Nourishing a baby . . .

Since we're still just waiting for our referral, I figured I may as well post on what's been on my mind lately, in case anyone is interested :)

I've been obsessing over what to feed the baby when he comes, and this is all new territory for me. I breastfed Aidan and Bridget for 14 months each, and though they occasionally had formula when being babysat, they basically went from exclusive breastfeeding to solid food and never really relied on formula for any nutrition. As I've researched commercial formulas I am now so thankful that they didn't have to! I hadn't realized that most formulas contain corn syrup and soy (even non-soy formulas have soybean oil), both of which I think are unhealthy.

Some adoptive mothers are able to induce lactation and breastfeed, but not exclusively - without pregnancy it's really impossible to make enough milk to sustain a baby. I haven't ruled out doing some breastfeeding to help with attachment but if the baby is more than a couple months old, it will probably be too late for him to learn to nurse. We'll make that decision when we know about his age and whether he was breastfed by his birth mother. That brings me to the decision of how to find a formula that I think is nutritious, does not contain corn syrup or soy, comes as close as possible to breastmilk, and is available. I think I know what I'm going to do, but it requires some explanation of my nutrition philosophy.

I have a somewhat controversial opinion on the proper nutrition for my family. I don't agree with the idea of a low-fat diet, which is so pervasive in our society. I also don't believe that vegetarianism is healthy, though if commercial meat is the only thing available, it probably is a better choice. Basically, I believe in a "traditional diet" (not a paleolithic diet, though). That means that those things that were available and eaten by traditional cultures around the world are the healthiest choices for us.

For example, traditional cultures included a lot of fat in their diets, but they chose things like butter, olive oil and animal fat, which are natural, rather than vegetable oils or hydrogenated fats, which are created with very damaging chemical processes. They always ate fats with protein, and protein and fat occur in nature together for that very reason. Traditional cultures also consumed seafood in some fashion, even if they were nowhere near the coast. They would trade for dried fish or fish oils and include them in their diet because they are so packed with nutrients. For us this means that we need to include cod liver oil in our diet because it's the most efficient way to get those nutrients.

We do eat grains, but try to only use whole grains, and I soak them for the maximum nutrition. We make kombucha tea and during the summer I made kefir and used it in smoothies (Bridget loves it just straight with some honey in it!) We try to eliminate white sugar and only use raw local honey, real maple syrup, and Rapadura (naturally dehydrated sugar cane that still has all the vitamins in it - it looks kinda like dirt but you can subsitute it for white sugar in recipes).

Our vegetables are basically all organic, either from our CSA share or garden, and we basically just use seasonal vegetables. That means that this time of year it's pretty much just root vegetables, cooking greens and squash!

As far as meat, we eat only grass-fed beef and pastured chicken (with exceptions for eating out of course). This is more expensive, but we not only avoid all the hormones and antibiotics in commercial meat, we also get all the nutrients from the grass that the animals consumed. We drink raw milk from a small farm where I can talk to the woman who milks the cow and see the barn and the animals and how healthy they are. Nothing has been heated to a point of destroying all the valuable nutrients, and the benefits of drinking raw milk are amazing (see www.realmilk.com). This is probably the most controversial thing we do, and brings me to my question - what will I feed the baby?

I found a formula recipe in the book Nourishing Traditions (basically the cookbook/resource that changed my life!) that takes either raw milk or cultured pasteurized milk and adds a bunch of vitamins and fats to it to bring it really close to breast milk nutritionally. It was developed by Mary Enig, who is the lipids expert who first pointed out the dangers of trans fats and has been a huge proponent of traditional nutrition. This recipe has been used by many, many people and has been tremendously successful, with healthy kids who don't have issues with cavities, obesity, ear infections, etc. It's very complicated in some ways, but totally worth it if it helps our baby's health. I feel that it's even more important for him than it might be for an infant born in America who had a great start to life - he probably will have been malnourished at some point and will need as much nutrition as he can get in order to regain his health.

We do plan to just buy the formula they've been using at the care center for the time we're in Ethiopia and on the trip home, just to minimize the number of changes to his system until we're home and can handle them. We're also probably going to use cultured milk, rather than raw just to be extra careful (though I freeze my milk so that by the time I use it, the farmer has already used it and would have notified me if there were any issues with it). We're dealing with vaccination questions as well, which I'll probably post on (I'm not anti-vaccination, but do have concerns).

If you want more information on all this, visit the Weston A. Price Foundation or read Nourishing Traditions - I promise it will be interesting, even if you don't agree! And I won't be offended by any questions, either!

Nourishing Traditions

I just have to mention this book I've been reading, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. It's absolutely amazing - I haven't been able to put it down! It's a combination of a cookbook and textbook about traditional nutrition and cooking.

A lot of it is based on the research of Weston A. Price who traveled throughout the world studying native groups who had excellent health, and documenting what they ate. The idea is that before processed food and the development of processed sugar, groups who ate "traditionally" (meaning animal products, raw dairy and soaked and fermented grains) had excellent health with virtually no cancer, birth defects, or chronic illness.

At this point, Americans are eating less saturated fat, dairy, and animal products than ever before and yet our cancer and heart disease rates are growing. As recently as 50 years ago heart disease was uncommon and now it is a leading killer. Why? According to this book animal products and saturated fats are necessary for your body to function and have antioxidant and anticarcinogenic properties. The problem is in vegetable oils, especially hydrogenated oils. These are extremely toxic to the body and they believe are one of the leading causes of heart disease. The fact that American's consumption of saturated fats has gone down while the incidence of heart disease has gone up should be reason enough to consider this theory!

These are not this one woman's ideas - there are excerpts throughout the book from many, many articles and other books on the same subject. I loved the way the book was organized as well, with some major articles in the front but a lot of the content is spread through out the "cookbook" part (which is huge) in sidebars. I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of fermentation and the necessity of it in order for us to digest things properly. I was unaware of the extent to which this was (and is) used throughout the world in every culture. I've already made whey and a batch of apple butter through fermentation (which uses whey) and I'm excited to try some other things.

Stefan is totally on-board with it, which is amazing and wonderful. He is actively helping me get rid of plastic in our lives (more on that later), stop using the microwave, and start having a more traditional diet. Hooray for great husbands!