Why I'm nutty.

(Lost most of my pictures when I switched from WP to blogger. Slowly working on putting them back, but it's a massive undertaking so please forgive the broken image links!)

Over the years, we've seen quite an array of sensitivities in our children.  The sensitivities manifest in different ways.

Tummy problems.

Skin rashes.

Sniffles/respiratory reactions.

There are people I've met who don't understand me.  They don't get me.  They don't understand why I'm "crazy."

"Hippie."

"Crunchy."

"Earth Mama."

You name it, I've heard it all.  Snobby, too.

The first year of Ben's life, we dealt with all sorts of scary things like excessive vomiting (sometimes projectile but always excessive), blood in his poop, green poop, frothy poop (poooooop, poop, poooooooop), lack of poop, too much poop (did I mention poop?), terrible skin rashes, dropping off the weight chart, height plummeting and eventually losing weight.

It was a rough year.  I also lost my milk supply around seven months which was one of the worst things that could happen to me in my eyes.  There was never a question in my mind that I would breastfeed exclusively from day one until the day my baby was ready to wean.

Sometimes things don't go as you plan.  You have to adapt.

Adapt, I did.  I began to learn about healthy living.  Changing our diet.  Removing toxins from our environment.

I haven't always been so crazy.

But when staring into this sweet face, I was painfully (literally) aware that I had to do something to help my angel.

Once I started reading about food and chemicals and the problems associated with the modern-day world we've created, I became nutty about it all.  I threw out all our processed food (and believe me, we ate a ton of it) and I began the very slow and at times difficult switch to the healthy(er) lifestyle I try to provide for our family today.

And though things are much better today,

...we obviously still struggle.

My little man is curled up on the couch today, not feeling quite like himself.

He threw up this morning.  It really isn't that abnormal around here.  It just...happens.  He wakes up early some mornings, crying and clinging to his tummy, and sometimes he throws up a little later, sometimes he doesn't.  Today he did.  I hate watching this.  I hate watching my baby in pain, knowing in my gut there is still something I'm doing wrong that I could change to help my sweet baby.

And my daughter?  She currently looks like this:

I mean, I hurt just looking at her.

And my youngest, Landon?  He hasn't escaped the fate of my genetics.

This morning I was a little horrified to see the beginnings of the face rash on Landon.  This is pretty much exactly how the rash that would become the top picture on this post began with Ben.

The moral of the story could be that despite all my attempts to create a healthier environment for my family, we simply can't escape it; my children will live like this, with digestive problems and skin problems and respiratory problems, until someday their bodies are stronger and more capable of fighting off whatever it is they're reacting to.  But I'm a mom, and as such, I can't just stop there.

I can't just give up.  I will fight every day for my kids.

So when I go on a rant about Monsanto or pesticides or why we're trying to buy our food locally and eat as little processed crap as possible, please understand that this is a very loaded and personal subject for me.  I'm a mom.  I'm a mom who has done her research on the rise in allergies and eczema and asthma and if I say that I let my kids eat dirt and don't make them wash their hands all the time, I know you'll think I'm crazy.  You might think I'm a snob who judges you and the way you live, but please trust me when I say I'm not.  I'm only doing the best I can do to help my sickly, sensitive children.