Been a while...its now 2013 and its February...how time flies.
Quick update...Chinut is gluten intolerant...oh yes indeedy :\
How does one 'find out' that they are gluten intolerant? It begins with denying the fact that every time you eat bread or similar, you experience awful wrenching pains across the diaphragm, up the esophagus and get a smashing headache and sweats to go with it. Yes, for a while there (a long while actually) I'd considered that it must be eggs, or butter, or a combination of eggs and toast with butter, so I'd try 'no butter' and still get a reaction...so I tried 'no eggs' and I still got a reaction. Finally (oh dear me, yes, it takes a while for the light to dawn...) I tried 'no bread', but I told myself it was so I could actually lose some extra flab because admitting that the pain was caused by bread was like telling my best friend they were a bad influence on me...just a hard thing to do.
So bread was eliminated and I went on to feel marvelous. I lost a stack of weighty flab from my bod. I felt so much better! The peri-oral dermatitis I'd had flaring very very badly even went down. These subtle and not-so-subtle indications of my body's massive internal imbalance, helped me to stay bread free for some time. Though, contradictorily, I did not want to admit I had gluten intolerance. It seemed like a weakness to me. It seemed to me that I'd have to admit 'something was wrong with me'...
I ate oats, and with minimal reactions and the actual goodness of oats, I was able to 'feel full' after a meal of them. Three years down the track from my wonderful pregnancy with Angelina where I'd done all the bread-free work, and I'd slipped back into old habits. I can bake bread really well, and its a source of pride for me to produce this for me and my family, so it was difficult to bake this gorgeous smelling stuff and not sample some too...you know what I mean. Out of the oven comes a hightop loaf of wholemeal or tray after tray of vegetable Cornish pasties and it turns into Drool City. When I would see my babies all heartily tucking into the goodies I baked it made the world seem right. Baking tends to lend a certain atmosphere of comfort to a home.
Zipping forward to the pregnancy with Jeremy and I've again established a massive flare up of peri-oral dermatitis. Its awful. I feel like a baboon's arse, my face is red, inflammed, itchy and cringefully ugly to me. I desperately try every known trick I have and ask informed friends for their best take on what to do. Time and time again we return to pro-biotics and pre-biotics as the indications all point to massive internal imbalance. I even go so far as to try out MMS (water cleaning) treatment, but it was a little to much to take. What does help is the pro-biotics. I used Kefir milk. It's sour and zingy, creamy and wholesome. I like it but I don't like having to drink it. 'Consistency' is not my 'thing'. I help this by also using a pro-biotic vegetable powder (In-Liven by Miessence) but its made with greens that contain gluten, so I end up having my skin blow up from that. I go back to Kefir. Better. At this point, I am still eating bread (yeah! can you believe it?!) and having the pain reactions to it, but being pregnant and sometimes very hungry, I choose the quickest option and 'make a sandwich'. (this does cause me pain but I can explain it as indigestion of pregnancy...nice'n'tidy) In fact, we all can see, its not a quick option and not even the lazy option...that would have been a pear or an apple, which is what I did during Angelina's pregnancy.
Along comes Jeremy, birthed at home into water, and he's just beautiful. I enter this stretch of Motherhood with conscious foreboding. I look at him on the first night and shake my head, say to myself 'how am I going to do this when I feel like 'this'?', and we end up just 'getting on with it'. That's what I am good at. Perseverance. I persevere. If nothing else I am the Energiser Bunny...I'll just keep on keeping on. A couple of weeks in and we all know something is definitely wrong. A baby, any baby, shouldn't be able to produce this much wind. Its just in.sane. And me too! I can't get over how much bloating and wind I have. Its uncomfortable and unsociable. I read all I can about babies, gluten intolerance, dairy intolerance, and colic being a convenient way for us all just to keep on eating a standard western diet and dose our infants with colic mixtures. Tidy,...again. Society seems to enjoy tidiness.
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| Jeremy around four months old, and me ;) still sort of bloated...we've found gluten free bread, but I don't think it helps one to stay slim... ;\ |
This is like a red rag to a bull in my case. 'So I should just dose my bubba and hope it works?'. Like fuq I will. I know there is a solution, but it will be a difficult one for me to get my head around. I make no bones about it now. I am a product of conditioning from the society I was brought up in. I'll get past that too though,...one day soon. I try one week without dairy, and little effect (because I'm still eating bread) and then the next week with no bread. Well. After one 24hr stint of no bread Jeremy sleeps for four hours, peacefully, in the morning. I conclude, 'I am gluten intolerant and so is my baby'. Tah-dah!
Without gluten I become calmer. My skin clears up and I 'handle' stuff better. Now, all I need to do is get this bod into gear and balance the internals, because, yep, we've got thrush on a massive scale. Both baby and me. We clear it away with liquid and gluten free pro-biotic (Fast Tract from Miessence) some organic extra virgin coconut oil, a little colloidal silver and lots of fresh food. I am still on this particular 'journey' and this bacteria or parasite or whatever is stubbornly refusing to fuq off out of my system or at the very least calm down enough to be undetectable...so we are in a kind of def-con 5 situation with this little 'bastid' (or could that be 'blasto'?)...I'm starting Pokeroot Tincture in the coming week so will keep you posted on that little experiment too.
I notice from now on, that when I have a milk tea that Jeremy gets bad nappy rash. It manifests like his bowel is on fire..poor little chap gets red blistery like things around his anus...and so again I can conclude that at least for Jeremy 'my baby is dairy intolerant'. I also observe that eggs make me feel queasy. They give me a pep of energy via the protein, but from what I am researching about gluten intolerance, it lends credence to the theory or research so far that gluten intolerant people seem to have difficulty processing certain proteins.
It is at this point I now know that Vegan and Gluten Free is going to be my future. Now starts the de-programming from a life so far of breads, standard grains, dairy and egg. Honey! omgoodness...I'll have to give up honey! damn. Then I discover maple syrup. ok!...its all ok again... ;)
More to come on my amazing Vegan and Gluten Free Journey in future posts! Stay tuned for amazing insights into Almonds, Cashews, and Brazil nuts (yum). The glory of Tahini. Wonderful wonderful Maple syrup and the joys of dried fruits and bliss balls. Banana and Spirulina smoothies, fresh organic herb teas, stacked green salads to make your mouth water,Chia Seed fantasticness and more :)
Blessings! xxx
