Food is the best medicine
Just scrolling through my old photos and found this precious photo collage of Oliver at around 4.5 months. It brings back lots of memories and I’m sharing my little story with you.
I remember that morning I took Oliver to the pediatrician for his severe eczema where he was prescribed steroid cream. Apart from the ezcema, he was also lethargic and warm to the touch. I told the pediatrician he was probably running a temperature and was lethargic. He didn’t do any temperature check or say anything and just sent us home with the steroid prescription.
After I got home, I noticed little Oliver was even more lethargic and didn’t really wake from his sleep and that his temperature was over 39 degrees. I called the nurse on call and was asked to call the ambulance.
I called the ambulance and the paramedics arrived promptly and assessed him and said he was very dehydrated. We were tossing between taking him to the hospital or managing the dehydration at home. And we decided to keep him at home.
I was so desperate at that time, he wouldn’t drink from my breast nor the bottle. And as I was also recovering from a terrible flu, my milk had almost gone dry. I quickly reached out to the very special Facebook group where mummas donate breast milk and I managed to get some breast milk that same day. Also, I had to send David to the city to buy a Supplementary Nursing System (SNS – feeding bottle with a tube). David was also very sick and was running a very high temperature. He took some panadol and drove to the city in peak hour traffic to pick up the SNS. Total journey took 2.5 hours.
And with the SNS and donated breast milk and some experimentation of what could work to get some liquid gold into Oliver, I finally resolved to this, dummy feeding tube bottle. And it only worked after he had gone to sleep and I could drip milk into his mouth drop by drop through the dummy. Took 1 hour to feed him 100ml. And I didn’t know at the time, that I would spend the next 9 months feeding Oliver from the SNS, not always through the dummy although a lot of the time. It was super tedious and I’m so glad it has kept him alive!
On a side note, because of the constant sickness and stress in the family, David had taken quite a bit of time off work during that period, even before. That has taken a serious toll on his career in the corporate world. Unfortunate but true. It was super stressful at the time as we could see the imminent redundancy for David. Although in hindsight, that was one of the best things that happened to us. With David home looking after the family, we were all finally able to heal, slowly but steadily. We took that summer off before I returned to the corporate world, and we were able to be all together as one family, healing physically and emotionally.
Now, two years on, we are in a much better place. We have been through a very serious healing journey, starting from the gut, eating nourishing food and removing inflammatory food. And all of us are so so so much healthier. Oliver is now hardly sick and is super strong and active.
Zachary’s health as well behavioural challenges have also significantly improved. We know it was the diet, because on days where he’s eaten something he’s not meant to, e.g. chocolate bar, he would be having lots of meltdowns and sore tummy for several weeks. And it happens every single time.
Btw, I’ve never taken Oliver / Zachary back to the pediatrician since and we have very rarely seen a GP. We never bought or needed the steroid cream in the end. Food is now our medicine and our naturopath #familyhealthnaturally is who we go to now for health advice. We are blessed that there hasn’t been any medical emergencies since, which require us to go to the doctors or hospital.
I share this little story because I hope it empowers someone to start taking charge of their own health, not through downing pills or medication, or succumb to a lifetime of chronic illnesses but through nourishing food and natural medicine, many illnesses can be reversed, even ones where the doctors tell you otherwise.
Hope you have a great day.
Thank you for reading. ❤
