This week, I am promoting the Natural Fertility bundle sale. The books in this sale are not just for couples struggling with infertility, although I do believe couples who find themselves in that situation would greatly benefit from these resources. Any couple looking to grow their family, naturally or through artificial means, will find a wealth of resources for preparing the body to be a welcoming host for a pregnancy within the pages of these books. It is so important to be feeding and caring for your body the right way when you are planning a pregnancy.
I already shared one couple’s story earlier this week. Today I am sharing another couple’s beautiful story. Thanks, Justyn, for being willing to share about your journey with our readers!
Justyn’s Story
Like most women, I assumed that I would use birth control pills until we were “ready” to have kids, then immediately become pregnant when I went off the pill. Like many women, I discovered it is seldom that easy.
Knowing what I know now, I will never take the birth control pill, again. Not only does it have the potential of preventing a fertilized egg from implanting (killing a newly formed life, which is not acceptable to us), but it also wreaks havoc on the body. I can’t say how much of my struggles with infertility stemmed from using the birth control pills, but I’m sure they played some part.
When I went off the pill, we “tried” to get pregnant for months. Months turned into one year… then two years. At that time, we had no health insurance, so I couldn’t see a doctor. I was in my mid-twenties, generally healthy and I thought I ate well. According to the food pyramid of the time, my diet was ideal. Lots of grains, some fruits and veggies, some low-fat dairy, lean meat and “healthy” fats (canola oil, vegetable oils, etc.) and not many sweets.
We had made the mistake of telling several friends at church about our plans to have a baby, so every week for over a year (until we moved to a new state), we were met with, “Any news, yet??” We were discouraged and confused. We thought that it would be so easy to get pregnant. After two years, we began to seriously consider adoption.
Shortly after the two-year mark, we decided to do a detox diet. It had nothing to do with getting pregnant, we just thought it might be a healthy thing to try. I can’t remember the name of the little book we followed, but it started by cutting out everything except fruits and veggies for a few days. Then, it added in goat’s milk yogurt. After over a week on that, we were able to add in unprocessed seafood (not fish sticks, but real fish fillets and shellfish). By the third week we added some meats (again, not processed ones like chicken nuggets, but real cuts of meat) and I believe some goat cheese. After that, we added a few gluten-free grains and then were back to our normal diet… but we were pregnant!
It never occurred to us that our detox diet had anything to do with getting pregnant after such a long time of trying. We were thrilled, but we hadn’t really learned anything. After many miserable months of morning sickness, we were right back to eating our normal diet. In spite of that, we had a healthy baby girl born in a natural birth center.
Just before our baby turned one, we started “trying” again. We were back on our “healthy” diet, according to the food pyramid. Again, we had no success for two years. That’s when I learned about Weston A. Price and “real” food. Understanding that nearly everything we ate was highly processed was a shock. Store-bought bread, crackers, canned foods, breakfast cereal… pretty much everything in the aisles of the stores had it’s nutrition stripped and was then “fortified” with synthetic vitamins.
I immediately got rid of all our processed food, which left us with nearly nothing. I began to buy organic fresh fruits and veggies, free-range/grass-fed meat and eggs, full-fat dairy from grass-fed cows, coconut oil and butter to replace all the rancid canola and vegetable oils, whole wheat berries to grind and make fresh bread from, I began making homemade stock for cooking with, rather than store-bought… six weeks later, we were pregnant! Our second healthy little girl was born at home and I believe that the easy and quick birth had a lot to do with our unprocessed diet and some nutritional herbs I drank as a pregnancy tea.
That’s when it finally clicked. It was our diet that was causing the unexplained infertility. We were eating what most Americans consider to be very healthy, but our bodies were so starved for nutrition that we couldn’t get pregnant. In both cases, once we completely cut out all processed foods and only ate foods that were full of their original nutrition, we were able to easily conceive.
Although switching to real foods may not be the answer for all cases of infertility, it is certainly the best place to start. Ditching the processed food and truly nourishing our bodies with nutrient-dense real food helps to create the perfect environment to conceive and grow a new life. After over two years of eating real food (we eat about 90% unprocessed and allow for about 10% processed), we would never go back. We are healthier and we absolutely love how we feel and how our food tastes.
Justyn has been married 11 years and has a five-year-old and a toddler. She began blogging to share what she’s learning about her passions, which include “real” foods, herbs, natural living, gardening, crafts, homeschooling, homebirth and anything else that grabs her interest. Recently, she began an online store of natural products. She sees all of these things as ways God gave us to live creatively and would enjoy sharing her journey with you. Come on over for a visit at Creative Christian Mama or on Facebook.
To find out all the details about the sale, read this post or simply click on the banner below to purchase the bundle!
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