When dealing with morning sickness, the most important thing to remember is that the same thing will not work for everyone, and don’t give up until you find something that works for you. Also, you may not be able to alleviate ALL of your nausea, but even if you can lessen it somewhat, it will make your life much more bearable during these first few weeks. You may find some new ideas of your own that work for you much better than the ideas presented here. If so, I would love to hear about them!

1.    Eat more frequently, just a bite or two every 30 minutes or so to keep your blood sugar up.
2.    Juice ½ of a lemon into a cup of hot water and drink first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Eat breakfast about 30-40 minutes later.
3.    Eat small amounts of foods with ginger in them – ginger ale, gingersnaps, candied ginger root, etc. Also can try ginger capsules.
4.    Wear a motion sickness band on your wrist.
5.    Chew peppermint gum.
6.    Take extra B-Complex. Start at 100-200 mg per day and increase by 50 mg per day until you are no longer sick. Make sure you are taking a B Complex rather that individual B vitamins, because it is water soluble and will pass through your urine so that you cannot take too much. Also make sure you get the yeast free kind to avoid problems with yeast infections. Take 50 mg amounts throughout the day.  When morning sickness starts to lessen, slowly decrease the amount of B Complex you are taking until you eliminate it all together. According to a home birth midwife, this will relieve morning sickness in 80% of all pregnancies.
7.    Take milk thistle capsules (recommended by Shonda Parker, author of “Naturally Healthy Pregnancy”). This should ideally be done for at least a month or two prior to conception. Milk thistle is a liver cleanser and the idea is that morning sickness is made worse by a stressed liver.
8.    High protein snacks at night, such as a few peanuts, or a drink of milk. Also try this first thing in the morning before getting out of bed.
9.    Peppermint essential oil (I recommend only Young Living therapeutic grade oils) dropped into a glass of water or 1 drop under the tongue followed by a glass of cold water. Or put peppermint oil on a tissue and deeply inhale for a few minutes right under your nose.
10.    Some people recommend eating a lot of protein to manage morning sickness, and others say that you should stay away from too much protein and especially dairy products. Try both and see which one works for you.
11.    Herbs that may help – catnip, dandelion, peppermint, and red raspberry leaf.
12.    Make sure you are drinking plenty of water.
13.    Try taking cod liver oil twice a day – the flavored kind is fine if that is easier for you to take.

Author: Brenda Minica, CD (CBI) – All rights reserved.

NEWBORN JAUNDICE

Brace yourselves, this one is cool! (to a young mother at least! *grin*)

I had one of those “now no one can tell me that Essential Oils don’t work” experiences, and just had to share.

One of my college roommates had a baby (her fifth) the Friday of convention. (that makes her two weeks old tomorrow, kind of important to know that.)

On Friday of last week, she came into town (she lives in a small town an hour away from here,) to have her “well baby” visit.

*Note* This is not a natural woman. She and I are really like oil and water when it comes to…well almost everything. We are, amazingly, the best of friends despite our vast differences, so she patiently puts up with my ‘radical ramblings.’ We share religions and both are very spiritual. (I was supposed to act as doula for her at the birth, but she allowed the Dr. to induce her under the contrived thought that she has fast labors and she lives an hour away from the hospital…*sigh*)

The baby was horribly jaundiced at this one-week visit. Her billirubin level was 21.6.

The Dr. told Shirley that brain damage occurs at 25 and that she would have to leave her baby at the hospital. They then told her that while they had room for the baby, that there was not room for her to stay, and that she would have to leave her baby. She adamantly refused, reminding them that she was breastfeeding, and told them that there must be another way.

The hospital staff finally relented and agreed that if she would stay in town, that they would loan her a billirubin light and blanket. She took it and went immediately to her sister’s house a few miles from the hospital and plugged it in to see if it would help.

She called me in a panic. I went over with my Peace & Calming and my White Angelica. I am out of Trauma Life, or would have taken that too. I got there and listened while she cried and stressed over her new angel. (I put Peace & Calming on before I walked in, under the thought that she might not let me put any of the oils ON her, so at least she could smell it. I was right.) She refused all offers of oils because they might make the baby not want to nurse. I didn’t argue.

She asked me for advice, and I said that what I would do would be to pray and ask Heavenly Father to tell her what to do to help the baby, and reminded her that as a mother, she is ENTITLED to divine guidance, because they are HIS children too.

She thanked me and said that just talking had made her much calmer, and that she felt better (Peace & Calming, anyone? *grin*).

The next morning, the baby’s billirubin count had climbed to 22, despite staying in the blanket except while nursing. Shirley commented that she was looking sicker.

I asked if she had prayed and she said ‘yes, but nothing is coming.’ I told her to listen, and accept the answer, even if it was confusing to her.

(She had felt for a few days that the baby needed a chiropractic adjustment, but her Dr REFUSED to allow it, so now she was desperate.)

My phone rang at 10:30 that night. Shirley said: “I have an embarrassing question to ask.” I said, “Shoot!”

After hemming and hawing for a minute and me assuring her that we had gone thru enough together that I would not be offended at whatever it was…*smile* she finally asked:

“Do you know what an enema is?”

I about died laughing! I said. “Of course I know what an enema is, my whole family uses them when we are sick!”

“Oh, then you know how to give one?”

“Of course!”

“To a baby?”

“Of course!” I said.

Quiet on the line…”Well, that is my answer and I have no idea what to do.”

I then told her how to give a baby an enema with a nasal aspiration bulb and she asked if I would come over after church the next day and help her if she didn’t have the courage to do it that night. I said, “Of course!”

After church, (I broke the Sabbath, but it was a case of “ox in a mire” in my opinion) I went to a drug store and got the best enema bag I could find and headed over (with every oil I have and my Essential Oil Desk Reference in hand…and a prayer in my heart that she would let me use them).

I got there and she started gushing…”I did it, and she felt better, I could tell! She was so patient, and felt such relief, I am so glad I did it!”

I asked her what the baby’s poop had looked like and she told me it was still meconium (sp?). AT TEN DAYS OLD!!!

My babies are pooping mustard like, breast milk poop at 48 hours old at the most! We talked about it and she agreed that her others had cleared their meconium a lot sooner, and that this might be ‘part of the problem’.

I asked if she wanted me to help her do another enema and she agreed. I then asked if she cared if I used some Essential Oils on the baby, and she (much to my surprise) said “Sure, if you think it will help.”

I was so happy! I suggested that we start with a prayer so that we would have guidance and know what to do to help she and the baby get home sooner. We did.

I rubbed Peace & Calming all over both of us moms first. *grin*

I put Valor on the baby’s feet and then opened my Lavender. I rubbed Lavender on her head and down the bridge of her nose (I had no idea why, it just felt right.) By the time I could get the cap back on my Lavender, the baby’s eyes were FLOWING yellow goop. (I mean flowing, like tears!)

Shirley said, “Wait, this is making her sick, it is bothering her eyes.” I said “NO!!! That is the billirubin! Look!”

And sure enough, it was…just yellow gunk, pouring out the closest outlet it could. It ran for a few minutes (while the baby laid there totally content and cooing, by the way) then slowed down. I suggested we do another enema to see if that would help.

We got our distilled water warm and I put a few drops of Endo Flex (I was out of Juva Flex, and EF was recommended in the EODR) in the water. We sucked up the oil and did another baby enema. She was still passing almost straight meconium. While she worked the water out, I rubbed a few drops of Frankincense down her spine then added some Cedarwood. I then did a raindrop technique-like motion with the feathering and pulling away from the spine. (Super gently, no one attack me!)

We then put Release on her liver and Lavender all over her belly (two or three drops of each).

We put Endo Flex on her feet and Rosemary on her back.

When we took that diaper off, she had urinated so much that the whole diaper was almost orange! The billirubin was just FLOWING out of this tiny body!

We did one more enema and that one almost looked green instead of like black tar.

I asked her what oils she wanted to keep, and she chose Rosemary and Endo Flex and Lavender. She rubbed them on the baby all evening and whenever she woke to nurse.

Okay, really long story…but the next morning, Shirley took the baby to the Dr. to check her levels and they were down to 15! He told her that if she stabilized there, that she could go home the next day.

On Tuesday morning, her levels were DOWN again, (to 14) and she got to go home on Tuesday!

Used with permission. Names have been changed. For more information about essential oils, contact me or visit http://www.buyessentialoils.org.

HALTING EARLY LABOR

Used with permission – names have been changed.

Sandy and her husband realized they were coming to a crossroad in life. Although Mark earned a comfortable income, he was rarely home. When Sandy learned she was pregnant with their third child, they realized that they simply didn’t have enough “family time.” They began praying for a home-based business that would take care of them financially and allow them to devote more of themselves to raising heir children.

Seven-and-a-half months into Sandy’s pregnancy, she went into labor after an airplane flight. “Because we had used herbs for several years, they were the first place I turned for help,” says Sandy, “but none of them worked. I called my midwife, and when I described to her what I was going through, she said I needed to get to a hospital right away. My midwife got into her car and started speeding toward my house, but we lived so far from a medical facility that she also wanted to call a helicopter service to come pick me up. I told her to wait for one minute before calling the helicopter. During that minute I prayed, asking the Lord to guide me to something in my home that would be powerful enough to stop my labor. The answer that came to me was ‘essential oil of Lavender,’ so my husband grabbed the YLEO bottle of Lavender and rubbed it all over my stomach, legs, and feet. Sixty seconds later, as my midwife was driving into our driveway, my labor stopped. Completely. My midwife was so shocked her mouth fell open.

“For the next five weeks I stayed in bed with 24-hour care. Every time I got up, my heavy labor started again. We kept using lavender until my baby’s due date. On that day, I put the oil away and delivered a big, beautiful, healthy baby boy after a 30-minute labor.”

At that point, Sandy knew that there had to be some serious science behind the oils. She began researching then and discovered that there is a tremendous difference between most of the oils on the market and the therapeutic-grade oils offered by YLEO. “Typical oils would not have been powerful enough to help me during my pregnancy,” she says.

Sandy started sharing the oils with friends and family members. She says she just could not keep quiet about the “wonderful treasures that had been provided to use for healing.” One day she went to the post office and discovered a “huge check. The was when I realized that if I could become a leader and treat my business as a business, I had a chance to help other mothers like myself who wanted to stay at home with their children but needed extra income.”

*For more information about essential oils, visit http://www.buyessentialoils.org. I am also happy to share my own personal experiences with essential oil use during pregnancy and birthing.