Creating Family Wellness – Our Path to Closer to Fine

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Monday, January 18, 2010

I feel like I’m living some variation of the old “Closer to Fine” Indigo Girls lyrics. I loved this song when I was an undergrad; it was the perfect lyrical representation of my state of mind in college.  Now, twenty years later, I’m living a very different life as a mother of two small children, and oddly enough — I’m still looking for answers.  The questions have just changed a bit as I’ve gotten older. My current quest is getting my family well — especially my youngest daughter who has been mostly unwell since she was born. I feel like we’ve tried everything, and yet I know there’s more to discover on the spiritual realm that could help her.  My current “Closer to Fine” lyrics as they relate to my baby Izaroo:

We went to the naturopath; we got cranio-sacral therapy; we looked to the psychic; we tried aromatherapy. There’s more than one answer to our questions, pointing us in a crooked line.

Honestly, I’ve hit a wall with all that we have tried and I now realize it’s time for me to dig into the energetic, subconscious lack-of-ease within me that may be contributing to my highly sensitive baby’s chronic physical manifestation of dis-ease.

“A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.”  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

For the sake of my health and the health of my family, I’m going to attempt to keep my post short tonight so I can rest. We’ll see how that goes. I say that every night I’ve committed to write and generally stay up way too late out of sheer determination to finish.

Izzy is particularly sensitive and I’ve known this since before she was born. I just didn’t know exactly how it would manifest, and I didn’t predict (who can?) that she would be sick more often than not for the first 15 months of her life. I also didn’t realize until now just how critical my own well-being — which I realize is way beyond the physical — is for hers.

I generally trace the challenges and potential “trauma” of her life that may have contributed to her ongoing physical challenges to my pregnancy. While pregnant with her I experienced some intense grief with two deaths. The first was a child of someone I grew up with who died in an accident and the second was my dog Hazel, who was a sweet companion to me for many years prior to meeting my husband.  Also, when I was seven months pregnant, I fell down our stairs while carrying our then 2 year-old and was pretty freaked out by the whole experience.

Then, came her intense entry into the world. A home VBAC where she went into distress after transition and my midwives calmly told me I had to get my baby out within the next 5 minutes or we would have to transport to the hospital immediately. Her entry into the world:  me screaming through the final pushes and an episiotomy;   immediate skin-to-skin time together and nursing (thank God for that sweetness) and then the midwives determining she needed a tube down her throat to clear the passage and help her breathe.

She had difficulty breathing most of her first few months which led me to sleep holding her to my chest while sitting in a chair so that she could be upright.  She also had basic reflux symptoms though I never wanted to call it that at the time.  I took her to a naturopath to get tested for food sensitivities and completely altered my diet for 3 months to try and help her. No dairy, no nuts, no eggs, no soy, no wheat, no citris……but I held onto a few simple pleasures and wish that I hadn’t as it might have helped her more:  the occasional glass of wine and chocolate. I knew better.

Two cranio-sacral therapy sessions altered her life and she experienced her healthiest little chapter from about 3 or 4 months to 8 months, though she still didn’t sleep worth a damn.  buy cialis doctor online garde,century gothic,comic sans ms,times,times new roman,serif;”>The chronic colds began after that. She had a month reprieve after some intense aromatherapy sessions, but ultimately she’s been sick more often than not since then and she’s almost 16 months now.

I think her nose has been congested or runny most days since Thanksgiving.  I’m not kidding. The past week or so, her nose hasn’t stopped running; she’s had difficulty breathing at night; she’s coughing quite a bit and is ultimately pretty miserable.  We’re currently embarking on a 2 fold wellness plan.  One, dosing her up with homeopathic remedies as prescribed by our Naturopath and staying clear of Baby Tylenol which we learned was suppressing her immune system; and Two, me taking responsibility for her health by digging into my state of wellness beyond the obvious.

The obvious:  get more sleep, exercise more consistently.

The not so obvious:  to be discovered after I finish reading “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitali.

Posted in AP & Self Care | 4 Comments

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