International Women's Day 2011

Grabbing my beautiful sister and her (at the time) tiny daughter for a hug - celebrating sisterhood.

Today marks the 100th annual International Woman's Day - which celebrates and recognises achievements that women have made economically, politically and socially.

As a woman, I'm grateful for the progression we have made over so many years. Each day in the clinic, I'm also reminded on how our needs vary from men. Whilst we strive for equality in the work place and a louder voice, physically and mentally we are very different. Both sexes are specifically unique. We have different requirements nutritionally, our hormones are different, our bodies work on different cycles and on the whole we generally require more emotional support. From a fertility perspective, we see the greatest variance as women carry and nurture offspring in the womb.

You may recall a post I placed up last week - I love how it demonstrated emotionally the beauty of sisterhood :: They teach it at Stanford.

"Women connect with each other differently and provide support

systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life
experiences. Physically this quality "girlfriend time" helps us to create
more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can
create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men
often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a
buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their
personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing,
hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely."

Celebrate your uniqueness this International Women's Day - and grab your sister, mother, friend and colleague for a hug.

Why cleanse?

There has been a lot of recent attention focused on 'cleansing' in relation to its necessity and effectiveness. I have to agree with some of what has been published; over the counter 'kits' don't properly support the body and may be harmful and damaging because not one size fits all when it comes to cleansing. However, I am here to tell you, your body can only benefit from the right type of cleanse.

Cleanses are absolutely necessary to rid the body of toxic matter that builds up and literally lodges itself right through the gut. Your gut is your bodies own cleansing mechanism, however, what we ingest, breathe and wash ourselves in, isn't doing our bodies justice. Potentially our bodies would do an awesome job of eradicating waste, if we put into it cleaner things including, less toxic food, water free from nasty pesticides, antibiotics and drugs.

By now you would know that I have put it out there that I am running Step-tember Body Clean Out. Im challenging all to join me in a very simple and basic cleanse that EVERYBODY can do. All you need is to give me 7 days (from September 1 - 8), where each day I will add 2 steps for you to add on. So, the initial day will be 2 steps, the second day 4 steps and by the time we get to day 5, all 10 steps will have been outlined. You will continue with these 10 steps for a further 2 days (or longer should you want to continue to feel awesome). Its that easy! Of course, should you require something more specific, its best to come into The Pagoda Treewhere we can dig deeper, with a supported Spring Body Cleanse.

On Monday the 30th of August, I will be posting the complete cleanse, with the aim of us all doing it together commencing September 1st. You can start at anytime, however I know it will be great to all be in a somewhat supported environment, where you can ask questions via my blog at anytime or email me. Its' going to be a perfect start to spring and a perfect start to an awesome you for September!

My breast feeding journey

As World Breast Feeding week nears an end, my mind has been drawn back to those early days of my breast feeding journey. Im grimacing as I write and think about those first few weeks. However, I got there. I breastfed, I persevered and Im proud.

Olivia's birth was very long, partly due to the complications I ran into during my pregnancy. I was diagnosed with an irritable uterus, which saw the start of my labor at 30 weeks. I was airlifted from Mildura (where I worked fortnightly, to deliver Chinese Medicine to country Victoria), hospitalised and told to rest. This, an impossible task in a midwifery ward. Fed up, I discharged myself, and took myself home, frustrated with what modern medicine couldn't offer me. Finally I took charge, had my beautiful business partner treat me with acupuncture, took herbal medicines and lied on my couch for 7 weeks. It seem like an eternity. I had contractions (which didn't hurt but were more like braxton hicks) constantly for 10 weeks, so by the time labor was upon me, my body was exhausted.

Pre-labour contractions commenced 6 days before I gave birth, each day they would be more and more intense but each day, they would stop and start. I would literally be in labour for 10 hours, with contractions at 4 minute intervals, only to have it stop. This went on for 5 days. My uterus was so fatigued. Finally I gave birth, but given all the complications and marathon efforts, my body was completely out of sorts.

My milk didn't come in until day 8. I had no idea that it wasn't there - I mean, how was I supposed to know? I hadn't done this before, nor had Livvi my baby. Because my labor had taken a turn, I was administered fluids via an IV, which certainly had an affect on my hormones. There are so many factors that can delay milk coming in including c-sections, IV drips, epidural etc. I had no idea!

So finally my milk came in - and 'they' weren't wrong, a day of tears and sadness. I remember wondering how I was supposed to do this. Of course, because the milk wasn't there earlier, we had all sorts of attachment issues and like my fellow blogger potty mouth mumma who by the way inspired this entry. (be sure to check out her awesome blog too!) I could feel things weren't right with Olivia and her feeding, I and so I took myself off to several tedious visits to the lactation consultant and had countless home visits by my maternal nurse. I was introduced to nipples shields which were able to offer some relief from my dry, hard, cracked, bleeding and infected nipples. We took Livvi to the Osteopath to fix her little spine up after all that labor and we seemed to finally be off!

Things were on the up and I was happy for a short period of time until the mastitis kicked in. Oh dear lordy this was the worst I think I have ever felt in my life! I remember standing in my kitchen, about to faint. Thankfully my mother recgonised the signs. I remember those words... "you've got mastitis!" I had no idea what to do. My mind was frazzled, and it wasn't until mum said to me "how do you treat this Nat? What do you do in the clinic?" that my mind actually switched on and thought "hello! I treat this regularly! I can fix me!" So I took myself off to my clinic, The Pagoda Tree, got me some herbs, some cabbage leaves and off I went! My mastitis cleared up within 12 hours. I was amazed.

We cruised along for sometime, perhaps 3 weeks or so when I started to develop vertigo type sensations. Breast feeding was seriously drawing on my reserves. Some days I was so dizzy and faint, I couldn't get up. So back to the herbal shelf for me, making up another decoction to drink to set me back on track.

All up I breastfed for 11 months. I for sure would have gone longer had I had any milk left. It just dried out. I have many theories as to why - probably the most significant being my return to work when Olivia was 3 weeks old. My body never had enough time to recover. Being in the fertility industry, its extremely difficult to up and leave. By the same token, I have no regrets getting myself back into the swing of things and was fortunate enough to be able to bring Livvi to work with me for the first 6 months of her life.

There was one thing that got me through my journey - support. Without it, I would have for surely failed. Education and support is the main focus of this years campaign for World Breast Feeding week. The African proverb is 100% true... "it takes a village to raise one child." Im grateful for my support network. It may just be the greatest gift a mother can have.