Why still Jess's Garden

Over the last year I've been playing with a range of blogs about my changing life, but I have decided that I can't maintain multiple blogs and I'm in the processing of bringing the posts from the other blogs over to this blog.
When I orginally started this blog I wrote this post, which basically discussed the idea that I was a beginning gardener, but I didn't outline why I had chosen the name "Jess's Garden".
As I think about it now, I chose the name because I garden to create a space that I want to share with my family. (Jess is my dog) This is still the case, this blog is about me trying to create a home and family. Creating a garden is a key part of that process, but it is not the only part, so I feel the different parts of this blog are all congruent to the same goal.

Sage flowers

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I wanted to post pictures of the garden, but the everytime I went outside with the camera, the rain started again and I couldn't get any photos I wanted. So instead here is a photo of the sage in flower from before christmas. I love the purple flowers.

Yes that's how I feel

As I drove out to pick up DH this morning I happened upon a radio interview on radio national with Peter Sculthorpe I must admit I don’t know anything about him, from the interiew I know he is an Australian composer. I caught the tail end of the interview and he managed to give such a good summary about how I feel about religion, spirituality and life in general.

QUOTE FROM TRANSCRIPT

Peter Thompson: You gave up on talking about God because people misunderstood what you meant, is that right?


Peter Sculthorpe: No, that was when people would ask me what sort of a composer are you, and I'd say, Well I'm a religious composer, and people would say, Oh, really? What, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist? But by religious composer I meant that almost all my music seeks the sacred in nature, and if that's not being a religious composer, what is, if one is seeking what is sacred.


Peter Thompson: But you're very attached to that saying that Pandit Nehru, former Prime Minister of India, used in describing Bali that Bali is the morning of the earth, the morning of the world.


Peter Sculthorpe: Right, yes.


Peter Thompson: That's what you're describing, aren't you? That God in nature?
Peter Sculthorpe: Yes, God in nature, yes, which is related of course to Shintoism, Japan, which is to do with the sacredness that is in all things, in all nature.

END QUOTE

The idea of scared in nature is how I feel about my spirituality. I find it such a hard thing to define for myself or others and there I was sitting in the car going. “YES, that’s it.”
I’m now off to see if I can find any of his music to see how it makes me feel.
( I really should listen to RN more often, the interviews and discussions are so often thought provoking.)

My poor husband

Sometimes, (just sometimes mind you)I feel sorry for my husband. Just now he goes out and brings in all the wet washing on the line. The weather has been wet, windy and plain weathery and thus the washing hasn't dried for several days. I'm feeling very behind in the washing and today's load of nappies has been sitting in the machine because there is not much else I can do with them.
Any way instead of being grateful for my husband dealing with the washing I get cranky because my LOOPY mind decides he is making implications about my inability to deal with the washing.
What is with that!!!! He was helping and I'm cranky and letting my own guilt obsurce his helpfulness and caring.
Oh well, I'm loving the wet weather must make the most of it.

Diet update

We are still working our way through the food challenges.
Since my last post about the diet we have tested
* Goats milk
* Amines
* Nitrates

I think the goats milk had a mild reaction, but it just made her a bit spewy. So I'm not completely sure that it was the goats milk. But I hated the taste so much of the goats milk that I couldn't be bothered continuing the test.

The amines seemed OK, but again the test required eating 3 bananas a day and I don't like bananas. I'm now eating foods with amines but monitoring it carefully. I must admit there wasn't that much I could add that had amines but not Salicylates, so I'm not to worried about them.

In the last few days we have tested nitrates, this has meant eating bacon and ham. YAY!!! I've really missed these. Thankfully they don't seem to have reacted, but I'll keep monitoring for the next few days.

I'm not sure what I will test next, it will either be milk or soy. I'm thinking soy as I'm pretty sure the milk will react and we'll need a few days afterwards to recover.

Flavours in Breastmilk

I found this article very interesting. The fact that their research showed that it only takes at the most 8 hours for the taste to disappear is interesting in relation to Saana's response to food I've eaten.
When doing the food challenges I can always tell if there is a problem with the food within 12-18 hours. IF she hasn't reacted after 24 hours I can pretty much be assured that the food is not a problem for her.
I must admit I've always suspected that breastfeeding helps develop a babies tolerance to flavours. I also think that a broad diet while pregnant help to develop the babies tolerance to different foods, but I don't know how you would research that idea.

Diet update

I've lost track of exactly how long we've been doing the diet now. Miki has been very grateful for all the foods I cooked and froze before Saana was born, I don't think he would have coped on the diet. Each time he eats my food he comments how bland it is. But that's life.
We have tested several different foods
She no reaction to
• Wheat
• Yeast
• Eggs
Her nappy rash flares up if I have lots of yeast, but generally OK.

But last thursday I tested Salicylates and we knew about it by that night.
Over the day I ate
• 150gm of canned peaches
• 1 granny smith apple
• Pumpkin soup (cumin & onion)
• 150 ml of freshly squeezed apple juice
• Half a mango

Approximately 10 hours after first food was consumed she started to react. Our evening and night ran like this
• Noisy reflux sounds but very little vomit
• Started making her “I’m in pain” cry
• Would start to fall asleep then wake up with a jerk and start crying again
• The strong reflux occurred for her evening foods on the 10th and her overnight/morning feeds the next day.
• Her day feeds on the Friday still had reflux, but wasn’t as intense.
• Friday afternoon and Saturday she appeared to have colicky tummy pain
• On Friday her stools had blood in them
• By Saturday evening she was pretty much better.

So now I've accepted that for now I'm not eating anything with even moderate salicylates> After we have finished all the other food challenges I will test her tolerance levels.