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I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day.  I sure did.  Though to be completely honest, I think many of my days are like Mother’s Day.  I do not take this for granted.ever.  I just happen to have an amazing husband who lets me know I am appreciated and loves doing things for me.  I regularly consider myself the luckiest girl alive.  We are a house of love and sap.

We really didn’t do anything  out of the ordinary for us.  We took a walk, a family nap, went out for dinner, washed the cars and played outside.  I also planted the certified organic vegetable transplants I picked up yesterday!

I have a tip for you mommies concerning Mother’s Day.  Tell your people exactly what you want.  They cannot read your mind.  Set expectations ahead of time and sometimes you even need to reset them the day before.  Like if you want to sleep in  If you want brunch a particular restaurant, a certain gift or a few hours of a quiet house to soak in the tub/read a book.  Tell your people so they can give you the Mother’s Day you want!

Hi friends.  I’m talking self-care today.  I know for a lot of mommies that this gets put at the end of the priority list but we really should not do that.  I am slowing crossing things off my self-care checklist and wanted to share one of my successes with you.

I had an overall cholesterol level of 260 since about 2006.  Even when I was vegetarian for a few years and even when I was running 20 miles a week my levels were the same.  I have great genetics. Not.  I took statins for a little while a few years ago and they jacked my liver all up so I refused to continue them.  At the end of last year I started working with a Naturopathic doctor to try to understand my risk level and find a more holistic path to treatment.  What is an N.D.?  Here is how I understand it: Medical doctors treat symptoms, Naturopathic doctors seek to determine the root of the problem and utilize natural methods to help your body restore its health.

Progress on my cholesterol levels:

Before

• Overall                     262
• HDL                           67
• LDL                           186
• Triglycerides        46

After

• Overall                     207 (Down 55 points!)
• HDL                           72
• LDL                           124 (Down 62 points!)
• Triglycerides        55

It’s pretty amazing!  I am going to share some of what I did to get there, but also know that there is a little more to it.  I am just not comfortable sharing it all with the world.  I promise you it is all easy stuff though! I also want you to go seek out an N.D. in your area and not just go off of what I did.  Everybody is different and what worked for me may not be what works for you.

Supplements:

• 1000mg of niacin 2x/day
• 1000mg of Krill oil daily
• probiotics daily – I like the Pearl brand as it does not require refrigeration

Other important factors are getting regular exercise and drinking lots of water.  I do not consider my work here finished yet either.  I’m going to get a carotid artery ultrasound to get an idea of how much plaque is built up to better understand my risk level.

What have you done lately in the area of self-care?

We do cloth diapers round here but the first few months we used disposables.  This means we have a diaper pail.  A few months ago I was searching for a new nighttime cloth diapering solution as we were springing leaks.  While I figured that out we went back to sposies at night.  This means the diaper pail came back into use.  Emmet caught on very quickly and soon put the dirty diapers into the diaper genie after the morning change.  It was adorable AND helpful.

Then a nighttime diapering solution was found and while I stopped using the diaper pail, it was still sitting out in its place.  It turns out somebody else kept using it.  I was missing a diaper insert and could not find it anywhere.  I have a few extra and dug into that stash, thinking it would turn up soon.  Then a change of clothes disappeared.  I was stuffing a pile of clean cloth diapers a few days ago and Emmet came in and started playing with some of them.  Then he took one shell and went over to the diaper pail and using his best “working hard” noise, pushed it inside.  Oh my.  I did not know he was still using that thing!  I went over and opened it up and sure enough, there were all the missing items.  I will be re-hiding the diaper pail shortly.  Little stinker!