Healthy things not do do while pregnant or breast feeding

Feeling better and eating better has made me want to detox. I want to cleanse soooo bad. But I can’t. If you drop weight too fast or cleanse/detox while your breastfeeding the toxins get released into your breastmilk which means that baby gets them for dinner. Or breakfast or lunch. You get the picture.

I feel like my hormones are out of balance and I need to start fresh. I stopped taking all of my supplements except for pre-natals, iron and Omega 3’s with Vitamin D when I got pregnant. There isn’t a lot of research on what is safe and what’s not in terms of supplements for pregnancy or nursing and I wanted to be on the safe side. Which also means that my hormones went off balance because I have hypothyroidism and I stopped taking my supplements. I also know my body well enough to know that my adrenals are not functioning at their optimal level because I don’t get enough sleep and because I still have pretty bad anxiety when I drop Annabelle off in the morning, I pretty much lose it if I can’t get to her by 4pm.

I wanted to start drinking Kombucha, which isn’t a good idea since it’s a detoxifier so again, toxins in the breast milk. I’m glad I found that out before I ordered a case of it. I ended up doing a hair analysis to make sure that I was right about what I intuitively knew was going on with my body. Sure enough, my adrenals are taxed and my thyroid isn’t where it should be. Like I said, I didn’t know what’s safe to take while nursing. So I had a consultation at the Sunflower Shoppee and they recommended some supplements and assured me they were all perfectly fine while nursing.

I started on my supplements and when I pumped that night my breast milk was bright yellow. Almost flourescent yellow, it looked like it would glow in the dark. I thought my body was getting used to the supplements. I kept taking them, along with something called Calm Advantage to help with my anxiety. I used to take a De Stress but didn’t want to take it since I didn’t know the effects with nursing and since I was assured that Calm Advantage was fine while nursing I tried it and I must admit it worked, I felt a little more at ease after dropping Annabelle off. 3 days into taking the new supplements Annabelle was being fussy, not falling asleep, staying up all night and no one was getting much rest. She’s been fussy more or less since I started taking the supplements. On the second day of introducing the thyroid supplement (about day 4) Annabelle was still fussy. So I did some research. The conclusion? I shouldn’t have been taking ANY of the things I was sold.

At the end of the day it’s my fault since I didn’t do my due diligence and look things up on my own. I trusted someone who is a “trained professional” who assured me it was all fine to take while nursing. Not so! Just because the bottle doesn’t say anything about it not being safe while breast feeding doesn’t mean that it’s safe. I did my research in the morning, stopped taking everything and Annabelle has slept like an angel ever since. I am not pleased. Needless to say I won’t be asking them for supplement advice again. That also means that I had 4 days worth of breast milk that I pumped that had to be thrown away. So now I’m on a mission to find something I can take for my thyroid and adrenals that is safe until I stop nursing and reset my hormones with a cleanse.

Now I’m also on a mission to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else while they’re pregnant or nursing. I’m gearing up to take my health counseling in a new direction and I’m going to be focusing on pregnancy and new moms, nursing or not. There’s so much information and misinformation out there that it’s hard to know what to do and it’s easy to constantly question and second guess yourself. It shouldn’t be this hard to get good information. We need to eat real food with real nutrition. Simple as that.

If you’re in the Fort Worth area stay tuned for workshops and cooking classes for easy ways to start eating real food.