Well, I went and had a baby!  He came a few weeks ahead of schedule so it was a major surprise but we are both doing great.  I had another fast labor with no medications and a few friends have asked for advice on how to do the same so I thought I would share a some ideas that may be useful to other expecting moms out there.  Even if you plan to use medication during birth, hopefully these tips can help you get through the beginning part of labor with the best possible outcome!

1. Have a small baby.  This is the part where I disclose the fact that both of my kids were under 6 pounds and both were born prior to their due dates.  I share this because I want you to know up front that I am not a rock star mom with a high pain tolerance – I think if I were one of these women on the news having 14 pound babies the title of this blog would probably be “How to Schedule a C-Section”.  However, if you do all that you can during your pregnancy to  make sure that your baby is a size that is appropriate for you it can make labor easier.  The most important key here is to keep your blood sugar under control so that your baby doesn’t get bigger than they should be.  You can do this by avoiding sugar; eating a nourishing, traditional diet that is rich in healthy fat, protein, and vegetables; getting regular exercise; and keeping stress levels under control as much as possible.

2. Immerse yourself in positive birth stories.  Part of this is also to not let yourself watch reality tv shows about birth that just show women stuck in hospital beds, unable to move freely, experiencing difficult births that end up with all kinds of interventions!  I highly suggest reading Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, the first half of which is all positive birth stories (the second half is full of really helpful medical info).  Or if you have friends or relatives that had a positive birth, ask them to tell you about it in detail.  That way when you are in the throes of labor you can have in your mind positive and reinforcing images rather than the fearful and dramatic images that are projected on television.

3. Put the pain in familiar context.  This may not work for everyone but it really works for me.  I think part of what makes labor so scary is that women are inundated with statements like “it’s the worst pain you’ll ever feel.”  For me, prior to birth, the worst pain I thought I ever felt was my first bikini wax!  But to most women a bikini wax isn’t bad at all, so it’s really all relative.  Open ended statements like “the worst pain you’ll ever feel” leave a lot up to the imagination when you’re going through a new experience.  What worked better for me, rather than imagining that the pain was going to just get worse and unimaginably bad, was to take each contraction and realize that it really just felt like a bad stomach flu or really intense gas.  So the pain wasn’t a huge mystery to me, it was something I had felt before in the form of stomach pain and it was something I had already survived in my life.  Other women describe labor as feeling like bad menstrual cramps, while others say it feels like intense lower back pain.  And, not to be crude, but to me the pushing phase feels like you’re pooping a tiny bowling ball with a small wooden log attached…maybe not a familiar feeling but at least something you can imagine!

4. Make water your friend.  Hang out in the shower or bathtub (whatever is comfortable for you) and if you are not feeling nauseous, be sure to drink plenty of water between contractions.  Hydrated muscle is able to operate much more efficiently to get that baby out.  For my first child I spent about 4 hours in the shower at home (thank the good Lord for a large hot water tank!) letting the warm water run over my stomach and back which greatly eased the pain of contractions.  For my second baby labor happened very quickly and we had just enough time for me to get into the whirlpool tub at the hospital for a short time before I got to the pushing phase.  When we arrived at the hospital I was already 6 cm dilated and having very intense contractions every 2-3 minutes.  As soon as I immersed my belly in the warm water, it took all the pressure off and I actually had to send my husband into the other room to check the monitor (they put one of those waterproof mobile monitors on me) to see if I was still having contractions because being in the water took all the pain away!  Sure enough I was having regular contractions of the same intensity as before even though I could hardly feel them and within about 15 minutes I was ready to push.

5. Keep moving.  As mentioned above, the way birth is pictured on television is that a woman just lays there, yells a lot, and a baby is born.  Having been through two unmedicated births in 3 years (yes as I was pushing out the most recent baby I vividly recall thinking “how am I already back at this place in such a short time???) I can think of nothing more ridiculous or more painful than the thought that we are supposed to just lay there and magically push another human out of our bodies.  If I had been prepared, I would have had someone video me during labor so that every time The Learning Channel puts on another birth special showing a woman lying in a hospital bed I could hack into it and instead broadcast myself in labor with my first son pushing against the wall as a contraction started coming and then when the contraction was in full force running naked through our tiny studio apartment yelling “It hurts it hurts it hurts!” at 4 in the morning while my husband sits on the bed timing contractions and staring at me with wide eyes.  Somehow running and yelling helped to discharge the pain and let it move through me.  With this most recent labor, what felt right during intense contractions was to grip the bathroom countertop with my hands, stand up on my tip-toes, and quickly sway my hips back and forth like an overcaffeinated hula dancer.  I do think that this movement helped the baby get into position faster and was part of what cut my labor from 8 hours with my first boy to 3 1/2 hours with the second.  I think that this point is one of the most important even if you plan on eventually having an epidural because if you can stay in tune with your body and what feels right as far as movement you will help your baby get into the best position before the medication is administered.  As a side note, when you are driving to the hospital or birth center and obviously can’t move around then singing can be really helpful.  Keeping your neck and mouth muscles relaxed with singing or humming or deep breathing actually helps to keep your pelvic muscles relaxed and open.

6. Choose your own position.  Birth is an adventure and you should be allowed to choose what feels right to you.  Be sure to discuss this in detail with your healthcare provider so that you know that when you give birth you will be allowed to do what feels right to you.  The midwife I have been visiting with was very lenient and would basically let you give birth while swinging from the chandelier as long as it posed no harm to you or the baby.  However, when I actually went in to the hospital the doctor that was on call was one who preferred to assist birth with the woman on her back.  For my first son I gave birth in this standard position (slightly sitting up, leaning back, both legs pushed back) and I recall feeling like I needed to be on all fours but I just didn’t feel free to move because everything was happening so fast (he was almost born in the car because his stubborn mother waited until contractions were less than 2 minutes apart to go to the hospital) and I was overwhelmed.  It took me half an hour to push him out in this position (I’m not complaining!), I ended up with a second degree tear, and something was not right in the way I was pushing so I went through 6 months of pain that only resolved with pelvic physical therapy.  Yes, such a thing as pelvic physical therapy exists – it’s like a tiny gym for your nether-regions – and I highly recommend it for any woman who has lasting pain after childbirth.  With my most recent birth, after I got out of the tub I was brought to the hospital bed (no water births allowed in hospitals here in Hawaii yet) and I told the nurse I wanted to be on all fours with one leg on the ground to push into the ground.  She said I had to be completely on the bed and that I could be on all fours but when the doctor came in I would have to turn over.  Of course in my head I was thinking that if the doctor also had a bowling ball with a log attached coming out of her body then she could decide how I would be but since she did not then she would have to figure out how to physically make me turn over.  Plus a few swear words.  So, I hunkered down on all fours, face in the pillow, bare butt still swaying quickly in the air and just kept thinking over and over “animals do this every day without dying and without pain medication”.  I vividly remember one push…two pushes…the nurse next to me telling me to breathe and try not to push because the doctor was not at the hospital yet…three pushes…another nurse saying “she’s not going to wait, get the ER doctor”…four pushes…and then I looked down at the bed and there below me was this perfect little boy and the nurse was saying “turn over Jessica and hold your baby!”.  I was completely in shock that he came out so fast!  I know your second one is supposed to come faster but I honestly think that the position I was in was right for my body and how he was positioned in me and that is why he was so incredibly fast and easy to deliver and why I felt completely fine and had no pain after the birth (though this was partly due to the endorphin rush that goes along with childbirth) to the point that I didn’t even need Motrin.  Some women find that standing, kneeling, squatting, laying on their side, or another position is best for them to help their baby make his or her entrance into the world.

7. Stay flexible.  And I don’t mean physically, though that is important for helping with all the movement and positioning items mentioned above!  I mean stay flexible mentally and spiritually in your expectations – there is no other time that is such a life and death moment as the process of giving birth.  While I generally tend to be anti-medicine simply because I respect the intelligence of the body more than the intelligence of the medical realm, there is a time and a place for modern medicine.  If you went into birth hoping for a natural birth and ended up with every intervention known to man but at the end of it all you took home a baby then in my opinion it was successful and you should be proud of yourself!  Childbirth can be both exhilarating and traumatic and then add to that the huge hormone fluctuations and the lack of sleep associated with having a newborn and all I can say is…wow.  If your birth didn’t go exactly as you planned, talk about it with someone who loves you, cry about it, let all of the emotion out and let yourself move on.  And if your birth did go exactly as you planned, please do talk about it and help those around you reprogram their thoughts and expectations about childbirth!

If you have labor tips of your own please share them in the comments section – I would love to learn what helped you!

Lately, I have been receiving an unusual number of inquiries regarding sperm health through my Ask Jessica Q&A service.  I’m not sure what it is about the new year that makes men so urgently concerned about sperm health, but I’m happy to help answer their questions!  I have received so many questions that I thought I should start a series of blogs about sperm health to help those of you out there with the same questions who might be too shy to ask.

One of the most alarming things I have been finding in my sperm research (I’ve been up to my elbows in sperm research lately, thanks to you readers) is the way that sperm interacts with soy.  It keeps on coming up so I thought I would focus on soy for the first installment of this blog series.  Here are a few facts, supported by research, that will have you hiding from the scary soy monster!

• Soy exposure beginning in infancy and continuing through adolescence causes males to have “significantly higher” levels of estrogen and “significantly lower” levels of testicular testosterone than in control groups.  While the study supporting this was done on rats to determine whether soy exposure changed the physical makeup of their reproductive systems (it didn’t), it is still alarming to me to think of how many little boys start out on soy infant formula, then transition to soy as filler in their school lunch meat – all in the name of good health.
• Foods that help to improve sperm health include egg yolks and raw (or at least non-homogenized) milk, while soy was found to induce “sublethal” damage to sperm, meaning it doesn’t directly kill sperm, but it gets pretty darn close!  An interesting study was done on ram sperm (really, what could be more manly than sperm from a ram?) which found that freezing sperm with egg yolk or milk protein made it more functional when thawed, while freezing it with soy lecithin created “sublethal damages that seriously affect sperm functionality”.  One more reason to choose creme brulee over soy ice cream for a romantic baby making dessert!  As if you needed a reason…
• Just a few months ago, a study was done in Japan which found that increased intake of soy and coffee (oh no!) was a “significant contributor to poorer semen quality”.  Other non-dietary factors identified as sperm killers (kind of like Ghostface Killah but different) in the study included exposure to plastics, ingestion of pesticides, and increased levels of cadmium from cigarette smoke.

It’s important to keep in mind the fact that the body can usually deal with soy if it is only eaten occasionally and in small amounts.  The effects of soy are not the same in everyone – some men suffer extreme hormonal changes when eating even small amounts of soy, while some vegan men who use soy as their primary source of protein have no problems with fertility and have several healthy children to prove it.  If you do decide to eat soy, please be sure it is not genetically modified (label would say something like “GMO-free”) and try to stick to fermented forms of soy such as tempeh, miso, or natto over highly processed forms such as tofu.

As the new year approaches, many people start focusing on what is to come and putting together their lists of resolutions and other things they want to do differently in the coming year.  I personally like to take a moment at the end of the year and make a list of things that made me feel thankful over the past year.  I find it to be a calming and encouraging ritual during the craziness of the end-of-year holiday season.  While there are many things I’m thankful for personally, this is not my personal musing blog – it’s my nutrition blog!  So I thought I’d make a list of a few things in the world of health and nutrition that made me feel thankful this year.  Hopefully they make you feel the same!

I am thankful:

• That the human body is much smarter than we realize and it is always looking out for our best interest.  One example of this over the past year was learning that candida (the type of yeast that grows in the body) eats heavy metals.  So, for people who have stubborn candida problems that won’t respond to anything else, sometimes the body is allowing the candida to grow in excess because that is helping to relieve their body’s burden of heavy metals such as mercury (and in some cases, copper).  People in this situation may benefit from having a mineral profile test done by their doctor to see if they have an excess of toxic metals and/or a deficiency of healthy minerals and how to deal with it.  This knowledge helped me give hope to a few clients who were struggling with candida and angry at their bodies for letting it overgrow!
• That a fetus feeds off of the yolk sac for the first few weeks of life, which means it gets the nutrition it needs (as long as mom was building up her own nutrition prior to pregnancy) and is not as directly affected by what its mother eats the way it is later in pregnancy.  This is such an amazing adaptation that I am so very thankful for because in those first few weeks of life a woman may not know she is pregnant and may decide to go on an exciting party date with her husband while on vacation in California because their toddler is with grandma for the evening, and maybe the restaurant they ate at had a $5 martini special and maybe she had too many lemon drop martinis and then found out a few weeks later that she was not alone in her body!  Not that this ever happened to me personally in the last 6 months…
• That plastics are being recognized as a significant source of health problems for men, women, and children – especially those containing Bis-phenol A and phthalates.  Maybe this seems like something to be sad about, but I am actually thankful that the knowledge is getting out there and more and more people are making changes to avoid plastic exposure.
• That the FDA recently conceded that raw milk can be transported across state lines for personal consumption.  This doesn’t mean raw milk is becoming legal for sale, but it is quite encouraging to finally have the FDA not persecuting people for ridiculous things such as drinking milk from their own healthy cow.  Yes, there are many other things I am not happy with the FDA for approving (Splenda, aspartame, pesticides, the list goes on) but this is one small victory.
• That the CDC is working with hospitals and taking steps to encourage women to breastfeed their babies at least through the first 6 months of life.  This is still much less than the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 2  years or more, but it’s an encouraging step!

There are many other things I could list, but these are the first that come to mind.  When you have a minute, I encourage you to make your own list of things over the past year that you are thankful for and tuck it away somewhere – it’s always fun to come across lists like that later on and read them again.  It’s also a great exercise that acts kind of like a mental “feng shui” treatment – clearing out the clutter of stress and worry and helping your mind focus on the things that make you happy.  I have found that being thankful for what I have helps to bring more things into my life to be thankful for.  Happy new year!

For those of you who have last-minute holiday gifts to take care of, here are a few of my favorites.  They can all be purchased online so you don’t have to fight the crowds.  And if you happen to live on an island in the middle of the Pacific or some other remote place that won’t receive your shipped items before the desired date, you can always cut out a photo of the item and tape it into a card with a note saying it will arrive soon.  Happy holidays!

Nothing says “Happy holidays, I’m sorry for being a headache” like the gift of sinus cleansing with a nifty green or blue neti pot.

For the creative, health-conscious chef in your life, a copy of Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. This is my favorite cookbook and even when I’m not cooking I like to read through the informational tidbits in the sidebars of the book.

College students, bachelors, and busy people who tend to eat on the go can all benefit from a basic set of glass storage containers like the ones pictured above by Pyrex.  What seems like a boring gift can be spiced up with the knowledge that you are saving the recipient from countless amounts of exposure to hormone-altering plastic compounds found in most other food storage containers.  So it’s actually an exciting and scandalous gift for their reproductive health – a must-have for every bachelorette party registry!

A very creative and healthy gift idea is to buy someone a membership into a CSA (community supported agriculture) program in their area.  Just visit the Local Harvest CSA page and type in the desired zip code to find a nearby CSA.  Most CSA programs function on a weekly or monthly basis and make boxes containing a variety of seasonal produce available to their members.  Depending on the CSA programs available in your area, you can buy a one-week trial membership for $15-20 or a longer membership if desired.  This type of gift is better for someone with some kitchen experience (especially with obscure vegetables).  Weekly boxes of leafy greens, kohlrabi, radishes, and spaghetti squash might be a little overwhelming for the novice cook!

For the sparkling water lover in your life, try this soda maker with glass carafe.  It’s a little pricey up front, but in the long run it will save money and space in your recycling bin (I suggest buying this for someone in your house so you can reap the benefits also!).  If you need more reasons to make your own sparkling water at home rather than buying it from a company, just watch the documentary Flow and see the impact bottled water has on the environment, indigenous cultures, and our health.  After I watched that movie I had no choice but to give up my beloved boxes of San Pellegrino water from Costco!

As a person who can never turn down free kitchen gadgets from friends who are moving or trying to get rid of clutter, I have assembled a collection of those 16 ounce “Little Dipper” crockpots for ants that come free with the normal size crockpots.  Each time I accept another free tiny crockpot, it is wrapped in the original packaging, which means that my friend never used it in all the years they had it in their possession.  Despite this, I get visions in my head of an amazing Mexican-themed dinner party with several flavors of homemade cheese dip being kept warm in the little baby crockpots, all snuggled in a row.  Well, after 2 years of storing a family of tiny crockpots still in their original packaging in my cabinet, I have finally come up with a daily use for them – making oatmeal!

My husband leaves for work pretty early and I always want to send him off with a warm breakfast (especially during the winter when it gets down below 70 degrees here in Honolulu at night – freezing!) but there’s no way that this pregnant lady with a toddler is going to get up early enough to make something fresh for my hard working honey.  He really loves oatmeal and it’s actually quite a healthy and filling breakfast if it’s prepared properly by soaking before cooking to reduce levels of phytic acid (a nutrient blocker that makes grain difficult to digest).  Here’s what I do:

• Place 1/4 to 1/2 cup of oats in the crockpot and add twice as much water.  I like to use steel cut Irish oatmeal but just get whatever you can find at the store that seems the least processed.  If you are a gluten-free person make sure the oats are labeled as “gluten free” because many times, oats and gluten-containing grains are processed on the same equipment so there is cross-contamination.    Gauge how much you soak based on how much cooked oatmeal you want – using 1/4 cup of oats will expand to about a cup cooked, and 1/2 cup will expand to about 2 cups.  If you have time, let this soak for a few hours.  I like to put this on before I make dinner since I’m in the kitchen anyway.  Once in a while I don’t have time for this step so I skip right to the next one and my husband seems to survive okay!
• After the initial soak, dump out this water and then add about 3 parts of water to 1 part of soaked oats.  You can also add a dash of buttermilk or whey if you have it to help make the oats even more digestible.  I add a pinch of Celtic salt at this stage to increase the mineral content, and a dash of cinnamon so the kitchen smells warm and comforting when my husband wakes up to eat.
• Plug in your tiny crockpot and let cook overnight!
• In the morning, mix with any toppings that make you happy to be awake: butter from grassfed cows, coconut milk, minimally processed cow’s milk or cream, chopped raw nuts, raisins, dried cranberries, raw honey, shredded unsweetened coconut, chopped dates, apple sauce, protein powder – whatever your heart desires.  If you’re more of a savory person, you can also mix an egg and some bacon or sausage in for a salty pudding reminiscent of a big hairy Irish man.
• Fill crockpot with water to soak so it’s easy to clean up and use for the next day, unless you’re like me and have several tiny crockpots that can be switched out so there’s no hurry to clean up the used one and it can just sit on the counter taking up space and waiting to be washed.  Not that I ever do that.

If any of you readers out there have uses for tiny crockpots (other than cheese dip, I figured that one out already) please share them in the comments section!  I love finding new and exciting uses for all my kitchen gadgets.

Nothing says “I’m better than you” like cooking with capers.  Most people either love or hate the flavor of those salty little green pellets, but no matter what, if you serve them at a dinner party and someone complains about it you can very aristocratically say “That’s okay, not everyone has refined enough tastes to enjoy the delicate nuances of capers” while gracefully adjusting your tiara.  This is especially helpful when the dinner party consists only of you, your  husband (who does not appreciate capers, by the way), and your toddler.  Here are just a few of the health benefits to justify cooking like a princess:

• Stachydrine, a phytochemical found in capers, has been found to be a “potent anti-metastatic agent” in regards to prostate cancer and seems to work at the genetic level to keep prostate cancer cells from reproducing.  So you are actually cooking with capers to keep all the prostates at the dinner table healthy!
• Bioflavonoids from capers have been found to inhibit NF-kappa B activation.  Who cares?  Even if you don’t, the drug companies do.  NF-kappa B is a major target for drug research because this factor has been found to be chronically activated in disease states such as cancer, arthritis, asthma, atherosclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, and even acne.
• Extracts from caper plants have been found to lower blood pressure by relaxing blood vessels.  Of course, if your hypertension is due to salt sensitivity then eating salty capers by the bucketful is probably not the best option.
• The anti-arthritic components in capers seem to be most concentrated when extracted into alcohol.  This justifies cooking any sort of protein (fish, chicken, lobster) in a white wine, butter, and caper sauce!
• Capers are a rich source of rutin, a bioflavonoid that is sometimes taken in supplement form to prevent and treat varicose veins.
• Capers have been found to have “important antimicrobial, anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and antiviral properties“.  This study firmly proves that if I left anything out in my list above, you can use the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game (health version of course) to relate whatever ailment your dinner guest may have to something that capers can help with.