Hormonal Musings (A Post About ME!)

This post is probably entirely Too Much Information.  Be forewarned.

SO things have been a little different in our household lately.  Since the beginning of January Justin and I have been working to cut out all grains from our diet.  Justin has actually been really good and only cheated once (and got a giant headache as a reward).  I, on the other hand, have been doing this more slowly and mostly just trying to avoid gluten.  We will eat rice about once a week, but other than that I never cook anything that has grain in it anymore.

(It's a very long explanation, but we're doing this because grains are horrible for you.  For ANYBODY.  They are biologically designed to attack whoever eats them, and basically they punch holes in your gut, and cause tons of autoimmune diseases, infertility, etc.  Dairy and legumes have a similar effect. Obviously not everybody has these problems, but grains do, in fact, treat everybody the same way.  It's just that some people are more sensitive to these effects than others.  So we've been cutting grains - especially gluten, which is the worst contributor - out of our diet to see what kind of effect it has on our fertility, my colitis, and our general health and well-being. )

Some interesting things have happened since I have cut back on my grain intake:

1. I suddenly have a sex drive.  I mentioned my lack of sex drive and all the complicated possible reasons for it back in my post on Baby #2.  Well, it has reappeared.  We've been having sex several times a week (or more), because I want it, not because I feel like I should because I love my husband.  This is a nice - and welcomed - change.  In my opinion, this is the most sex we've ever had.  It's not technically the most sex we've ever had, because we obviously had a lot of sex when we were trying to get pregnant.  But that was mostly obligation sex ("We better never go more than a day without doing it because we don't want to miss ovulation...").  Like I said before, infertility kind of ruined my appetite for sex, and nursing seemed to make that even worse.  Suddenly, not so much.  I'm still nursing as much as I always have.  So could it be the lack of grains?  In our research we have read that decreased libido can be a side effect of al those gut irritants.  Interesting...

2. Last week I spotted verrry lightly from Monday to Thursday (Jan 17 to 20).  It was a similar sort of spotting I used to get the day before I would get my period during the cycles we were doing IUI and I was 100% for sure ovulating.  It never really got any heavier than just the slightest bit of pink (and occasionally a small streak of red).  It definitely was not a period - this I know for sure.  I don't know what it was, though.

3. I had a negative OPK!!  I've mentioned before that one of the symptoms of my fertility issues are that I always have positive or almost positive OPKs.  I have taken about 10 OPKs since giving birth, just for the heck of it, most of them in the past few months.  All have been positive.  This past week I took one when I was spotting that was also positive.  Today I took one, just for funsies, and it was negative.  Negative!  Wahoo!  It wasn't super negative, but the test line was definitely lighter than the control line.  I'm going to keep monitoring this every so often, just for my own awareness.  But this is the first time I've had a negative OPK since giving birth.


I kind of went into this no-grain thing half-heartedly.  Even though I know all the issues grains cause, and how beneficial it can be to get rid of them, I haven't really been into it.  I haven't really believed anything would change for me, personally.  But I'm not so sure now.  Maybe these 3 things are connected?  They're pretty out of the ordinary for me.

I guess we'll wait and see... :)

Puffs

I gave Noah sweet potato flavoured Puffs today.  It was his first finger food.  He really liked them, but the poor kid couldn't figure out how to get them into his mouth!  He would get one in his fist and then bring his fist to his open mouth and try and try to eat the puff that was clenched tightly in his fist.  He would look so confused by the whole thing.  His hand would be covered in slobber, and he just couldn't figure out that he needed to open his hand to get the puff in his mouth!

I don't know what I was expecting?  A perfect pincer grasp from an 8 month old boy who has never been allowed to handle tiny objects?  lol

We'll work on it.  Behind Daddy's back, because he doesn't want him to eat Puffs.  But it really is the perfect (ie. non-messy) way to teach him how to feed himself and develop fine motor skills.  And they have vitamins in them:)

Gluten Wars

Today my dear husband and I fought.  Over what I consider to be the most ridiculous thing.

Back story.  As we all know, Noah gets constipated from nearly everything.  As a result, he has been off rice cereal (since it has a reputation for constipation) for over a month.  He hasn't had any other type of cereal because his father is incredibly stubborn.  He wishes we all ate a paleo diet (meats, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, AND THAT'S IT).  He hates grains, and he especially detests gluten.  He saw rice cereal as a compromise, since he didn't even want Noah to eat that.  But he wouldn't let me feed him the "Add Water" kind because of the extra milk ingredients in it.  I had to get the "Add Breastmilk or Formula" kind.  (I'm not sure what all the cereals are like in the U.S. because my friend goes across the border to buy hers - way cheaper - and the ingredients are different even though it's by the same company.  But here in Canada those two kinds of cereal have vastly different ingredients).

Well, perhaps it was a compromise, but it was an unsuccessful one, since Noah couldn't tolerate it.

I have gone along with this gluten-free thing for awhile, but Noah has not been getting the additional iron he needs because he is exclusively breastfed (no formula) besides the dinner of fruit and vegetables he gets at night.  The iron in breastmilk is the best absorbed iron you can get from ANY source - including meat.  About 50% of the iron in breastmilk is absorbed and utilized by the baby, as compared to 4% of the iron in formula.

That's great.  But once the baby starts eating solids, the iron is breastmilk is no longer as well absorbed because it starts to bind to the molecules in the solid food.  So while I'm not totally on board with the whole BABY NEEDS MORE IRON AT 6 MONTHS thing, I do agree that sometime in the second half of the first year baby should start to receive more iron supplementation.

Noah is 8 months old.  So I do some more research on the benefits of continuing to keep him gluten-free for awhile longer.  I see none.  There ARE benefits to being totally gluten-free, but I have no intention of keeping Noah gluten-free his entire life (if it were totally up to my husband, he would be, but it's not).  So I may as well introduce it now in a controlled setting.

So yesterday I decided - and informed Justin - that I was going to start Noah on Oat cereal.  It's not as high in gluten as wheat, but it will provide extra iron and possibly not make Noah constipated like the rice cereal.  Justin disagrees with the idea.  I tell him I don't care.  He says "I really don't have any say in this, do I?"  I say "No."

End of story?

Not quite.

Today I go out and buy the Oat cereal (and the only option is the "Add Water" variety).  And some Sweet Potato Whole Wheat Puffs.  And some vegetable Mum Mums.

Justin looks in the grocery bags and discovers these purchases. 

He pretty much acts like he wants to divorce me.

He fails to notice (or care, once it's pointed out to him) that I purposefully did not buy anything with any SOY ingredients whatsoever, since soy is like majorly unhealthy (it's not even allowed to be sold as a type of baby formula in Australia), and basically like giving my baby boy an estrogen supplement.

My husband is usually very happy and friendly and smiley.  But he stopped talking to me for awhile tonight.

And just to rub it in (not intentionally) he had to FEED Noah that dreaded gluten-containing, milk-ingredients-containing Oat cereal.

Honestly, this "fight" was going to have to happen at some point, whether it's at 8 months or 12 months.  No matter when I introduced gluten, it was going to cause a commotion in our house.

Hopefully it's worth it and Noah doesn't get constipated.