The theme of yesterday’s post was “reveal,” but I waited until this one to close that loop. I am not going to yoga on Day Eight. Instead I went back to a second class on the evening of Day Seven.

This does feel like cheating, I admit. But looking at the day, with a wedding at 2:00 and a mother blessing 4-7 p.m., and commitments to my family and my home in the morning, it is just not feasible for me to go to either of the Saturday classes offered. If there were a 6:30 Sunrise Yoga, I’d be there. But 8:30-9:45 is just too late for all we have to pack into the day, including my preparing all the food I will need to eat all day to accommodate my special grain-free, starch-free GAPS diet. My friends and family need a nourished, rested mama, and that is already a little sketchy.

So instead, I went out for a second time on Day Seven to my first evening class at Centered Yoga. It was Yin yoga, a class described by the studio as using passive poses and the breath to create a “sense of balance, harmony and inner peace.” Sign me up!

Even though I was dragging a little all day, and it was so lovely outside I might  have rather taken a walk than spend as much time in the car as in the yoga studio, I knew that I would feel better for having had the meditation and relaxing stretches. And I knew that I would feel almost I wasn’t a cheater if I doubled up on one day but certainly like a failure if I didn’t go on Saturday or Friday night. My husband was going to be home early, so it was the one time I could get to an evening class.

Aside from the yoga, which I’ll get to in a second, one eye-opening part of the experience was seeing what life is like for the hundreds of people who work in Georgetown and live in Virginia. The post-work and Friday night scenes are foreign to me these days. It felt like cultural tourism just to sit on Key Bridge at 6:15 p.m. And then, on the way home, to sit on Canal Road at 8:15 p.m. That was the most exposure I’ve had to over-20/under-30 humanity and to external combustion I’ve had in a long time. Witnessing it — while listening to classical music — was an exercise in anti-narcissism. It’s important to be reminded that your own individual issues are not being obsessed over by everyone else in the world.

But I’m avoiding talk of the class, I see.

Early on, the teacher invited us to dial back our intellect and to “turn up the volume” on our intuition. She said a lot of provocative things, and sometimes the music helped me get out of my head and let her words take me to their essence.

The first time she said, “Our hips tell our stories” — that they reveal a lifetime — I could only think of boys and things you do with them in the dark. But on the second side in pigeon pose, I thought of giving birth to my daughter, 10 months ago yesterday.

In the birth pool, I had my left knee down and my right knee bent, up and perpendicular to the ground. My labor was short — just 4.5 hours from the pop of my water when I went up into bridge pose at 5:30 a.m. to her birth at 10:08 a.m. — but I was pushing for too long. I’d been unpracticed in the art of breathing through intensity; as soon as it came, I wanted to match it. But three hours later, I was tired and the midwife’s tone got just a touch stern after my daughter’s head was out that the rest needed to come along, too. No longer feeling the inevitability of the next contraction, I had to finish on my own, and quickly.

And when I did, I was cautioned not to pull the baby too high out of the water because of her short cord. My son’s cord was so short, he’d been breech and delivered via c-section. I’m not exactly a fan of short cords. I got a little freaked out.

Then I remarked that, while my surgically-delivered baby’s head looked quite intact and non-smooshed, and this baby’s did not. It looked funny, her eyes and ears seemingly set wide apart. She also didn’t cry right away. I didn’t know what to make of this near-flaccid baby who looked rather like Gollum. My first thought was a worry that she might have Down Syndrome and that I would not know how to be a good mother to her. I worried I wouldn’t love her enough, that my heart was not big enough to envelop this being I’d spent nine months worrying about and loving and feeling move inside me. What would this reveal to me about me if I stopped short of adoration?

We can never know who are children are, but it is striking to me how much with both I just looked at them in wonder. And with my daughter, I had a nervous first two minutes wondering if anything had gone wrong, chromosomally or otherwise. Here I’d had my successful homebirth in barely enough time for my midwife to make it to my house and relieve her backup. But what would happen now? Who were we all going to be?

In yoga class, I felt my hips expand in pigeon pose and thought about my story. The teacher told us, before folding, to expose our hearts, and I found that sob at was hiding on Day Four. And I cried. Mostly it was in my body, but some tears fell on my block, the floor, my cheeks.

I hope the teacher wasn’t concerned if she noticed. It was an important release.

I came home wanting to embrace my baby and her father. They are precious.

And yet, life is not just a Lifetime movie. The baby would not go to sleep. When I pulled her off my breast, she writhed like I was sticking her with a hot poker. I gave her homeopathy, Rescue Remedy, an herbal calming tincture. My husband tried again to get her to sleep. Finally I put her on my back, did some watercolor painting for the motherblessing books, and there she lies, her neck cocked over in a way that probably feels as uncomfortable as the extra 20 pounds feels to my back while I sit with horrible posture.

But it’s what is working right now. I don’t want to challenge it. Sometimes you just have to go with that and have faith that things will all work out as they are meant to be.

Right?

Other posts in this series:

Day One: The challenge begins!

Day Two: “Let your bottom blossom”

Day Three: “Shine!”

Day Four: “Surrender”

Day Five: “Root and reach”

Day Six: “Brighten the belly”

Day Seven: “Reveal”

Day Eight: “Expose your heart”

Day Nine: “Play”

Day Ten: “Party in the pose”

Here is a health-focused piece cross-posted from my main blog, Crunchy-Chewy Mama. I had been putting more health-focused pieces here and more snippets from life on the alternative mainstream divide over there, but I now that I am writing for The Washington Times Communities at “Reading Ingredients: Tales of a Health-Conscious Mom,” I’m re-evaluating my blog strategy (which includes looking for someone to help me upgrade them all or combine at least these two blogs.)

Here is my tale of a recent illness and how I fought it off the pharma grid.

***

We’ve got 60 degrees here in Metro DC and I think I’m finally getting over a cold that started two weeks ago. I never get sick and stay sick. This was annoying. Not so bad that I had to make the husband stay home or back out on a major event I was planning, but bad enough that I sounded like the woman from “The Nanny” if she had a sinus infection. Not pretty!

We don’t do drugs in our house, so I did my best to self-medicate. This starts with food — lots of nutrient-dense homemade (from pastured chickens) bone broth and a limit on refined carbs. When I look back, the weekend before I got sick I had hot rice cereal for breakfast one day and French toast another day (GF millet bread, but still) and a bunch of rice crackers. That’s way more packaged food than usual. So I cut out what I could but still allowed myself some antioxidant-rich raw cacao.

When I started to feel an illness on I restarted the flower essences I maybe should have been taking all season long from Perelandra. On Tuesday the 12th, I tried the homeopathic remedy Hepar. Sulph. Calc. and promptly got worse with a sore throat and swollen glands. I think I honestly fell asleep on the floor of my bathroom while my son played with toys in an empty bathtub. A homeopath said it was most likely that this reaction was just pushing the natural course of events forward and that now I just had a cold I might as well let run its course. So I gave up on the homeopathy – none of the indications seemed 100% right on anymore,anyway – and just tried garlic & ginger in hot lemon water in the morning, eating well, getting sleep, staying in bed even if I couldn’t sleep well (instead of getting up to work), and putting some eucalyptus in my shower. I kept meaning to get even just a basic saline nasal spray but didn’t, and we found our humidifier but never got it working.

Well, all that, and a lot of water and a lot of bodywork. My head was killing me with major sinus pressure, so I looked for whatever healing hands had openings. On Wednesday, the day after I felt terrible, I had a chiropractic adjustment and acupuncture. On Saturday morning I had a massage, primarily of craniosacral therapy. On Monday afternoon I had another bodywork session, a combo of craniosacral therapy and lymphatic drainage massage. Each time I handed over my credit card after a session, I did feel better. But it didn’t last to the next day, not as much as I wanted. I still had a lot of nose-blowing and some coughing.

Then, on Wednesday when I’d been sick for a week, my eye looked red in one corner, which I thought was from not sleeping well until the next morning when it was sticky and red all over. This was the day of my event. None of the many homeopathic remedies for conjunctivitis sounded spot-on for my symptoms, but I got so weepy when my friend rang the doorbell while I was trying to have my son nap, that I decided to take pulsatilla. And I found some homeopathic eye drops at CVS, which I think helped, for sure with the redness. The eye was cleared up a day later. (The second eye got it too and also cleared up after a day).

Friday I saw an osteopath who worked a lot on my head in general, my sinuses and even in my mouth and upper palette. I sounded like a different person after that appointment — much less nasal. But the next morning I slept in and still felt like I’d regressed. Maybe shopping for a sofa, meeting friends for coffee and walking a mile in mild winter day were too much. But we did get a new rebounder, which I used twice, hoping that it would help my lymphatic system clear out. And I did fit in a little yoga.

Sunday I had to drag myself out of bed but felt a lot better after starting the morning off with Vitamin C before my lemon/ginger/garlic drink, to which I added turmeric and elderberry. And then I had a full breakfast and set to work on some reorganization of the house, which felt great. I even had a little decaf coffee and some GFCF sugar-free (maple syrup only) chocolate cake my son and I had made as a celebration of my successful event Thursday night (adaptation of this cake recipe but using mashed cherries instead of applesauce and adding cacao and coconut flakes).

Despite this indulgence, I could tell I’d turned the corner Sunday afternoon. It’s now Monday afternoon, and though I still am not ready to go out and do a full run in this gorgeously warm day (or to be too far away from a tissue), I am glad I was able to ride this out and that so far, no one else in the house seems to have any symptoms.

Almost a month ago, I went to the grand re-opening of Holeco Wellness Medi Spa, the first holistic/wellness medispa recognized by Green America as a Green company and listed in their Green Pages. The owner is a wonderful woman who recently spoke at a Holistic Moms meeting. They are in a building that just underwent some lobby renovations, including new glass doors. On my way into the event, where I hoped I might win some fun beauty or energy door prize, I got instead the most ironic of injuries — I walked right into the glass door that I thought was open, cutting my nose bridge with my glasses and giving myself a huge blow that resulted in a mild black eye a few days later.

As someone who has gotten a ton of craniosacral therapy, I knew that this blow was going to be with me for a while. The knowledge that I was setting myself back hurt more than the immediate physical trauma, though that was pretty bad, too. I was so upset that I was not aware enough to prevent this injury. Honestly, a perpendicular piece of glass did sort of look like the door, but I still should have seen that the door was closed before I rammed into it.

So after I bled all over the ground, went up to the open house and got some ice (and got looked at by a nurse), I drove home as soon as I felt it was safe to do so. When I got home, I immediately took Emergency Trauma Solution and then later Arnica. This was a Tuesday, and on Friday I had a previously-scheduled craniosacral appointment. The therapist said there was quite a bit of trauma, and he recommended Traumeel cream and anything to help with lymphatic drainage.

The next Tuesday, a week after the incident, I saw an acupuncturist and chiropractor who, before he did acupuncture, used an activator on my sinuses, which kind of freaked me out. But some stuffiness cleared up right away, and when I saw the craniosacral therapist again on Friday, he said I seemed much better than he would have expected. He gave props to the acupuncturist. Two weeks later, I saw him again, and he said that the intense jarring of energy actually let him work more deeply into my birth strain than he’s been able to before.

So even though I really hadn’t planned to spend that much money on treatment and time without exercising (even after three weeks, I still felt the injury in my nose when I first went jogging), I am trying to believe that there is/was/will be something good to come out of this injury, as the spa owner suggested when she kindly called me the day after the injury to check up on me!

I haven’t been pro-vaccine for a long time, since I got the flu vaccine in my 20s and felt terrible.

Now that we’re facing a potentially bad flu year, there is a lot of talk about vaccines for flu and specifically for H1N1/Swine Flu. I’m hoping that the alternative folks are right that the best way to avoid getting seriously ill is by avoiding refined foods — especially sugar and flour — and generally eating a healthy diet, along with giving our bodies assistance in fighting things naturally by getting chiropractic work, acupuncture or craniosacral therapy.

But we don’t always get the sleep, exercise, or nutrition that we need, so I’ve ordered from Perelandra the 2009-2010 Flu Season Balancing Solution from the Microbial Balancing Program and also FSBS+, which is supposed to address pandemic strains of the flu. These bottles are $10-15 and from a farm local here in Virginia. I know some folks are hoping their homeopaths can make a homeopathic version of the standard vaccine.

I hope that we can do okay, as we did last winter on health and wellness except for the week after the Holistic Moms chapter launch (and the Inauguration, which was an exciting but very long day). The following week, my son came down with an ear infection that I’m pretty sure was his system’s response to his mom’s stress. That lasted over a week but cleared without drugs. We were still nursing at the time, though, and this year, he won’t have that protection.

This season, I hope we can find the inner balance we need and can count on the Perelandra solutions (the above, as well as the Immune and Lymphatic solutions) to stay healthy.

Two weeks ago, I fell taking a step onto a neighbor’s basement stairs. My foot just slipped on the carpet and I was about to bounce down the stairs on my bottom. Having sprained my ankle in September 2007 two weeks before I was going to run a half-marathon, I was determined not to let my legs take any of the ill effects of this fall.

So I braced myself with my hands – I let all the weight fall into my upper body. Within minutes, I knew my arms were going to hurt. I was in a fragile emotional state before the fall, and I knew that the feeling of upset and the trauma were going to settle into my body in a powerful way. I went home and sobbed for a few minutes after I took my first round of drops of Perelandra’s Emergency Trauma Solution (ETS Plus). I repeated the drops every 5 minutes four or five times. Then I took arnica and applied Traumeel lotion topically.

But it hurt a lot to raise my arms out to the side, and I knew that whatever I did, I was going to need help. I kept taking arnica – no OTC painkillers and the next morning called the massage therapy center where I’ve been going for over a decade. I knew my regular craniosacral therapist wasn’t working that day, but the other one was, and she had an opening. Fortunately, my husband had a few days off of work, so I could take the appointment.

The session was very powerful. Not only did I leave feeling like almost all the pain was gone, I was profoundly relaxed. It was clear that I needed the session anyway; CST simply needs to be part of my regular life, at least as long as I’ve not got a consistent yoga and meditation practice going on.

I happened to get in this past week with another CST practitioner I used to see a lot before my son was born. He has more experience with visceral manipulation and other aspects of Upledger training. He worked on my son for 30 minutes and for me for the remaining 20 minutes. The work felt deeply therapeutic. He said I was still locked up from the incident and that he worked to release the tension. That night I actually felt tired before 11:00 for the first time in a long while. That would not be the first time that CST helped me to chill out enough to be able to get to sleep at a decent hour.

I’m very glad to have these practitioners in my life to keep me from holding on to negative patterns and then compensating for them in other problematic ways.

I am being pulled in opposing directions. Now, my wanting to do several things at once is not a new thing, I freely admit. However, I was starting to feel good about the idea of going to bed early in order to get up early and do yoga or work out and write before my son got up for the day. If I get up at 5:00, I figured, (something I did regularly while teaching high school), I can do 20 minutes of yoga practice at home and then write until he comes downstairs with his dad at 7:00. We’ll get him used to sleeping or at least resting until 6:30, and then he can play quietly in his room or in the hallway while LJ showers and gets dressed. Or, on alternate days, I will write for just a short bit and then go to the gym to return at 7:15, when LJ has started breakfast but is about to be needing to leave for work.

Either way, I thought, I will feel refreshed from an early bedtime, exercise, centering and creative expression. Surely this will make me more than ready to face a day of focusing on my son when we’re together — being fully present with him. And on the days I do have some childcare, I’ll be more on-task for having gotten some ideas down on paper already. I’ll either be able to move ahead on that or work on work or leadership for the moms group I’m starting.

That sounds lovely, but I’m feeling like it just ain’t gonna happen, not without a few rough days of habit change. Why? Because my son is no longer sleeping soundly through the night on his own or in his own room. He paddles into our bed sometimes as early as midnight. Sometimes he just snuggles in, but other times he tries asking to nurse first. I tell him it’s sleepy time, not morning yet, and he usually complies, especially if I have some almond/coconut milk ready for him to drink. But when he wakes at 4:00 and I say no to nursing, he sometimes gets pissed. He whines, telling me “No!” and wriggling his hand back up or down my shirt. This also happens on occasion when I cut him off from the allowed post-5:00 feeding(s). I essentially feel like I’m done with my night’s sleep at 4:00, and that is just too early even if I were getting to bed by 9:00. In fact, on New Year’s Eve, I stayed reading on the couch when my husband took him up to bed, and for some reason that image would not let the boy rest without his mama. So we all went to bed together early that night. And 4:00 still felt just plain wrong.

Yet I never fell back under solidly, and he wanted access to the bar at 5:00 and 6:00, and then he was just up and wanting us all to be up for the day. That is now becoming the norm: he whines, “I’m hungry! I want to go downstairs!” He used to be willing to go play in his room for a bit, maybe bring in a doll or some books to us, but now the suggestion that he amuse himself just upsets him more.

I don’t know what we’re going to do. Since my husband will probably not start his new job this week, I think I’m going to say we bite the bullet and I just leave the upstairs at 5:00 and let them deal with it. I’ve planted seeds of suggestion about this to the boy, which he ignores to ask some unrelated question that seems to be a cue he doesn’t want to hear about whatever I’m saying. I am not in a hurry to wean for good before age three, but we may have to morning-wean or bed-wean. I don’t know if he’s just coming on like gangbusters now in a last-ditch effort to claim the goods before he drops them or what. We had been down to just morning and night until just after Thanksgiving (also just after I ovulated for only the fourth time since he was born); then he was asking around the clock for a few weeks. Since that period ended, he’s tapered back to morning and night, sometimes before nap and only asking otherwise if he gets hurt or is just feeling needy. I ought to read more of How Weaning Happens and Mothering Your Nursing Toddler. My friend’s 13-month-old just stopped on his own — was crying when she’d try to feed him. I just can’t imagine my boy ever wanting to stop. I wonder if there’s something I’m contributing to that dynamic — some need to be needed?

I would like to wean and cleanse before the summer, before considering trying for another child if that’s what we decide to do. If we do go for #2, I would want my body to have some recovery time and to get to the healthiest possible state, which it clearly is not right now. Seeing as it took 29 months to get my first postpartum period, I want to be gentle with myself.

One other thought about the boy is to get serious about restarting remedies. Tonight I gave him Bach Flower Essences Impatiens and Vervain in addition to our first time trying Rescue Sleep — and I could get him back to the craniosacral therapist and get us both into one of our healers who helped before. I also read in Peggy O’Mara’s “A Quiet Place: Your Child’s First Healer” in the new (Jan/Feb 2009) issue of Mothering magazine that the homeopathic remedy Nux Vomica is a go-to helper if you’re waking at 3 or 4 a.m. If I don’t find that I have any in my medicine chest, I think I will pick some up tomorrow and give it a try. And I will also call my pediatrician (a homeopath) to finally get in for an appointment!

After my son’s first illness in a while, I’m so glad I’m still nursing and that we can still create a family bed.

Last night my son said he had a “stomachbake,” and he clearly had some gas, but he fell asleep fairly easily around 7:30. Then, when he woke at 9:00 p.m. crying, I was worried he’d caught the tummy virus my friend’s child had. He felt hot, and the temp read 100.2. This is the first fever he’s run in a very long time. I’ve never medicated for anything, including for a fever, believing that it really is the body’s way of healing itself (see NY Times article). I’ve given my son homeopathics and flower essences and will entertain herbs, but he’s never had any over-the-counter medicine.

This was also the first time he’s really been sick since he became verbal. It was a real throwback to deal with a child who was upset but unable to tell us what was wrong. If he smooshes his finger or scrapes his knee, he usually says either, “Aw, I just hurt myself,” or “I’m okay, Mom.” This time, it was just unhappy tears.

Thinking this was a tummy bug, I suggested, “Let’s give you some drops.” Since this is familiar to him, he sat and opened his mouth. I gave him Perelandra Microbial Balancing Program drops for the Digestive system and also for Immune and Lymphatic. Then I remembered he sounded a bit stuffy when I put him down for bed, so I threw Respiratory in there for good measure. I added celery and tomato and F-1 and F-2, which a practitioner had previously told me to use in case of a tummy bug or ingested mold or other icky stuff.

I tried to keep both a sympathetic tone so he knew I knew he understood he was not happy but also a lighthearted and reassuring approach, counting out one set of drops in English, one in French, another in Spanish. Although he’s been sleeping through the night for over six months, and we generally don’t nurse until after 5:00 a.m. at the earliest, I nursed him back to sleep.

Around midnight, he woke again and I had to use the bathroom. I can’t remember if we nursed again before I got up or not, but when I left he followed me, and then he saw my husband and said he wanted Daddy. So LJ went to sleep in the boy’s room for a while, and I went back to the much comfier bed down the hall.

It’s been a few weeks since we moved E’s double futon into his own room. The bed takes up half the floor, but we figured one thing at a time. I think we all sleep better without our son in his own room now that he’s two and a half, and it has made afternoon quiet (read: nap-resistance time!) calmer. However, I’m very glad that we can still share sleep when it’s clearly the thing our son needs. (Or any of us needs. One day I’d had to say goodnight to him early before going to a meeting, I woke at 4:30 and crawled into bed with him just to be close. I still love the snuggling, but I also know he’s ready for his own space.)

I have had my frustrations with nursing a grabby toddler, but I haven’t yet gotten the desire to wean the way I got the desire to move bedrooms. According to Mothering Magazine’s article “Extend Breastfeeding’s Benefits”by Kyla Steinkraus (September/October 2007 – Issue 144), breastfed toddlers do seem to be healthier physically, and emotionally. I figure that with a child with food sensitivities, the longer he can get nutrition from me, the better. And in a child with an intense and gregarious personality, the longer he can have quiet closeness with his mama, the better. Since he hadn’t been sick in so long, I took for granted the health benefits.

Now that our nursings have gotten down to just morning, before nap and night (and sometimes skipping the pre-nap if we’re out & about), I feel freer but after this illness, I also feel like my son is more vulnerable to illness with less breastmilk intake. I’m not ready to put him out into the world without that layer of protection.

He woke this morning temping in a 98.1 and was in fine spirits all day. So far he’s been sleeping soundly since a few minutes after we gave him his drops again four hours ago. If he needs to nurse tonight, I’ll turn the clock back a few months to make sure he gets well.

Who knew that May 31st was the day before June 1st?

When my friend’s husband asked if I was available to come to a surprise birthday party for her, I didn’t put it together that the half-marathon I’d just registered for was the following morning, Sunday, at 7:00 a.m. – a hour away. We talked at length about the ideal time for the party – 5:00-7:00 p.m. – to maximize the chances of folks getting childcare and enjoying the catered wine tasting.

Once I set out to make hotel reservations for the race city, I realized the problem with the dates. Don had already booked the caterers for Saturday night, so I decided we’d skip spending the day in Annapolis and instead head there after a decent dinner at home. The boy would fall asleep on the way, we decided, and I just wouldn’t do more than sip a few of the wines.

Once we got dressed up and dropped our son off at a friend’s, where he was happy to play with her and her daughter, it was hard to hold back from fully enjoying the night. This was the first time my birth class buddies and I had been together without our children in tow! I sipped and sipped some more, and by the sixth out of eight wines to be sampled, I realized I’d moved beyond mildly buzzed. My head felt only a little warped, and I was happy to have had so much fun with my friends. I’m so sensitive in my body now, that’s where I felt it. I had the sensation of my blood becoming toxic and my liver getting perturbed. But I had a race to run in less than twelve hours, and there was still dinner to make and eat, packing to finish, a toddler to nurse (not the cleanest milk he’d ever had, I know), and a drive to do (with my husband behind the wheel). I didn’t feel great about exposing my son to the alcohol, but now that he’s over two and doesn’t nurse a whole “meal,” I decided he could handle what came into my milk from less than three (maybe even only two) glasses of wine over two and a half hours.

My real concern was with myself — would I be in running condition the following morning? I hadn’t ever studied up alternative tonics to mitigate intoxication – I hadn’t needed to. But this night, I’d imbibed beyond any level I’d had for years. I tried to focus on believing I could cleanse my body and purge the toxins. While my husband drove, I placed my hands on top of my liver and on my back, trying to send healing energy to move the alcohol through my body rather than settle and store itself in my tissues, a technique I learned by reading John Upledger’s primer on craniosacral therapy, Your Inner Physician and You. I took deep breaths and tried to cultivate compassion for myself and my body and not to shame or blame myself. I had, indeed, had a great time with my friends, and I realized that the party and wine buzz may have given me some freedom from the fear I might have otherwise had about the race. Six months earlier I sprained my ankle less than two weeks before the first half-marathon I’d registered for, and it’s been a long recovery of body and mind to believe I could come back to health and complete my goal without another major snag. Maybe I needed the push out of my over-analyzing brain.

On the solely physical level, I drank lots of water in small sips and also drank some of the Vita Coco coconut water I’d purchased on a whim for post-race recovery, noting its claim as a “nature’s sports drink” and “natural rehydrant” at the bottom of the package and being impressed with the vitamin content and claims to replace electrolytes with no added ingredients – no salts or sugars. Shortly before we got in the car, I saw in my race materials that Zico, another brand of coconut water, was going to be giving away samples at the finish line (see Zico’s nutritional information), so I figured this was a good hangover buster.

Alcohol has always affected my metabolism, making me ravenous. After a big dinner of chicken and vegetables and a snack of banana and nuts in the car, I nursed EJ back to sleep in the hotel bed around 11 p.m., said goodnight to my husband, and stayed up get my gear ready and to finish dinner’s leftovers (and snack some more on top of that). I took a few doses of Perelandra’s Emergency Trauma Solution (ETS), and of a solution of few Bach flower essences – Crab Apple for cleansing, Gentian for discouragement , Larch for fear of failure, Impatiens for desiring a hasty recovery, Walnut for major transition and White Chestnut for monkey mind/thoughts going round and round in the head.

There were wedding guests in the hotel who’d had a lot more to drink than I had, and the sleep I found between 12:30 and 5:45 a.m. was disturbed by hallway noise more than once. I started the morning with some water, coconut water and the remainder of the green juice I’d made right before we hopped in the car the night before – parsley, celery, lemon and garlic. I sipped it slowly as I got ready. Before I put on my shoes I mixed some Valor essential oil blend from Young Living Oils into some lotion and rubbed my feet with it. Young Living claims: “Valor® is an empowering combination of therapeutic-grade essential oils that works with both the physical and spiritual aspects of the body to increase feelings of strength, courage, and self-esteem in the face of adversity. Renowned for its strengthening qualities, Valor enhances an individual’s internal resources. It has also been found to help energy alignment in the body.” Ingredients are: Spruce (Picea mariana), rosewood (Aniba rosaeodora), blue tansy (Tanacetum annuum) and frankincense (Boswellia carteri) in a base of almond oil.

At about 6:30, I ate a half a banana and a few small leftover coconut flour pancakes before leaving to walk the 0.8 mile from the hotel to the start of the race. My husband waved goodbye from bed, but EJ stayed asleep next to him, marking the first time we’d start the day without nursing. In fact, he later told me, “I slept with Daddy the whole time!”

The run was great. I felt strong through mile nine and only then felt a little like the slight uphill should have been in the other direction. When we exited the bike trail for the last mile along a steamy, sunny highway, I was glad to be almost done. But, cheered on by another runner, I finished very strong and have smiling race photos to prove it. My time was better than I’d expected, and I felt no ill effects upon finishing. After the race I drank a lot more coconut water, ate nuts, seeds, and chocolate-covered goji berries, took some Rescue Remedy and ETS, had a great shower, ate a lot of food and enjoyed the day — including getting lost and walking another two miles back to the hotel with my boys. I could have fallen asleep on the way home, but once I got past that, I had so much energy, I stayed up until 1 a.m. that night.

The next day my muscles felt used but not especially sore. I was happy that I’d finished the race and enjoyed myself and also that I’d been able to manage the ill effects of unwise decisions in drinking. Later in the week I went to bed early and felt more tired than I had in a while. After that post-CST exhaustion I described in the last post –and my lofty goal of turning in before midnight and getting up to at least walk early in the mornings – I’d reverted to my night-owl habits. Since the race, I’m finding it easier to honor more reasonable hours. And I’m looking for the next candidate for a long race to keep up my momentum.

I’ve been taking a class recently on using flower essences with infants and children. I’ll go further into my experience with them in the past once I merge it in my head with the more detailed info I’m learning.

For now, I want to highlight Emergency Trauma Solution by Perelandra (available online only). I’ve given this to my son and taken it myself when we’ve had a few scares – one when we worried he might have ingested some Visine and another when he tumbled a bit down the hill in our backyard. The idea is that the solution can help stabilize you — your electrical field and all that is affected by that — after a trauma of any kind – physical, emotional, mental. It can help speed healing on all levels. I have a lot to learn about this modality, but so far I feel like ETS has, in fact, kept me from leaping to an anxious space, which I normally would have then inhabited for a very long time.

Some people also use Rescue Remedy for this kind of gentle balancing in the face of fear or trauma. A Bach flower remedy, Rescue Remedy is a mixture of five flower essences and can be found at most health food stores, the Vitamin Shoppe, and places like Whole Foods Market. It’s in a small brown bottle and costs somewhere $5-12 depending on where you are and how big the bottle is. There are also sprays and creams of Rescue Remedy and 38 individual essences if you want to address specific emotional issues. Essences can safely be used on anyone, even pets!

For babies, one drop on the crown of the head or wrists will do. Toddlers and children can be given a drop or two orally if they’ll cooperate. You can also put a drop in the palm of your non-dominant hand, focus, and “send” it to the person who needs it if he or she is not with you — kind of like ordering a grande prayer with an extra shot.