Three years ago tomorrow, my first son was born. He has changed my life enormously, but not entirely how you’d expect. Yes of course now I don’t ever sleep in and I do a lot more laundry, but from a health perspective, my life has changed a lot too–for the better! Let me count the ways our family is now healthier thanks to the desire to make my child’s life the best it could be.
- We used to only buy organic dairy and poultry. Now almost all the produce we buy is organic. I estimate that about 80% of the food in our home is organic. I love doing this for our family, and for our farmers and earth, even if the grocery bills are higher.
- We started a garden. And a huge compost bin.
- Almost every night, we eat a home-cooked meal in our dining room. This is a far cry from the days when our dining room housed our turn tables and we ate every meal (often a frozen one from Amy’s) in front of the TV.
- We don’t use plastic Tupperware in our home–well, I take that back. I now use it to store my son’s toys.
- Bleach and ammonia have been replaced with baking soda and vinegar.
- We buy all natural cleaners exclusively–from laundry detergent, to bathroom cleaner, to shampoo. I’m almost certain that there are no toxic cleaners in our house any more!
- We think less is more when it comes to bathing. This is a huge change for me. My first son initially got a bath nightly with shampoo and lotion and all the works. Now both my kids get bathed when needed, and that doesn’t always involve shampoo and multiple products. I’m actually starting to believe that less is more!
- I’m not looking for quick fixes as much anymore. For example, instead of applying diaper rash cream when rashes appear, I lay my 4 month old in the sun with a diaper off for 5 min after each diaper change. Any rash (which I must say is minimal thanks to cloth diapers) never lasts longer than a day with this treatment.
- I read more. I haven’t read this much since graduate school. Granted, most of it is about parenting and children and their health, but at least I’m reading full books!
Now there are a few ways in which my life is less healthy since having children (I get much less sleep and that which I get is fragmented and less restorative, and I work out much less than I did before kids), but overall our family is so much healthier since we had children. Thank you to both our wonderful boys!!!
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