The day my son couldn’t climb into bed
Although I have certainly talked about various pieces of our journey over this last year or so of blogging, I never yet have specifically addressed what brought me to this place. By “this place,” I mean what I will and won’t eat or buy; raising or sourcing pastured meat; and filling my kitchen with raw cheeses, fermented jalapenos, and sourdough bread.
This place: Real Food and Traditional Skills, the place where I connect with so many of YOU.
Have you ever tried to figure out how you got HERE, wherever HERE is for you?
You’d think you could trace a straight line going back to a specific point, but that’s not usually the way it goes. Did it start here? Nope…there was this other thing back there…oh! and remember when that happened…
Well, that’s how life is. We are rarely single-faceted.
So when I think of where my journey started, rather than pointing to ONE major event, I point to several, all merging to bring me to THIS place…the place where my sister looks in my fridge and says,
“Jen! Your fridge! This is THE most non-prepackaged refrigerator I have EVER seen!”
The point where I actually DON’T purchase boxed cereal – EVER – and I wrinkle my nose when I see that my kids or my hubby have brought the contraband Lucky Charms or Velveeta Shells & Cheese into the house.
Still, not a perfectionist here! Ooh, I’ll take that package of Oreos, thank you very much! And my best friend is more than welcome to tuck a sleeve of Toffifay into my birthday gift bag…I’ll enjoy EVERY waxy bite.
So we see that one of my “facets” is a bit of hypocrisy. “Don’t bring that TRASH into my kitchen,” mumbled through a mouthful of Oreos. 😳
Brendan and Nick, my little food-sensitive babies. Of course, I didn’t know it yet…
So…about that day my son couldn’t climb into bed.
All his life, one of my babies had been a screamer. His arm had been broken during birth, and I always felt like that made him hate the world. Until his little arm healed, everyone who touched him hurt him! I hurt him too…but I was mom, so he clung to me.
You know, you just accept that your kids are the way they are. Sure, he screamed more than the others. Sure, he got a little hysterical when he stubbed his toe.
But then there was the night he couldn’t climb into bed. I kid you not. It was late at night, and we had just gotten home. He was probably about 4-5 years old. I got him in his pajamas and told him to climb into bed. He just started screaming, wailing, “I CAHHN’T! I CAHNN’T!”
Well, I knew his tendency toward hysteria, but this threw me for a loop. He wasn’t being a brat, I could tell. Under normal circumstances, although he was a very - shall we say - CHALLENGING child, he wouldn’t have disobeyed a direct order, especially not one like “Climb into bed.” What the heck was THIS?
So the next day I did the only thing I knew to do: I called my calm, practical, give-it-to-you- straight friend Kathleen. (Everybody oughtta have a Kathleen!)
I still remember her words: “Jen, first you have to stop blaming yourself. We moms ALWAYS blame ourselves when things go wrong with our kids.”
“Second, you have to protect him, because no one else will.”
That brought me up short, and I knew she was right. Running my kid all over creation to this, that, and the other event because it’s what’s expected. Letting him eat anything and everything, because I didn’t want to be the Fun Governor.
Yep. It took a while, but this mama finally got it. While the world would have us believe our kids must be constantly entertained and run to this, that, and the other event lest they “miss out,” what our kids REALLY need is consistency, rest, and good nutrition. Before long, he was putting HIMSELF to bed…at 7:30 in the evening, if need be! We might be watching a family movie or playing a game, and he’d say, “I’m going to bed.” To this day, it’s the norm for that boy to bed in bed by 8…and he’s 23 years old!
But equally critical, it turns out, was his food. God was so good to let me have a chance conversation with a friend from Minnesota whose son, it turned out, screamed over every little thing! Now, THAT sure sounded familiar. The more she described HER son, the more she described MINE.
And at the core of the issue? FOOD.
So following her recommendation, we had some detailed blood testing done, and it turns out my little guy was sensitive to probably 30 - 50 foods. Things like venison, mustard, onions, vanilla. Huh? Gluten I could maybe see…but VANILLA? Hmmm.
To make a long story short, within ONE WEEK of eliminating the food he was sensitive to, HE STOPPED SCREAMING.
His eyes cleared, he stopped stumbling, he stopped screaming. And now we’re back to the FIRST thing my friend told me: “Jen, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself.” When I think of how my poor son felt before we figured out what was wrong! Oh, my heart. To this day it hurts to see videos of him as a little boy, because I can see how FOGGY he felt. He “just didn’t get it” back then, and now I know why.
And now of all my kids, he is the one most aware of the effect diet has on him. He’s the one above all who absolutely REFUSES to eat fast food, who has even been known to bring his own REAL food to a pizza party, so he doesn’t have to eat the garbage.
Well, now we come to…
The Day the Sausage Squished.
(That got your attention, didn’t it?😉) THIS is the point at which I stopped buying grocery store brats..and, really, almost any grocery store meat at all. One of our favorite easy meals takes pre-cooked brats -usually Eckrich or Johnsonville- and cooks them up with potatoes and cabbage, drizzling a mustard sauce on top. Yum! Ready in 20 minutes AND delicious, to boot! What’s not to love?
Until the day the sausage squished.
I know I’m not the only one, because you guys say it all the time. “I used to eat grocery store meat, but it doesn’t taste right and the texture got weird.” Yep! I don’t know what happened to the sausage, but now it literally squishes. It is SO gross. 🤮 Could be fillers, but I know from people who raise hogs that if you feed them cheap feed, their meat gets soft and squishy. And if they’re raised in CAFO’s, there’s no exercise to speak of, so it’s a double-whammy.
(And that’s why I’m SO happy to be raising real, pastured poultry. By that I mean poultry that ACTUALLY spends most of its time outside on pasture and eats top-quality locally-raised feed! I always say, “These aren’t couch potato chickens,” and that’s why the texture is so firm. Click here to buy real pastured chicken!)
Then there was seeing what MY dietary choices did to my children.
I’ve got to give credit to my parents. My mom fed us three square meals a day, and there wasn’t a lot of sugar in our home. Problem is, I ate far more sugar than they realized. Our school had a pop machine that kept me well-supplied with Mountain Dew, and Eric’s Party Store around the corner got all my spare cash in exchange for a steady supply of Gobstoppers, Lemon Heads, Jolly Ranchers, and Atomic Fire Balls. It’s a wonder I’m not diabetic!
But IS it any wonder then that our first son struggled with candida from the time he was a tiny baby? Add to that a couple rounds of antibiotics in his first few months, and IS it any wonder he had sugar issues, rashes, and asthma as a child? IS it any wonder our second son was sensitive to all those foods?
Why was I so thoughtless that I failed to realize my unborn children MUST partake, for good or for ill, of my dietary choices?
And that pulls out the next strand in this tangled ball of yarn…our babies. Since being a mom, I’ve realized that what you won’t do for yourself, you’ll do for your kids. Whether that was managing to source good quality meat for our growing family even on a single income, or giving up ALL junk food to support Brendan so he didn’t have to “go it alone” as he struggled to get his gut back into balance, these things shaped my kitchen, pointing me in the direction I’m still going today.
Thankfully, that bit above about “for good or for ill” really does apply. It just so happened that during the time I gave up junk food to support Brendan, our daughter Rebekah was conceived. This was THE healthiest pregnancy I had ever had, and neither Rebekah, Drew, nor Caleb have ever had the gut issues or food sensitivities that our first two kiddoes had. It’s never too late to change and see at least SOME effect!
Jen & Bren - the day we successfully hit our “Six Months With No Junk Food” mark. I don’t remember what we wrote on our hands, but it was some sort of victory something!
NOW. Final result. Our health is perfect and we never eat anything except local, organic, pasture-raised food. HA!🤣
Sorry, Folks! It’s the real world, and this is a real life. I already mentioned my Oreos. I even got sick last week! I might even die one day. Well, shoot. I say that, obviously, very tongue-in-cheek, because it is so easy to get all whooped up and imagine we can “healthy choice” ourselves into perfect health. Not on THIS side of the Second Coming! Good choices go far toward good health, for sure. But please don’t ever think I’m saying if you eat my chicken and make sourdough bread & herb teas like I do it’s any sort of panacea. Real world, folks. Real world.
I hope this ramble resonated with you…if you’ve made it this far! If it did, I’d love you to share why in the comments below! One of my favorite things about getting to know all of YOU is hearing your stories and discovering how we’re really all the same. For some, grocery store meat isn’t an option…you get sick if you eat it. For others, you just can’t stand “the squish of the sausage (or chicken, or pork chops)” anymore. Others want to vote with their dollars and shop local! Whatever your reason and whatever your story, I’M GLAD YOU’RE HERE!