Natural Mama

As some of you may know, our believes with Wes is that he came into this world so perfectly precious and natural, we want to keep him that way for as long as possible.  This started during pregnancy... I was very careful to eat natural foods, limited processed foods, I didn't drink (obviously... but even the "occasional glass of wine" they say is OK I stayed away from), didn't take any medicines, even shy'd away from CAFFEINE! (most of the time...)  In delivery, I opted for no drugs, no epidural or pain meds of any sort (and YES I would do this a million times over!).  I breastfeed, EC and we chose to keep him "in tact" (uncircumcised...) which to my surprise would be the topic of more conversations then I could count... and very heated, strong beliefed conversations!  I was unaware after making this decision for our son that so many people would disagree with our decision.  But we stand by our decision, especially after talking with our Dr.  In his words exactly "It is purely cosmetic".  Being that there is no medical reason for circumcision I am very glad we chose this route.

So for those of you reading this and beginning to think this blog may not be for you, I encourage you to keep an open mind and while you don't have to follow the same believes as we do, I decided to write this portion of my blog for other mama's out there looking for more natural ways of healing.  Among many other "natural" choices we have made for Wes, yet another is commercial medicine. It has been all over the news this week of another "infant medicine recall" which Tylenol has published.  If you notice these days, all of the "infant" medicines on the market specifically direct you to your doctor if your child is under 2 (kind of ironic they still call it "infant" medicine don't ya think???)  I decided to add this part to my blog after hearing about all this on the news lately in hopes that I can help at least one baby in the process.  Please don't feel I am preaching my beliefs here, I do know and fully understand that what we practice in our household is on the extreme edge and I do not expect you to take everything we do into your own practices (I mean come on, who really potty trains their 6 week old!!!  -  (for more information see EC))

Try googling infant cold medicine and you will be SHOCKED at what you read (thank GOODNESS I did this one night in a moment of weakness...)  It was 2:00 in the morning, after spending a restless night with Wes and a sniffly nose and cough keeping us both up (OK, truth be known, Wes slept quit well in my arms, it was this mama who was so worried and flinched every time he sniffled or coughed that couldn't sleep)... I was steps away from getting in my car, going to walgreen's and finding something that would ease his cold.  I decided to dig out my phone and look up first which medicine would be the best to buy, so that I didn't have to sit in the store reading the back of every box in my p.j.'s (which I would totally do - I would NOT pick one until I thoroughly researched every one haha).  Ironically the articles that came up were not on which medicine's worked best, but which medicines were related to INFANT DEATHS!!!  AAHHH!!! talk about scaring the bageesus out of this mama!  I laid awake for at least another hour reading article after article about how horrible infant medicine is, how most brands have relinquished all medicines off the shelves for any children under the age of 2 and blah blah blah.  Holy Moly.  News flash.  Luckily with that cold, we only had 1 bad night - the next day he was just fine and I was thanking my lucky stars that I didn't give in.  Since then he has had a couple of colds, most of them not too bad until the week before last.  He woke up one Monday morning with a slight fever (100 - 101, luckily never got higher then that) and spent all day snuggled up to me on the couch (which for those of you that know my son, you know he does NOT snuggle... at all)  I knew instantly something was up.  Now I know a lot of mom's whose first choice would be to go to fever reducing medicine.  But if you look up what a fever actually is you will understand that a fever is the body's natural defense to fight off infection by heating up the body to kill of whatever it is inside causing the illness.  So why would you want to lessen the fever?  In sense you would be making the illness worse right?  So, I was prepared with medicine on hand JUST in case the fever got dangerously high (which, thanks to my dear friend "dr. nissa" I was also ready to try egg whites on the bottom of the feet!) Thankfully none of that was needed, we just rode out the fever and inevitably within the next few days the coughing and sniffles started up again.  We had one bad night of up all night coughing, so this time I went on the search for a natural cough suppressant for infants that is SAFE and all natural.  Honey as some of you may know is great, but you can't give it to your babies under the age of 1, so I kept my search up.  I found that lemon is supposed to work as well.  So, I made some lemon water, gave it to Wes from a bottle and voila! problem solved!  Our first test was with a nap, went smoothly.  Now of course he still coughed a little throughout the day, but I could tell a drastic difference.  The best result came that night.  Now when I say coughing all night, I mean the night before, Wes was literally coughing allllllllllllll night long (luckily he slept through most of it, he wasn't awake coughing, crying and whining, but THIS mama sure was!!!!)  That night, I nursed him just for a few minutes (which I will also add is your babies best defense against any sickness is your mama's milk), then finished with a bottle of warm lemon water (recipe to follow).  He really liked the lemon water too which I was glad to see.  He slept allllll night, did not wake up once.  The next morning around 6 he did wake up coughing again, I gave him some lemon water with breakfast and throughout the day and he was just fine!

So, after all of that explanation, if your baby has a cough, before reaching for the medicine cabinet, try this method first!  I'm here to tell you first hand, it works!

Ingredients:
1 lemon
2 cups of water
3 tbls sugar (can subsitute truvia, stevia, or even honey if your baby is over the age of 1)

Fill a small saucepan with water.  Cut the lemon in half, squeeze all of the juice out and just drop the rind and everything in the pot.  Season with 3 or so tbls of sugar and boil for 20 minutes.  Taste to check the bitterness level to see if more sugar is needed.

Now obviously you don't want to give your baby this much sugar all the time, but when he's sick, I thought to myself, why not spoil him just a little :)  I will definitely be making this with honey later on though, taking most of the guilt out of it!