Janice Constant

Homebirth with Chronic Illness

Well we had a successful homebirth praise the Lord! A healthy baby boy weighing one ounce more than his sister before him, making him the heaviest baby of our four littles. 9 lbs 14oz at home in the peace and control of our own home. One positive of all the worlds chaos, is that it caused us to research heavily on what having our baby at home would look like vs the hospital. In the end we learned that homebirth is much safer than in a place that’s meant for emergencies. And we’re so thankful! We wish we’d had all our children at home! It was so nice to have our first night be so unhurried, unworried and serene. My friend and unofficial midwife were both there and I couldn’t have wished for a better birth team. Between them and my hubby they were so encouraging and I went largely unassisted through the whole thing. My husband caught the baby, which was so special 🥰🥰 Childbirth is full of impossibilities: first of all the miracle of life occurring in the womb-impossible without the Lord. Baby coming out sure seems and feels impossible! And with my past health issues and strike out with the medwife system it seemed impossible to have our baby at home. However God knows what He’s doing. When we follow His voice and direction, it’s just beautiful. And He is a God of impossibilities. My recovery has been good and baby is gaining weight and growing awesome 😍 Praise the Lord for His awesome power 🙌🏼

A few of the great resources that have good information on physiological and natural birth : Freya Kellet on IG, @itsjustbirth IG, unassisted unhindered natural home birth ( private group on Facebook), @life.withasparkle Michele Ans, doula on IG

Social Media Censorship

The censorship online is just getting INSANE. Isn’t censorship itself proof of an something underhanded going on with certain “health crises”? It’s nearly impossible to write anything about “it” on social media without being “fact checked” or getting a link to the “trusted source”. In addition to that, FB and IG’s new very questionable privacy regulations its led me to think long and hard about remaining on social media at all.

On the one hand you could argue it’s more important now than ever to speak the truth and bring light. A lot on social media has been helpful and educational for me and I’m super grateful for others speaking the truth! But I still get hung up on the “privacy” regulations, leaving pretty much nothing you post or message even, private. When it comes to my littles I want to protect their privacy even more than my own.

Maybe God is using this situation to push believers off social media and to more person to person contact. After all, while social media may have its benefits, “relationships” on it are not complete. Plus with increasing communism flavor happening more and more, maybe it’s time to get out while you still can.

A lot of my home business is run from social media, so I’m still praying and considering what God wants of me. But these are some of my thoughts on it. Points to consider, is it worth it staying on social media? Or is it time for a “face to face revolution” 🤪

Big Batch Peanut Butter Oat Muffins (no refined sugar) with chickpea and whole wheat flour

( adapted from tasteofhome.com’s recipe for Peanut Butter Oat muffins) makes 4 dozen

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 cups chickpea flour

3 cups quick oats

12 teaspoons baking powder

2 tsp Himalayan pink salt

1 cup raw honey melted

4 eggs

1 cup natural peanut butter (warmed for 30-45 seconds in microwave makes it easier to combine)

5 cups milk of choice

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl combine wet ingredients. Add wet to dry just combining. Full muffin tins 1/2-3/4 full. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until you get a good “bounce back”. Would be great with a streusel on top as well!

Personally I don’t find anything inherently “bad” about wheat. In my opinion anything naturally occurring and edible is God made and therefore originally good. It’s the chemicals and processing that make it react badly in the body. Or too much of one thing. A wide variety of food is key to good health! That being said, my body feels best when I don’t overload it with wheat. Adapting this recipe with part wheat, chickpea and oats, plus replacing the sugar with honey makes it more nourishing and doesn’t cause a bad reaction for me. You could totally up the honey content for a sweeter muffin or add things to it. I consider recipes to be a good base and then adapt to personal or family tastes from there. Plus it’s fun! ☀️

Chocolate chip Oatmeal Cookies with honey

I’ve been CRAVING cookies so I just had to make some 😋 For scale, the recipe called for 2 cups sugar, 2 cups flour and 3 cups oats. (Full recipe below). I subbed in 1 cup of honey instead of sugar and a splash of molasses. Super delicious! My hubby and littles didn’t notice any difference. I hear so often that it doesn’t make a difference for blood sugar whether it’s honey or sugar, but there’s so much more to the story! Unpasteurized honey is much less refined, more natural and better for the body! I can tell the difference in my own body and how it makes me feel, even if I cut the sugar in half it still makes me feel “yucky”, honey doesn’t do that.

Raw honey has antioxidants that may play a role in preventing heart disease.

It has Antibacterial and anti fungal properties. It’s one of my go to remedies for colds etc. Raw honey and pure lemon juice in warm water I’ve found to be super effective.

Raw honey has also shown immune boosting and anti cancer benefits.

It’s also a potent prebiotic, meaning it nourishes the good bacteria that live in the intestines, which are crucial not only for digestion but overall health.

Refined sugar has none of those benefits and can cause damage in so many areas! It’s worth it to make a switch like this when you can. And when it makes little difference in taste and texture, why not?? 😃

Full recipe:

1 cup butter, 2 eggs, 1 cup honey, splash of molasses, 2 tsp vanilla, 2 cups whole wheat flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, 3 cups oatmeal, chocolate chips (measure with your heart ☺️❤️)

Cream butter; add raw honey, eggs, and vanilla. Mix well. Add dry ingredients. Roll into balls and flatten. Bake at 350 Fahrenheit for 10-12 minutes. Enjoy! 😋😋

Original Recipe credit: Shannon Brewer

Honey facts source: healthline.ca

Dangerous natural methods?

Do you ever notice how the natural way to do things is presented as “dangerous” or scary? Like natural childbirth, choosing to abstain from a v-xine, using food as medicine, using natural supplements to address health, not treating food with harsh chemicals, schooling at home. Where does that come from?

Obviously this is not everyone’s story but before I learned a bunch of things and was going along the “conventional” health path, without much of a question or research on my part, no one paid me any mind. There wasn’t an influx of people coming to me with concerns about whether I had researched this or that or if I was doing the right thing going along with what the medical field said. But after I was fed up with not getting answers, not getting better, started to ask questions, do more research, then I ran into more concerns. More raised eyebrows and disbelieving looks. Like “are you sure”? It begs a question of what society believes that when an individual actually starts looking into things is when it’s deemed “dangerous”. Maybe we need to get back to the basics of nature. How God created us to be. And stop idolizing “science” and “experts” so much. Sure both can have value but they are not immune to mistakes and missteps.

“Experts” used to prescribe cocaine as a medicine as well, maybe we shouldn’t blindly follow someone merely because they’re an “expert”. Just food for thought. 💭 Perhaps the responsibility lies with us always, to check into things, look at actual ingredients, look at actual numbers and see for ourselves what’s going on. I blindly followed for a long time. When I started taking responsibility for my own health and questioning things… Well it set me on the path to get better, be more present, and make better decisions, and more freedom.

Photo credit Maria Vojtovicova

Pregnancy and Healing from Chronic Illness

I’m due pretty soon with baby #4 👶🥳 After Baby 3, 4 years ago I was so done. Because of the crazy symptoms and everything, so run down and just felt like I could never do this ever again. But then I started feeling better and The Lord laid it on our hearts to have another. I went through a lot of fears and unknowns. Will being pregnant again cause me to flare up? Will I be set way back on my recovery? Can I handle it? Will the nausea not being able to eat decent food make my symptoms get worse again?

On the home stretch now. And for the most part my symptoms haven’t gotten worse praise the Lord 🙌🏼, except for the times when I wasn’t able to get my supplements in time with postal overload at Christmas etc. There’s something major to be said for having the right nutritional supports in place!!

The next two unknowns are labor/delivery and recovery. Because postpartum four years ago is when the crazy started. Giving it to the Lord daily (and more often 🙃💜), eating intuitively, listening to my body and God-given intuition, being intentional about moving my body in some way when I can, and being consistent with my supplements are things that I can do. And try not to worry about the rest. God alone holds the future and He’s never surprised by what happens. He can be trusted. He designed the female body to know how to birth, deliver and recover well.

Back story pt. 2

Fast forward to recovery time 💨 I have been tested for Lyme, but here in 🇨🇦 or anywhere really the testing for it is super unreliable. Many people go years or even decades before getting an accurate test result especially if it’s gone chronic. I’ve been in what I’ll call recovery for the past three-ish years now. It’s not been a straight path, it’s up and down and crashing backwards and leaping forward. When I first started to feel better I was so ecstatic that I figured I’d just go back to living (my version lol) of full throttle and learned that it doesn’t work that way! Set myself back quite a ways. The healing has encompassed mental, emotional, spiritual and physical. I’ve learned to accept my own limitations, while moving forward and decreasing them, which is not an easy lesson! Healing while parenting is no picnic either. The Lord has been so faithful in sustaining our family it’s just amazing. The times are rough but the good news is that none of it is a waste for those who love Jesus. Going through all of the health issues (and it’s not an end of road thing here) has brought so much good from it. Don’t get me wrong, there have been and still are many, many, moments of anger, bitterness and struggles with unforgiveness. Healing is not linear. I just hope to share some of what I’ve learned, am learning and spark some questions in others. There’s been so much I’ve had to unlearn in the process. There’s hope, and it may not come easy or “conventionally” but have courage and ask the tough questions. Ask the Lord for wisdom to open your eyes to what you’re not even aware needs to change. 💜 💚

Photo credit “boatierra” artist unknown

Back story

After my third baby was born was when I started noticing what ended up being an explosion of symptoms. I had pp bleeding on and off for 6 months. I made some diet changes which helped stop that. But then a whole slew of other things started rearing their ugly heads. Palpitations, erratic heartbeat, sweats, headaches, head pressure, pain and on and on. Sooo many doctors visits, with every lab coming back “normal” 😖.With three littles aged 3 and under, this was such a stressful time and a lot of it is a blur. After a year of this, I was fed up and started trying out natural things instead. I didn’t notice much until month 3 where I went through severe detoxing. It was interesting that with the “physical” detoxing came a lot of emotional detoxing as well. Maybe around month 6 I was seeing more and more positive changes. And the more the symptoms started to dissipate the more I realized I’d been struggling with these symptoms a lot longer than a year. Probably since around age 7 is my estimate now.

I remember being at a cousins one day and all of the sudden started getting a huge headache and had to go home. I ended up with a high fever and some other things I can’t remember, just what family has told me. Doctors at the time related it somehow to thyroid. But now after a lot of my own research, I know I was showing many signs of Lyme disease. After that time I developed chronic knee pain, less stamina, trouble sleeping, extreme fatigue, cognitive issues and so on. Doctors couldn’t find anything then either. So I learned to deny my symptoms, repress, and believed this was just normal for me. One naturopath years later was able to discern I was low in zinc (like non existent stores) and that did help but didn’t pinpoint a cause… part 2 to be continued

Intro

I am a growing-more-crunchy-by-the-week stay at home- Jesus following- mama, with a side hustle. My favourite things are: making food from scratch and finding ways to make it healthier, but not overwhelming, and being outdoors. I’ve had an undiagnosed illness for most of my life and after 20+ years of pursuing answers in a “conventional” manner, found huge help in the natural health realm. I continue to ask questions and dive deeper into the crunchy world. 🌱 I tend to be messy, have unpopular opinions, and just want to share them with you! To spark your own questions ☀️

“Good learning starts with questions, not answers.”

Guy Claxton, Professor in Education and Director of CLIO Development University of Bristol