Reducing Toxins in Your Life - Your Body

From here

The dictionary defines toxin as:

tox·in

ˈtäksən/

noun

1. an antigenic poison or venom of plant or animal origin, especially one produced by or derived from microorganisms and causing disease when present at low concentration in the body.

When we think of toxins we often think of men in chemical suits protecting their skin, eyes, and lungs from the horrible fumes and chemicals that one must be around for a dangerous job. But, did you know we have toxins of many types in our world today, in our homes, in our daily lives? They don't look like the fume emitting chemicals of movie making greatness. They look like dishwashing detergent, pain relievers, clothing, and more. 

Of course, we could go nuts trying to figure out how to get rid of every toxin. We just can't get rid of them all. But we can help to reduce the load on ourselves and our families with a little education and effort. 

What are some simple ways we can lower toxins? Let me share a few that will cost you nothing or very little. 

• If you are pregnant, could be pregnant, or want to be pregnant, avoid any metal containing dental for for 3 months prior to getting pregnant. This includes having gray colored fillings removed. 
• Always avoid Acetaminophen. It lowers your body's glutatione levels, which is it's natural detox system. It's just not a good medication unless you have 100% no other choice. 
• If you are sick, or within a 2 week period after sickness, don't get vaccinated at all. I am not saying to not vaccinate yourself or your family. That is between you and your family. I am saying, as do the vaccine manufacturers, that a sick person should not be vaccinated. Doctors often ignore this warning, but it's there for a reason. Your immune system cannot take that type of hit when it's trying to heal from something else, even something small. So, if you want to be vaccinated, just wait until you have been healthy for 2 weeks. 
• Check your household products for aluminum. This is in items such as water, antiperspirant, foil, broth boxes or other boxed foods such as soups, and even cooking items such as pans. Did you know "stainless steel" pans can have aluminum in them. This gets in your body and, yikes, lookout. 
• Eat clean. I wrote, not long ago, you are what your eat eats and you can't excrete. If the cow didn't excrete it, what makes you think you will? Instead of hoping you get rid of the toxins in your food, just know your food source and don't take a chance. 
• GMO = no! I can't believe I have to even say it. But if it's modified in such a way, just skip past it in the grocery store. If you aren't sure, skip past it until you can confirm it with the company or a 3rd party independent organization. Science making food in crazy ways, no thanks. 
• PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are in things like pajamas, furniture, beds, and more. You need to label read everything. For these types of items it will mean looking online and calling companies. Or, you can find a safe fabric source and buy from stores that use those. 
• TEFLON! UGH! I grew up in the 80's, was an adult in the 90's, and I remember the Teflon craze. Food doesn't stick to the pan, it is awesome. Yeah, well, it's a toxin. It's so bad for us. It's bad for our environment. It's bad for our pets. I remember, 20 years ago, when I met a couple that, back then, would have been called hippies, freaky, tree huggers (yeah, and now I would call them friend - lol). They told me they didn't use Teflon because she burned something once and both their birds in their kitchen died. She said Teflon did it. I smiled, shook my head in agreement with her, walked out, and said they were a bit nutty. Now I know they were right. Get rid of the Teflon. This doesn't have to be expensive.
• Body products - Get rid of the junk. I know it smells like lilac and lavender, but it's chemicals. If you want lilac and lavender scented soap, by soap that uses real lilac and lavender. Body care, hair care, and personal care products are usually full of toxins in them. Women, they are full of endocrine disruptors as well. If you aren't familiar with that term, you need to be. Do a bit of research. 

There are a lot of products out there that will help you make the switch. For clothing and fabric items in your home the internet is a huge buffet of great options. Just google organic cotton clothing and you will have weeks worth of reading and options at your fingertips. 

GMOs are a bit harder. Companies are lobbying against the labeling of them. Gee, wonder why. If they are so wonderful and safe, why not proudly say you use them? Sticking with organic will nail that one. You cannot have an organic GMO by law. (well, and logic)

Teflon - think about what our grandparents used to use. Look for high quality stainless steel (check make sure it's not mixed with aluminum) or go cast iron. If you use cast iron, make sure to go quality. Go for a company like Lodge made in the USA. There are cheap knock offs and you will pay for it with your toxin load. 

Body products - just check out stores like Whole Foods, Sprouts, and more. Look online for the myriad of organic or natural choices. I use Ava Anderson myself. I am not writing this post to sell it. But, if you are in the market for a bit of research, please feel free to visit my store online. If you want to order, you can do it all without contacting me so you don't have to worry about me having your personal information. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me. My Ava Anderson Page

Talk soon.

*This post contains a link to a company I am affiliated with called Ava Anderson. I receive no compensation or award if you click the link. But, if you purchase anything I do receive commission. 

Reducing Toxins in Your Home - Kitchen

Reducing toxins in your home doesn't have to be hard or expensive. When we started this journey we didn't do it all at once. Very few people could afford that process. We took it one step at a time and are taking more steps each week. This week I purchased two new pans and a set of tongs. It was a big spending week with regards to reducing toxins as I spent about $50.

Look around your kitchen and find just one thing to replace. I know a simple and very inexpensive way to reduce toxins is your colander. Most of us have a plastic colander like this:

From here

How about replacing it with a stainless steel colander or strainer? You can find them in the internet at stores such as Amazon.com and green home type websites. You can find them in traditional stores, even big box stores if you check labels. 

From here

Make sure, when you purchase your colander, that you aren't adding in other harmful toxins via metals. Read the labels to determine if they are pure or mixed with another cheaper metal like aluminum. If the label isn't clear, call the company or look online. I have stood in a store many times with a product in my hand, on my phone calling a company to find out what's in a food product or how an item is made. 

From here

From here

Another option is to buy a mesh strainer. These come in a lot of styles. They range from the traditional handle style we used to use for loose tea leaves to those that fit in a sink, to bowl shapes. Again, read the labels and do your research. 

If you look around, do your research, and buy smart, you can reduce toxins this way for less than $20. Now, that's a steal. 

Talk soon

Fall Candy That's Less Junky

OK, is junky even a word? If it wasn't before, I officially declare it is now.

From here

Who doesn't remember candy corn from their childhood? It was like a right of passage for children. I remember eating them color by color. They were bite sized but I made it much more of a chore. I ate the yellow, then bit the orange, then the tiny white. Yep, that's how I roll.

But, with our kids, they are a huge no-no. There is no way our younger son could even lick one without repercussions. Candy is pretty much impossible to find that fits into our variety of food intolerances and allergies. So, what's a Mom to do?

A Mom is to get creative and find a recipe for some favorite candies out there. And, now I have one for candy corn. Yep, CANDY CORN. And, yes, it's colored.

Five Little Homesteaders has a recipe for candy corn and even shares where to buy safer food colorings.

But, if you don't want to use a store bought pre-made coloring, you could use the suggestions Bioray has for the needed colors.

"Some ideas: Use saffron or turmeric powder OR juice some yellow bell peppers (yellow) Use carrot juice (orange)"

So have a bit more fun this fall and try some new candy recipes. Just make sure you aren't replacing junk with more junk. Buy real foods, use organic if possible, read labels (read labels, read labels, read labels) and, even with the homemade variety, don't go overboard on servings. 

Talk soon.

How I Got Started on This Path - Part 5 (The Final Steps of the Journey)

From here

This is a multi part series. If you would like to start from the beginning, follow these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

When we first got our older son's diagnosis of Autism I became a researching fool. I was on the internet, reading books, going over journal publications, and more. I was told PPCD and that was it and knew there HAD to be something else I could do to help our son. I came across parent after parent speaking about something called a DAN doctor and biomedical approaches to helping our kids feel better. I told my husband about it and, while he wasn't sure this was a legit thing, he suggested we go ahead and at least check it out.

I made an appointment with our first DAN doctor and showed up. I was so unprepared. I am used to 10 minutes with a doctor, go home with a pill, see you later. Yeah ... no. I arrived to see a sensory waiting room, a huge fish tank, and an appointment that lasted for 1 1/2 hours. I didn't wait for 1 1/2 hours. The doctor and I talked and went over plans for that period of time. He wanted to do a bunch of labs, not just throw pills at us. What he said made sense. The only thing he sent us away with was MB12 injections. He wrote us a script saying that we needed to wait for all the labs to come back, but our son's symptoms were screaming a B12 issue, so he wanted to get him started on those immediately.

A week later our prescription arrived (it had to be compounded). I sat with my son a long time trying to talk myself into giving him these shots. It wasn't that I doubted the need. It was my own personal freak out about the needles. I bribed him with a treat and we did our first shot. He wasn't too happy but it wasn't horrible, especially once he figured out he got the treat the second it was over. We kept our new treatment to ourselves because I was afraid I would see something out of desire to heal my son and I wanted all those unbiased eyes of friends and family to be my testing ground.

1 1/2 weeks later my being sold on the more natural way of doing things happened. My non-verbal son, my son who went from speech to baby babbling in a day's time, spoke. I will never, ever forget that day. I was sitting in a chair on one side of the room and my son was standing next to the sofa on the other side of the room. It was just a quiet afternoon when he stopped his little playing and said to me, "can we take a picture of that". It was like the world stood still. I sat there, for what seemed like forever, trying to comprehend what just happened. I said, "what did you say?" He looked at me like I had the comprehension problem and said, very slowly like you might speak to someone that didn't understand your native tongue, "can we take a picture of that". I about hit the floor. I wanted to scream from the rooftop. Instead I called my husband and told him what happened. Honestly, I think he thought I had been drinking and hallucinating. But, he got home that night and couldn't deny what was happening in front of his own eyes.

As we got him around friends and family I wondered if they would notice.

They noticed. Oh, they noticed in a big way. I kept hearing, "what happened", "what did you guys do", "how in the world...". They noticed. My Mom was sold on MB12 and joked we should give that everyday. This was huge for him and it was what his body needed. Our DAN was shocked when we returned for lab results. He had a non-verbal patient who was now verbal in a matter of less than 2 weeks. But he wasn't totally undone because this was his job and he sees healing in kids weekly.

From that point on we were sold. Supplements became a part of our lives. Diet change became the norm. Research into toxins, environmental issues, things we use in our home, and more became typical weekend activities. We discovered our dishes were a bad idea for our sons. They had the same toxins in them that we were trying hard to get rid of in their bodies, they went. Cookware that we had used for a long time was tossed because it was not safe for our kids, or ourselves. Foods that we never would have dreamed harmful were no longer on the shopping list because our kids had clear reactions that we didn't realize were reactions. (Ever heard of a child screaming for hours after eating an apple? Yeah, I have watched it with my own eyes.) The list goes on.

Is our home 100% toxin free? No. That's impossible. We live in a world with toxins everywhere. I just discovered that the very air we breath in our county has one of the substances that our younger son is intolerant of in it. Can't get rid of air. So, we help clean the air in our home. We make their world as safe as possible so when the attacks come, their bodies are stronger and not over burdened in order to fight it off. We have changed things as simple as shampoos, soaps, cleaners. We have changed OTC pain meds, snacks, and even consumables that I use in the kitchen. We are a work in progress. We refuse to stop our kids from having a fun time as children. So we don't freak as much about toys and outside items. But we do make them safer as we can. As I posted a few weeks ago, we removed some of the toxins from our son's tube feeding system once we discovered all that was in the bags his formula was held in each feeding time. These are simple changes that, while not making much of an impact on how we live our lives, make a huge impact on how their bodies function.

Look, I don't know if we can cure what ails our sons. They have a lot of health issues. But, would you rather have a sick child with a healthier body or a sick child with a sick body? That's all this comes down to for us. If they are going to have issues in this world, let's make them as healthy as we can in order to be able to be strong and fight against what is going on with them. We arm them spiritually to put on the full armor of God. We arm them with education so they can make sound choices and have successful lives in whatever God calls them to as adults. We are arming their bodies so they can be as healthy as possible. It's really that simple.

Talk soon.

How I Got Started on This Path - Part 4

From here

This is a continuation of our story being told in multiple parts. To start at the beginning, or to catch up on a part you missed, check out these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

When we got the testing back we learned something very new. We learned that Autism is not just not looking at us, not speaking properly, and stimming. It's so much more, so much of a whole body experience for these kids. In short, our kids were sick inside. Gut issues were horrendous, yeast was flaring, immune systems were not doing their jobs, the list goes on.

So, we piddled around with biomedical approaches, never being truly serious about it. And, we had sick kids. Oh, the world saw Autism and never cared that we weren't giving supplements or such, but we knew the truth and were just too tired, to worn, to frazzled to keep up with the stringent protocols.

Then our older son started to take a turn for the worse. Let me stop here and ask you a question. Did you know that if a child has Autism he or she can have a whole host of issues that have absolutely nothing to do with Autism but affect him just as much? Yeah, it's logical to us but there are many, many doctors who have no clue. They see Autism and then try to make every issue your child has fit within that world. It's like trying to fit a broken leg under the umbrella of a child's diagnosis of brain cancer. A child with cancer can simply break their leg and need completely different and totally unrelated treatment for that leg. Doctors need to remember that.

Our son used to love going to our local park with my husband. There was a nice lake there with a hiking trail around it. About half way around the lake, if you were willing to climb down a bit and go off trail, you would find a hidden little cave. They spent so much time in that little cave playing and talking. The entire trip, if you never went off trail, was a bit over a mile long. But, with what my husband and son did, it was probably closer to 1 1/2 - 2 miles total. They went off trail a lot to explore whatever suited their fancy. My son would come home with energy to spare.

Slowly we noticed he wasn't handling these walks as well. His energy levels seemed to be decreasing in big ways. He also, during this time, started to slow down on his eating. He was limiting his variety of food and restricting his intake. It seemed as if he honestly didn't even feel hungry most of the time.

It took us years to figure any of this out. We still don't have a full understanding of what is going on with him. But, we are getting closer each day. After our son had pretty much fallen off the growth chart, our GI said it was time for a feeding tube. He just wasn't able to sustain himself with his oral intake. So, a year ago today (wow, it just hit me, today is our tubiversary), we had a G-Tube placed for our son. It was the scariest thing I ever did for him, and it's been the best choice we ever made for him in traditional medical care.

He also started to have what we call "crashes". He just has no energy at all. His whole demeanor changes. It can take something as big as walking a few aisles in a store to cause one or something as small as having a tube feed. Everything makes him tired. Naps or a good night sleep don't take it away. Because of this we are the owners of two new things.

1) We now possess a handicap placard for our cars. That was shocking to see come in the mail after our doctor sent off the forms to the state. I wasn't really prepared for that and what it implied about our family.

2) We now own a wheelchair. Our son loves it. I think he likes that there is no more pressure for his body to do more than it can anymore. He does what he can, the chair does the rest. I hated our visit with the DME and therapist to order it after our doctor prescribed it, but the second we saw it and saw our son's face as he sat in it, I see it for the blessing that it is.

I am going to stop here. I will finish up with part 5 and end our story telling you how we tied all this into moving to a more toxin free life. You needed to know our history to understand our present.

Talk soon.

Short Break for Some Education

From here

I won't be on a lot this weekend. That means I will probably not finish our story about starting this journey until next week. I am going to be attending a 3 day education summit on Autism. My brain will be too full and my schedule too busy to think about the blog part of my life for a few days.

I hope to share some of what I learn when I return. And yes, I will finish our intro story.

Have an awesome weekend. I know it's only Wednesday, but part 1 of our trek starts tomorrow, so I am bidding you adieu now.

I will leave you with this parting gift. Below is a list of a few sites to help you reduce toxins in your home.

Guidelines for Non-Toxic Living - Concise list of changes you can make, some slowly and some right now, for a healthier home and body.

Home Safe Home - List of very simple things you can do now to change your environment in your home and your body.

Live Toxic Free - Check out her "Shop" link. It's full of great websites with products that are safer options.

Less Toxic Tube Feeding System

This was inspired by some women on a feeding tube support board I am a part of on Facebook. We started discussing what was in the bags that our kids formula and tube feeds were sitting in all day and night. Brainstorming started on many ends. My husband and I have been working on this plan and I finally have a workable model.

I am going to share the parts with their part numbers (for those parts that have them) and then how I put it together. This will allow for about 250ml of formula or blended food to be used. I am currently looking at 3 or 4 larger bottles that will hold 600ml or more for longer feeds. But, I haven't received those or tested them, so I am waiting before I share it as I don't want anyone to waste any money on useless parts.

There will be a lot of pictures in this post as I don't want confusion from merely writing names or descriptions. Forgive the quality of the pictures, I used my cell phone for speed.

Supplies

First I purchased an insulated beer bottle koozie. I found this at Walmart and it cost $1.00. There were a few color choices if your kids would like to choose a color. Make sure it's the type with a zipper. 

Then I purchased safe baby bottles. It needs to be a narrow neck, not the wide moth variety. You can also find bottles this same size that aren't baby bottles per se, but you must make sure the threading starts at the top. Many have a gap of smooth glass and then threads. That will not work. Amazon is a great source for lead free glass baby bottles. This is just a sample. You can use Dr. Brown's glass bottles, Lifefactory glass bottles, and more. You just need to make sure it's the narrow/standard mouth.

Now, this is where specialized pieces come into play. You will need to purchase a Kendall Kangaroo Safety Screw Spike Adaptor Cap. I purchased mine from ADW Diabetes. You don't need a prescription. They cost $1.92/cap. You can buy singles, multiples of 4, and boxes of 30. Your DME can also most likely get these if your insurance covers your feeding supplies as they are feeding equipment. 

ADW's part number is: 61775762

Kendall's model number is: 775762

This exact design is important. Notice the tall opening port and the small hole? The port is for the next part I will tell you about. The small hole is to allow air pressure to normalize for flow of food. 

Last is the tubing. I purchased an Enteralite Spike Right with Proximal End Connector. You can get this two different places without a prescription. ADW has them for $3.39/tube and Vitality has them for $4.20/tube. 

The pictures are misleading. You will see bags, tubing, etc in the picture but you will only get the Spike Right set, so no fears. 

Part number for Vitality and ADW is: 12223318

 This tubing has all the connectors and the cassette for your feeding pump to work properly.

This is what the end looks like. You will see why this is important in a minute. 

So, those are the parts we need. Total, for one complete set up, I paid $8.62. However all but $3.39 of that is reusable so you wouldn't pay that each day. And, $6.12 of that is medical equipment that you could go through your DME for, which should be covered by insurance. The bottles and koozie are reusable for an infinite amount of time and they account for $2.50 of the total cost. 

Now, let's move on to how to set this up so we can actually do a feed for our child. 

Directions

It's time to put this all together. This is very simple and very quick.

• Remove the lid from your baby bottle. I tossed mine as I will never use them since we are far past the baby stage in our home. Pour your formula/food into the bottle. 
• Screw on the purple spike cap and close it tightly. 
  
• Next, place the spike end of the tubing into the open port (the tallest and only open one on the purple cap). Make sure to screw it on tightly as well. 
• 
  
  
  
• Put the bottle into the insulated koozie. Zip it up and you are done. 
  
  
  
  

This is where you have some choices and decisions to make. You can use a backpack if you have one and slip the insulated covered bottle into the bag holder. I have a Kendall Joey backpack (not sure why the DME gave me that since we use an Enteralite, but it works great). It has a clip like the picture below. Fully extended (it's adjustable), it holds this contraption I made above perfectly and it doesn't move or slip. 

From here

You could also attach a piece of fabric or woven belt type material to the insulated cover and hang it from an IV pole (or whatever you hang your bag from now). You could accomplish this a few ways.

• Sew it on by hand or machine. 
• Use a snap setter to easily put snaps on each piece and attach it that way.
• Use grommets to attach the two items. 

Another idea is to make a bag. I am going to be making two bags for my son. One will hold this smaller bottle and one will hold the larger one. They will be similar to this one ... 

From here

Or this one ...

From here

But it will be a perfect fit for the actual bottles I use. I will make it open at the top and just a hole at the bottom so the opening doesn't open up in the middle of a feed and the bottle drop out. 

My husband has an insulated water bottle holder that is an option as well if you wanted to simply purchase a ready made item. It is very similar to the picture below, is insulated, and has a handle. You could simply tack the handle so it ends up at the other end in under 5 minutes. You can find them online or at any camping supply store (where my husband got his).

From here

My son was my final test subject. After a few well worded jokes from him, I asked him his thoughts about it, did he like it, did it make the feed feel any different, etc. His end result was two tubie thumbs up. 

The flow rate is the same and wasn't messed up with the different container. Clean up was a breeze. You know, let me share that with you as well. 

Clean Up

• Unscrew spike end of tubing from cap. 
• Unscrew cap.
• Empty and wash out bottle using warm soapy water. 
• Wash out cap using a rag or a gentle dish brush using warm soapy water. Air dry. 
• While squeezing the flow part of the tubing (the part of the tubing cassette that you squeeze to prime it), hold the spike end under warm water. It will clean out the tubing for you in seconds. After it is running clear water, stop the water and continue to prime it so all the water leaves the tubing. Air dry.

I use what we call the tubie octopus for all of my feeding tube parts that need to air dry. (extensions, tubing, caps, etc.). It's actually a baby bottle drying rack. It looks similar to the picture below. The cup in the center is perfect for 10ml and 60ml syringes, I drape tubing over the arms, can set caps and such on the grid at the bottom. It works perfectly. 

That's it. That's our new feeding system. Once I test the larger bottles I will make a second post sharing the name and vendor of those. If you find a larger toxin free glass bottle with the proper size opening that holds 600ml or more before I post, please feel free to share it in the comments and I will add it to my research and future post.

If you want to join our Toxin-Free Tubie group, please feel free to request membership on the board. We would love to have you. 

How I Got Started on This Path - Part 1

From here

I grew up like most of us did. We ate colored cereal, drank chocolate milk, and had school lunches served on little plastic trays 5 days a week. Food was just something we put in our mouths, utensils, cooking items, and household cleaners were just tools to use in our home and our world. We didn't think about it. In fact, the stronger the scent or brighter the color, the more we wanted it and used it.

I don't blame my Mom, grandparents, or anyone else for this. They didn't know. They just lived life with the things they had in the stores and thought very little about it. I know I did for a long time. They also had it a lot harder than I did because they had no internet and far fewer choices during that time. No one was out there asking, "what if".

And this is how I was living, that is until we heard we would be having our first baby. It all started innocently enough. I was online researching and learned about cloth diapers. My first response was "yuck, why would you ever deal with that". Then I saw one and it was, quite honestly, adorable. I started to look into them and discovered they were a huge money saver. I knew my husband would think I was nuts, but when I approached him with the words "will save us a lot of money", he was on board.

We rocked on with our oh so hippie cloth diapers (yeah, they were very much not hippie, but I was feeling quite tree huggerish) for about 2 years and had another baby. When we learned we would become parents again, something happened. Right about the same time we got the news, our older son had his 2 year old well child visit. We got such a glowing report. He was doing great. He was meeting all his milestones, developing wonderfully, advanced on his speech, growing like a weed, and had a smile that lit up a room. A few hours later that all changed.

We went home, I called Daddy to tell him how wonderful his big boy was doing, put our son down for a nap, and, when he woke up, something was wrong. He had gone from a speaking, laughing, happy toddler to a child who wasn't speaking. He started to do odd things like run for hours and hours a day. He would only stop when his body physically ran into something that made him stop (doors, walls, large furniture, etc). He would bang his head, run into windows so hard we put baby gates up afraid he would pop them out of their frames or break the glass, and wasn't speaking still. We were scared.

We took him to the doctor and he told us this was normal, he was upset about our new baby coming. I told the doctor, in utter confusion, "he doesn't know about the baby. I am not showing, we haven't bought anything for the new baby yet, we haven't told him, he has no clue." He smiled that "oh, you poor deluded woman" smile and told me it would go away soon.

It didn't.

That was life. I was pregnant, I had a toddler that had something wrong with him, and no one was helping me figure this out. I was tired, sad, and scared. My husband was tired, sad, and scared.

My pregnancy wasn't easy either. Our growing baby boy wasn't moving. I don't mean he only moved when I drank juice, ate sugar, or laid on my side. I mean he wasn't moving. We had scans, tests, and more. He was growing fine (in fact, like his big brother, growing like a weed), but he was not moving from the position he was in, ever. But, eventually he was born a nice big healthy boy and we couldn't wait to go home with our new bigger family. Day 2 of life changed everything for him. He went from sleeping awesomely, nursing like a pro, and just being a baby to screaming all the time and never sleeping. Our LLC said that coming to our room to help us with nursing was like a 30 minute break for her because he just knew what to do and did it well. She walked in right after he came back from the nursery that fateful day and was confused. She asked what had happened. We didn't know. We never did get him to nurse much after that. No matter what she tried, what we tried, what breastfeeding advocates tried, he was just screaming, unable to nurse, and rarely slept. I kid you not on the sleep. It would take us a good hour of work (hard work) to get him to finally pass out and, then, he would sleep for 30 minutes before waking up screaming again. He was refluxing like mad, spitting up his bottles everywhere. Because life was exhausting with all of this, I moved to disposable diapers and the most horrible rashes started. His skin would break down it so badly it looked like someone had used a potato peeler on his bum. Then, that would become infected with various things and we would be at the doctor begging for help. They had us change everything from soap, to kinds of diapers, to everything. None of it worked.

Finally, in desperation, I pulled out his cloth diapers, changed pediatricians, and asked her to help me heal his bottom. She knew what it was and was able to heal his sores. The cloth diapers took care of them ever coming back. Oh, he still wasn't sleeping, was crying all the time, and refluxed every meal, but at least his rear end could be touched to change a diaper, water could touch it without his screaming, and pressure could be put on it while he was held.

I will leave this story here and continue with part 2 in the next post.

Welcome to You, to Me, and to Everyone Who Enters

For my first post on this blog I am going to try very hard not to bore you with a lot of cutesy things about our family, my life, and more. Instead, I am just going to stick to the facts and save my words for future posts.

• I am a wife and mom, and I love both of those "jobs". I had things I wanted to be when I grew up, and they changed over the years, but I always, always wanted to be a wife and mom. 
• I am a city girl by birth and a country girl by marriage. I fit into the country life far better than the city life and I never could have dreamed I would feel that way. 
• I have two little stinkers I call son and they make me smile, laugh, and happy everyday (and, I won't lie, I have those days when I just want to yell "Calgon, take me away"). 
• We home school.
• We are Christians, and that seeps into every aspect of our lives. 
• We have pets. We have 2 dogs (polar opposites - 80lbs and 4lbs), 2 lizards (African Fat Tail, and Spotted Gecko) and a cat. My kids would have 40 acres of animals if we let them. 
• We live on 40 acres that backs up to my mother-in-laws remaining 360 acres. 
• We are, as I call it, knee deep in the medical world through both of my sons many medical and special needs. 
• And, as you can probably tell by my blog title, we strive to live toxin free. We are far from it, but are getting closer every day. There are many reasons for this, some of which we will explore in my blog, some of which is too personal and we won't. 
• I love to write, a hobby handed down to me by my grandfather who is an actual published author from the day when you didn't self-publish. I am writing my first book right now. It may or may not ever take off, but the joy of writing it was enough and my kids adore the story.

This is where I will leave you. We are so much more than this but this will at least wet your whistle about who we are and why we blog. 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.