…but I will tell you some of the pros of what I did pack.

• The food was delicious and refreshing…the mango really did take my salad to another level!!!! The balsamic tomatoes, the lemony tuna, the fresh salad…it was perfect for a hot day.
• We didn’t pick at food all day long. We ate a good lunch and enjoyed the rest of the day in the beach.
• We didn’t get stuffed. You know how gross you feel when you eat a bunch of knick knacks and chips and your belly sticks out…that didn’t happen to us.
• The kids ate well. I am sure that if we had balsamic tomatoes, pickles, and chips, pastelitos, and other junk food…my boys would have gone straight for the junk food! But since there were no other options, they ate yogurt, pickles, tomatoes, tuna, mango, nuts … light, refreshing foods…and they enjoyed it.
• At the end of the day, we all felt good about our choices. Cheating definitely has its perks and sometimes it is totally worth it. But rarely do you spend a day at the beach picking at junk food and feel “good” at the end of the day. You may enjoy it at the moment but later you probably regret it. Well, we really didn’t have the opportunity to cheat, but at the end of the day there were no regrets!

All in all we had a wonderful day. And although my meal plan seemed like a total flop at the beginning, it ended up being a success. And it encouraged me to share that with you. Maybe the next time you pack the cooler for your beach outing you’ll remember this post and pack some refreshing foods. Maybe next time you can be a positive influence on someone else. And maybe “beach” food can be anything we want it to be…as long as we have plates and silverware!

Its incredible how our bodies work. I’ve always heard that stress is a killer. There is talk about stress being a cause for depression, for being overweight, for cancer, for heart disease, I’ve even heard stress affects your gums. There are books and seminars all focused on managing and reducing stress. The word STRESS is quite common in our vocabularies. Yet it came as a complete and utter shock to me when I was recently told that my newborn baby is not gaining weight because stress is affecting my milk supply.

Since the birth of Ryan, my third son, I have gone through a series of events both positive and negative that have not allowed me to slow down. Having a newborn is a stressful event all by itself if you consider the physical part of the labor, the sleepless nights, and a new little person making its demands with cries instead of words. So when you sprinkle on work, other children, and exigent circumstances that require your presence and time, it can make for a bit of a disaster. I knew I was stressed. And I knew I was tired. But I also consider myself to be a person who copes very well under difficult situations. I thought I was juggling my life just fine.

And then last Thursday I took Ryan to a mommy and me class that I enjoy attending. I had not been able to go for about 3 weeks because I had been traveling or so busy…but on Thursday I felt I had to go. I felt I owed it to Ryan to spend a little quality time just him and I. It was there that Faith (the lady who heads this group) looked at Ryan and told me “honey, I think Ryan has lost weight since the last time I saw him. He is alarmingly thin. You should take him to your pediatrician.” I almost died. I had not noticed that my son looked so thin. All my other children have been pretty thin so I wasn’t expecting to have a chunky baby. But this lady has known me a long time and has never uttered those words about any of my boys. I went straight to the Pediatrician that day and discovered that Ryan was not gaining the appropriate amount of weight. My pediatrician sat with me and heard about what had been going on during this time and said… “Caroline, stress is the anti-milk.” The baby was not dehydrated and had been peeing and pooping so it seemed that I had enough milk but it wasn’t “fatty enough.” Well, as it often does, everything seemed to crash at that moment. I couldn’t get enough milk out when I pumped, my son cried frustrated at the breast as if he couldn’t get it out…I thought it was over… I lost my milk.
I am thankful to my pediatrician because he didn’t force me to give up. He recommended to me that I drink “malta with leche condensada” (an old cuban remedy) to increase the fat in my milk and said to come back in a week. “If in a week the baby doesn’t gain weight…then we’ll talk about it” he said.  I left the office so upset. I immediately called my general practitioner for some words of wisdom and even took the baby to see him. He said the baby was neurologically doing great but a bit too thin…and so was I.
Although he did not recommend the malta with leche condensada…he did give me a series of steps I needed to take to increase the fat in my milk. But he reiterated over and over to me that the key was that I RELAX.

This has been an eye opening experience for me. I thought I was doing right by not eating “unhealthy foods” but my lifestyle was no better than before I was eating healthy. I had to take a hard look at what I had been doing recently and I realized:

• I had been forgetting to take my vitamins
• I was not drinking enough water
• I was skipping meals because I was in too much of a hurry all the time
• I wasn’t eating “bad” foods…but I wasn’t eating enough of the “good” foods either.
• I wasn’t sleeping enough.

These are just a few of the factors that went into my milk production shutting down. You see, our bodies tell us in different ways when there is something wrong.  We gain weight, we lose weight, our blood pressure goes up, our cholesterol goes up, our gums get inflamed, we feel depressed and tired, we get chest pains.  There are always signs to indicate that we are not living our life optimally from a physical, emotional, or spiritual perspective. Yet we often ignore the signs until we are in a critical state.

I could no longer ignore anything because it wasn’t about my life, it was about my child’s. And isn’t it incredible that the only way that I could help my son was by taking care of myself? Nature is incredible. Our bodies are incredible. I had to make changes and they had to be drastic. I started with the easy part first…the nutrition. Based on a combination of advice from my doctor and pediatrician, I supplemented my diet with the following:

• 5 protein shakes a day – (Jay Robb organic protein) with chia, sesame, flax, and hemp seeds, unsweetened almond milk and organic maca powder.
• Horchata with water
• hard boiled eggs, avocados, coconut oil (in increased quantities)
• 4 1.5L bottles of water per day (I believe this one was the key to increasing my milk supply)
• gaia lactation support tea before bed
• Guinness beer ( I drank about 3 of them during that first week)

I’m still working on the more difficult task…the RELAX part. I’m not a very relaxed person in the first place… so this one was quite the challenge. I bought lavender oil and took hot baths with epson salt and lavender. I also tried to slow down in general and get more sleep, laugh more, and listen to music. And I tried to alleviate my anxiety by trusting in what I was doing. I believed my milk supply was going to increase. I believed the changes I made would help make the baby gain weight. I’m happy to report that  I took my son back 1 week later and he had gained 4 oz! Yay!

This is a work in progress and its not over, but my milk supply has definitely gone up. My son is back on track and things are improving. And I’ve learned a lesson. Taking care of yourself is the best way to take care of your family. If you’re not okay, then you are of no use to those that depend on you. So address the issues you are having. Don’t ignore the signs!!!!!