Diaper fright! (blood and mucus in stool)

Two weeks ago, when Weston turned 6 weeks old, I was greeted with an unpleasant surprise when I went to change his first diaper of the day. There was mucus in his stool and several spots of bright red blood. This continued throughout the day and got us more and more worried. The on-call pediatrician was absolutely no help (she said I could have blood in my breastmilk that was showing up in his stool--it is beyond me how that even makes any sort of logical digestive sense, assuming I DID have blood in my milk somehow from some painless internal cut inside my breast?!), and since the office was closed she wanted us to just bring him in for a visit the next day.

Hugo and I scoured the Internet for clues from other parents, discovering in the meantime that there is a plethora of frightening information available for susceptible parents! No surprise there. Fortunately Hugo came across a post from a mother who said that her lactation consultant told her the blood and mucus were caused by an excess of lactose in the milk, due to the baby getting mostly foremilk and missing out on the hindmilk. (Foremilk is sweeter --thus more lactose which is milk sugar --- and more watery to satisfy thirst, and hindmilk, which comes after, is creamier and richer to satisfy hunger.)

The solution to this problem is to lie on your back while nursing so that the milk has a better chance of mixing in the breast. I switched immediately to lying-down nursing (not the most convenient thing to do though I must say it is relaxing) and by the next morning Weston's poop was completely normal again. About a week later I also realized that he had stopped grunting or groaning when he had to poop!

At this point I am doing a mix of back-lying, side-lying, and sitting-up feeding, but I have noticed that he is happiest, most relaxed, and most satisfied when I nurse him while lying on my back. He loves being able to fall asleep on me like this.

Of course Oliver wants to join in the cuddling (not the nursing) on occasion which leads to situations like this:

My secret to successful breastfeeding--an easy tip plus delicious quinoa recipe to increase milk supply

Two weeks after Weston's birth we had a rather scary weekend -- lots and lots of crying and fussing. No matter what we did, he just wasn't happy. This was quite a shock as we were used by then to having a VERY easy baby in the house. He would sleep for nice long stretches without swaddling or any other extreme measures, in the bed, in his swing, on a lap, etc. He would wake to nurse, be changed, and have a look around, and then he would fall asleep again.

After worrying about possible constipation, abdominal pain, or other hard-to-detect phantom problems that can drive a parent nuts, I finally determined into day 2 of this that he was HUNGRY! It seemed my breastmilk supply had dropped off sharply. And of course a hungry baby is a fussy baby. I think it's entirely possible that a fair number of fussy or "difficult" babies out there are just not getting enough milk, making them very cranky and hard to soothe.

Fortunately I remembered an important lesson from when Oliver was a wee one: you have to drink lots of fluids to make lots of breastmilk! [Now of course this is a very simplistic solution to a problem of low milk supply; there can be a myriad of reasons why a new mother would have difficulty breastfeeding or low milk supply, and in some cases this really can't be remedied (this would be a good time to try making a nutrient-dense formula at home). However, the first thing to look at is always diet (more on this coming later), and the second thing is fluid intake.]

I read recently that an average baby might consume 32 oz. of milk in a day! This would vary based on the baby's age, but it's safe to say that a nursing woman is putting out quite a lot of fluid on a daily basis, and in order to make that quantity of breastmilk it is imperative that she be drinking lots and LOTS!

I upped my intake of fluids dramatically by consuming about 14 oz. per hour on Sunday, and by that evening everything was A-OK. My beverages of choice: a 50/50 blend of coconut water and filtered water, chicken bone broth (homemade of course), raw kefir (also homemade), plain water, and herbal tea.

I also ate an extra serving of my special sprouted quinoa pilaf which has the effect of increasing breastmilk supply. Here's how to make it:

1) sprout quinoa (awesome instructions and photos here) -- I use 1 cup of organic whole grain quinoa from Bob's Red Mill, a quart-size glass Mason jar, and a special fine-mesh sprouting lid from Sprout People. (Actually, I do this in triplicate, with 3 jars and 3 cups of quinoa, which yields about 3.5 quarts of finished quinoa pilaf! I eat this every night before bed, so I go through a lot, and it does last very well in the fridge, but you may want to cut the recipe down to 1/3.)

After about 2 days you will have lots and lots of lovely little sprouts -- aren't they cute?

Not only are they fun to look at as they grow, they also are really really good for you! Quinoa sprouts contain all nine essential amino acids which makes them very special in the plant world. Quinoa was considered to be exceptionally nutritious to traditional Incas in Peru (where quinoa comes from), and was deemed especially important for nursing mothers. Quinoa is gluten-free and high in iron, and is actually a seed, not a grain, which is probably why it works great for me health-wise whereas actual grains do not. I also love how sprouting takes away that odd characteristic quinoa flavor that always made me steer clear of quinoa in the past.

2) melt lots of lard (about 1/2 cup if making the full recipe) in the bottom of a large pot.

If you're new to lard you may find the smell off-putting at first, but let me assure you the finished pilaf will be delicious. The lard will only lend a neutral succulence, not a porky taste.

3) saute 2 minced onions, several chopped carrots, and several chopped stalks of celery until they begin to soften. Dump in lots of curry powder, and a few pinches of sea salt.

4) add the quinoa sprouts and stir them around until they are just mixed with the veggies and melted fat. 

5) Pour in 6 cups of homemade chicken broth (2 cups for each cup of dry quinoa you originally sprouted) and mix well. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat, allowing the quinoa to absorb the liquid and become fluffy. If you want your pilaf drier and fluffier, use a little less than 2 cups of liquid per cup of dry quinoa, and be sure to let it sit for a couple of hours undisturbed so it can absorb all the liquid. I don't mind my pilaf a little mushy, personally. Once it's finished to your liking you can add sea salt to taste.

Be sure that you let it cool completely before storing in glass jars in the refrigerator.

My preferred serving method is in a bowl of hot chicken broth, but this pilaf is also delicious warmed in the toaster oven (please, no microwaves!) and topped with either lots of raw butter, or plenty of grated raw cheese (or both!).

It's also wonderful as a filling for stuffed peppers or stuffed cabbage, with crumbled cooked ground beef or sausage added. You may want to experiment with other vegetables as well, such as tomatoes, bell peppers, or winter squash. (And of course, if you do not happen to be a nursing mother you should still feel free to indulge in as much quinoa pilaf as you like -- it's not going to have any undesirable lactation-producing effects. :)

What Oliver eats now: an update

Thursday lunch: "juice" from roasted chicken, lacto-fermented pickles, raw goat's milk Havarti, cured sausage, baby pear

At his current age of about a year (13.5 months to be exact), Oliver still gets most of his nourishment from breastmilk. Some kids show an early interest in solid foods while others are content to continue nursing for the most part, with supplemental solids, and Oliver is one of the latter. He loves eating and trying new things, he has his favorite and his not-so-favorite foods, but for the most part he seems to still be getting a lot from breastmilk. As someone put it to me recently, "They nurse until they feel complete." I would add to this and say that in my own opinion (based on observation and study), since the quality of the mother's breastmilk depends largely on the quality of her diet (particularly whether she has enough fat-soluble vitamins available), this will affect the child's interest in solid foods. Some babies reach for food early and seem to have a huge appetite because they know they aren't getting all that they need from nursing alone. There are many people who would be up in arms at this idea, but if we acknowledge that diet does affect breastmilk quality (which has been proven), then it really does make sense.

All of Oliver's food is from small, local family farmers (or fishers) who follow sustainable, humane, and ecologically-friendly practices. So from the raw milk in his bottle to the scallops at dinner, Ollie is getting a completely nutrient-dense and natural diet. Usually he has three small meals daily and about two bottles of raw milk yogurt (which is pretty liquidy and drinkable) and/or raw milk, with some supplemental raw cream, and/or raw egg yolk added as extra fortification. He also gets about 1/2 tsp. of high-vitamin cod liver oil daily added to one of his bottles.

For his solid foods, I generally offer them mashed or pre-chewed (unless he can gum them easily, like cheese), and try to emphasize the following:
-seafood (especially mollusks and oily fish),
-meat (all kinds, but especially my creamy liver paté),
-eggs,
-mineral-rich bone broths (all homemade, usually fish, chicken, or beef),
-raw milk cheese, and
-lacto-fermented veggies.

He really likes the cheese, raw fish, and broths, adores raw pasture butter from a spoon, and absolutely LOVES the lacto-fermented things I have offered so far, including sauerkraut, pickles, lacto-fermented cucumbers, American kim chee, and dilly beans. For some beverage variety, he loves my homemade lacto-fermented ginger ale, and also kombucha and kefir. And of course he also eats some cooked vegetables, beans (always properly prepared), and tiny tastes of fruit. I make it a point to offer a variety of foods that he is currently able to digest (so no grains yet), and emphasize foods rich in enzymes and beneficial bacteria (thus the lacto-fermentation, raw dairy of all kinds, raw egg yolk, and raw fish (marinated 7 hrs. in whey or lime juice to make it safe).

As of right now, we don't really offer Oliver much by way of sweet foods. I feel very strongly that it is critical that he not get used to eating sweet things on a regular basis. We don't eat much by way of sweets in our house anymore (which has been a huge benefit for all of us!), and I hope to keep it this way as Oliver gets older, with sweets for special occasions and as natural as possible. We will see how it goes! Already of course if he sees Hugo eating corn chips or a piece of bread or something else that we don't want him to have yet, he will want some and cry if he doesn't get it. So it's actually of benefit to us, too, because we have to eat more or less the way we want Oliver to eat.

Of course, when it comes to his predilection for gnawing on bones (a great source of minerals!), I'm not sure where he picked that up...it certainly wasn't something we had to teach him!

Interesting fact on derriere size

I was reading Real Food for Mother & Baby the other day (great book by Nina Planck), and learned a surprising fact: women store a certain type of fat in their hips and bottom (referred to scientifically as gluteofemoral fat) which is very stubborn (hard to get rid of by dieting & exercise), and is made up mainly of the type of fatty acid found in fish oil! This is also the fat that is so important for baby's brain development. If the mother doesn't consume enough of this fat while pregnant & breastfeeding, her body will feed the baby (through breastmilk & the placenta) off her fat stores. Now let me be clear here -- what the mother eats is still critical; fat stores alone will not provide plentiful amounts of DHA in her breastmilk (for example, vegetarians have MUCH lower concentrations of DHA in their breastmilk than omnivorous mommies). However, feeding your baby a bit of these fat stores is one way to "move" this weight.

I used to have what is referred to not-so-delicately as a bubble butt, but I noticed that while I was pregnant (I was pretty much vegetarian at the time, by the way) my bottom got quite a bit flatter -- noticeably so, and not really in a good way. Apparently I was feeding Oliver my butt fat! At last the mystery is cleared up!

So they're crowning babies now?

Babies' teeth that is...

At our pediatrician visit last Friday the doctor warned me away from letting Oliver nurse during the night. She says the milk coats their teeth and causes decay, which is why one of her little patients needs crowns put on her tiny teeth! What an awful awful thing.

As I have an overdeveloped respect for authority I didn't tell her this poor baby probably already had dental caries as early as in the womb. Deficiencies in vitamin D during early crucial development can actually lead to teeth decaying BEFORE they even erupt from the gums. Tooth decay happens from the inside out. Forget fluoride (which is poisonous) and depriving your hungry baby of milk during the night. Don't give up the ol' brush & floss yet, but it's really good nutrition that equals good dental health. I will talk more about this in a later post as this is a much larger topic.

*Note added 5/15: just spoke with local breastfeeding specialist for the Bay Ridge chapter of La Leche League. She says as some babies are born with teeth (!) the argument against nighttime feedings is preposterous. What is a baby supposed to do -- starve? As she said on the phone, next thing you know the baby isn't gaining weight, the mother's milk supply is drying up, and the pediatrician is telling you to supplement with formula! She will be sending along some scientific studies showing that breastmilk does not harm babies' teeth, and I will link to them later.

Oliver update

Feeding the Popper solids got off to a very slow start, but he is at last showing marked interest in our food. (On a side note, I have noticed a big increase in my own milk production over the past couple of months since he has been getting 90% of his nourishment from me and is growing so big, and since I have been eating so well!). We tried the pureeing thing, and freezing mashed food in little ice cube trays and then thawing them out, etc. The food really doesn't taste good like this, a little sawdusty no matter how good it tasted fresh, and I can't blame Ollie for not being too into it.

The newest thing, though, (which seems to work really well) is to chew a bite of food for Oliver and then put it in a special little bowl for him and feed it to him with a baby spoon while I eat my own meal. This is not the most elegant dinner-table practice, but it does allow for easy preparation of an appropriately-small quantity of food and also provides a digestive boost in the form of enzymes from the parental saliva. Oliver shows a marked preference for animal protein at this point, and has recently enjoyed pork breakfast sausage links, smoked venison sausage, breaded water buffalo cutlets, and artisanal raw milk cheeses (all from our local Greenmarkets or Abner Lapp's farm). He also likes soft egg yolks which I share with him when I make poached or fried eggs, and various fermented & cultured foods like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, olives, and kim chee. He enjoys cooked apple with cream on occasion, and sometimes mashed potato with butter or gravy or some other orange veggie with butter (carrots, yams, etc.). He will also eagerly eat sour cream from a spoon all by itself! Hugo and I attended Nina Planck's talk this week on 'Real Food for Mother & Baby' where we learned about an interesting experiment done several decades ago where older babies were allowed to feed themselves anything they wanted, as much as they wanted. The babies seemed to know intuitively what they needed: one drank cod liver oil until he was cured of rickets; another ate large quantities of sea salt and then stopped when he no longer needed it. It was quite interesting to learn this. Of course babies also have natural appetites for unhealthy sweet foods which we can't really indulge in this way since they don't realize these foods are bad for them (they were not available in the experiment), but since Oliver shows a preference for certain healthy foods I am allowing him to eat them. He enjoyed asparagus-ramp-spinach quiche this week, and some asparagus-white bean soup; he always likes having a little raw milk ice cream occasionally, and of course he still has the daily high-vitamin cod liver oil in raw milk.

At our 9-month-old checkup on Friday we found out that Mr. Popper now weighs 19 lbs. 6 oz. and is 28.2" long! He has also never been sick (one episode of teething fevers aside) and is a strong, happy, and hearty little boy. We are very proud. :) And also very glad that our efforts to keep him healthy and well are paying off so far...

In praise of spring butter

Hugo picked up our raw dairy from Abner Lapp tonight. The milk is SO rich and creamy this time - even more so than usual. And the butter is so yellow! [This picture doesn't do it justice -- it is really a vivid yellow-orange color.] It must be that renowned spring grass everyone is always talking about, which makes the butter extra-rich in vitamin A. Traditional Swiss villagers in the valley of Loetschental considered spring butter to be a sacred food, with special traditions and ceremonies built around it. They made sure to give this special butter to the women of childbearing age, and to the babies and children because they recognized that this was a fantastic source of healthy nutrients for fertility and for developing bodies.

Spring butter is extra-rich in A & D, but also high in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid, in case you're wondering), which protects against cancer, helps build lean muscle rather than fat, and encourages plentiful milk production (great for us breastfeeding Mamas!). And of course this butter (like all raw butter) contains the special Wulzen Factor, known for reducing joint stiffness. Spring butter does amazing things, and it does them so deliciously, I might add. Sacrificing taste for "health" is so passe. If you've been following this blog at all, by now you know that many of the foods that taste the best to us and are the most satisfying are actually also the most nutritious.

Shouldn't we be fat by now?

If you've been following this blog at all you know how much I love cooking with butter and eating things like eggs, cheese, and ice cream. So you may be wondering by now why we aren't fat. We have all been told that fats in food (particularly animal fats) are what make people sick and overweight. However, while we won't touch trans fats at our house with a ten-foot pole, we are eating plenty of animal fats and some natural plant fats as well (such as those in things like nuts and olives) -- AND enjoying excellent health. Oliver and I also take daily high-vitamin cod liver oil (from Radiant Life) which provides excellent amounts of vitamins A and D, as well as the all-important omega 3 fats. [I take 2 tsp. daily, or 2500 IUs of D and 25,000 IUs of A, plus 1.6 grams omega 3 fatty acids in the form of EPA and DHA; Oliver receives about 1/2 tsp. which is important for his health since vitamin D does not come through in breastmilk. We both drink it mixed with raw milk - Oliver relishes his but I gulp mine quickly while holding my breath. Vitamins A and D are crucial for pretty much all types of development and for healthy immune function.]

It is my firm belief that refined carbs and processed foods (which are largely made of refined carbs) are what cause weight gain and innumerable health problems. At our house we try to avoid processed foods as much as possible. The most processed we get is occasional organic whole wheat pasta, Amy's canned refried beans (the black-bean version is eat-from-the-can delicious!), blue-corn taco shells from Whole Foods, and my favorite whole-grain Kavli crackers. And yes, now and then we eat things like potato chips or shortbread cookies, but these are few and far between and always the best quality (which are usually better for you). All these great high-quality fats are curing my hypothyroidism and long-time hypoglycemia, and making me even-tempered and consistently happy for the first time in my life. Plus they make for incredibly rich breastmilk and a happy, well-behaved baby. I have also noticed that since eating this nutrient-dense, high-fat diet I have totally stopped craving sweets and carbs.

When people look askance (or even shocked) at my suggestion that they eat things like (gasp!) butter or whole milk, I like to mention the Masai of Africa, who are reported to consume up to 400 grams of fat on a daily basis, mainly from meat and raw cultured milk. Granted these people are living a more or less traditional existence with plenty of daily exercise, but they are effortlessly slim and healthy - something most Americans cannot claim to be. Until the past century, in this country we ate plentiful amounts of butter, lard, eggs, raw full-fat dairy, liver, and fatty meats and enjoyed far better health, high fertility rates, and much smaller waistlines than the average American does today -- as well as enviably low rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

All this is to say, as long as we keep seeing positive effects of our new way of eating at our house, we will continue! Of course, I also believe firmly that we should buy the best quality we can possibly afford, and limit consumption of conventionally-produced animal foods and fats. Farmers' markets and local buying clubs are the best way to do this.

Time for Monday breakfast!

I've done a few hours of work (starting at 6:30 today), and now Oliver is awake and fed, so it's time for my daily oatmeal. This has been soaking all night to neutralize the phytic acid in the oats; phytic acid is found in all whole grains and will actually pull nutrients out of your body, which is why soaking is a wise practice. Here's how I do it:

• put one cup Scottish oatmeal in a bowl (this is enough for 3 breakfasts)
• add 2 tbsp. whey (you can also use yogurt, vinegar, or lemon juice)
• mix in 1 cup warm-ish water
• cover with plastic wrap and let sit at least 12 hours or overnight

In the morning it cooks quickly, tastes delicious, and provides a wonderful array of easily-absorbed nutrients! Best of all, it also gives you lots of energy. I have a fast metabolism so I usually need to eat often (and have a tendency to hypoglycemia), but oatmeal sticks with me at least 4 hours and I feel great that whole time. I cook my oatmeal with plenty of raw butter, raw milk (or water), and usually raw honey, organic shredded coconut (unsweetened), some golden ground flaxseed, and sometimes walnuts. I like to serve it with additional butter and raw yogurt, or lots of raw milk. This is especially great for breastfeeding, as it provides lots of nutrition in the form of complex carbs, excellent fats, and plenty of protein and fiber!