Branded at Birth

February 15, 2013By Katie GuyFamily No Comments

I have to say I was quite shocked to have a package of my Seventh Generation diapersopened up and one handed to me the day my son was born. Here I was ready to put clothes on this new blessing, this brand new baby that had never had clothes on before and the first thing I have to put on him has advertising on it!!! COME ON!!!

Talk about ruining a moment. My new little darling is a billboard! Seriously? It was quite shocked. Seeing as I have not opened a package of diapers in probably 4 years this was not something I had seen before. Maybe it’s been going on for a few years. Who knows? I instantly voiced my shock over this and one of my midwives put it like this…

Yeah, I know! I love how you pay for their product and then you advertise for them.

Actually, it’s not even for them it’s for their third party company that has paid to be on the diapers.

Years ago I read about where cities were allowing advertising to be sold on their school busses. I thought this was bad. Now they are branding our babies!!! I love good design, but there has to be a limit. I remember the days when you could goto the store and the generic store brand was always a white box with black writing on it. I bet it was even in Helvetica.

Well, this was the only picture I could find and it doesn’t look like helvetica, but, oh well, you get the point. Simple, clean design. Less is more. Our lives are so over inundated with visual stimulation. It would be a breath of fresh air to see a company go this route. Hey, they could even name their company “Generic”. OK so if you see this product pop up I thought of it first!

Don’t get me wrong, I thought the Lorax was a cute movie and I get that they are saying Seventh Generation diapers are Lorax approved/green/good for the earth and baby, but couldn’t they just put it on the package and not every single diaper. By the way it was not even on the package ANYWHERE, only the diapers. We got rid of television mainly because of commercials, we don’t buy the paper or magazines, but they’ve found a way to advertise to us haven’t they. Good thing we EC (if you don’t know what this is I’ll be writing about this coming up soon), so diapers won’t be around our house very long!!! Also, it is kind of funny if you think about what my child is doing right on their advertisement every day!!

What’s next ads on our toilet paper??

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My First VBA2C Home Birth Story, 13 Years Later…

June 29, 2012By Katie GuyFamily No Comments

Wow, I can not believe it has been 13 years. I actually thought I lost my birth story. I have had about 5 computers since I wrote it and could not locate it. I decided to give it one more in-depth look a few months ago and I found it!!! I will leave it in it’s original form below for your reading pleasure. There are many things, mainly style, that I would change with it, but decided it was best to leave it as I wrote it 13 years ago. I did add some thing in italics for clarification.

At the time, I had joined an email group called International Cesearean Awareness Network around 35 weeks pregnant. They helped me with so much information. I credit ICAN and all of the wonderful ladies on it with helping me to pursue my first home birth VBAC , switching from a hospital birth midwife to a home birth midwife at 37 weeks pregnant!

Oh, and for those that don’t now “VBA2C” means, vaginal birth after two c-sections.

“Birth Story June 28, 1999”

On Monday June 28th, 1999 I was woken up with contractions at about 4:30 am. I got up and took a bath. It was a pretty strong one so I was pretty sure this was it since I was already 7 days late. This contraction was wierd I felt alot of pressure on my cervix like it was being pushed open really fast and hard by the baby’s head. Well the bath helped. At this point the contractions were about thirty minutes apart. I went back to bed, had a few more contractions and woke my husband up at about 6:30 am. I told him to call my mom to come over to watch our 2 and 4 year olds who were both born c/s for CPD (cephalopelvic disproportion, i.e. the baby is too big to fit through your pelvis) and FTP (failure to progress). Their weights were 8 lbs 5oz and 9lbs. Mom came over, contractions were about 10 minutes apart. We decided to call the midwife, who I just switched to at 37 wks four weeks ago. (Up until then I was going to deliver in the hospital without the full support of my doctor and hospital midwife.) She asked how I was doing and how far apart were the contractions. She said to call her back in 20 min or so. I called her back they were getting closer about 5-7 min apart at 7:30am. She told me to have my doula come over and she was going to go home to shower because she had been up all night at a birth and with another lady who was in, what turned out to be, a stalled labor. My husband called the doula to come over and she got there about 30 min later and I was in the tub for the third time. I knew I needed to slow things down. My last labor went really fast so I knew this one would be short also. When I got in the tub my contractions were about 3 min apart. I really wanted to wait for the midwife to arrive before getting out of the tub or at least get close. Well, she called from her car so I knew she wouldn’t be long. I got out of the tub and went to my bedroom. Got on the bed in the knee chest position to encourage the baby to be in a good position (whatever that may be for my body!!!!!). The contractions were getting intense and very strong and very close together. About 10 minutes after getting out of the tub wanted to push but the doula instructed me to breath through the urge. This was extremely difficult!!!!! Finally the midwife called when she was close and told the doula to go ahead and let me push.

By this time I was squatting on the floor with my chest on the bed. This position was very comfortable. When I finally got to push with the contractions it was such a relief it felt so good to not have to hold it in. The midwife arrived and I was already pushing I probably started to push at 10:30am, only 6 hours after my first contraction. Well she obviously did not need to check dialation, she could already feel the baby’s head coming down. I pushed in that position for awhile. Then she had me change. She sat on the bed and I backed up against her with her arms under my arms and squatted. Up until now I had done all of these steps with the other two births, labored, dialated and pushed for up to 5 hours. Now though the pushing changed it was different than I had felt before. There was way more pressure and it didn’t feel as good to push anymore . It took alot more effort to do it and alot more energy. This was the sensation of the baby actually moving down to a plus station.

I still, at this point, did not know if it was really going to happen. I just wasn’t sure. My thoughts weren’t negative, but they weren’t 100% positive either, I think that I just wasn’t thinking about it. Then I finally asked what stage the baby was at and she said a plus 1 or 2. Then I knew it was going to come out and I started to get impatient. It hurt so bad all of the pressure was so extreme. I was also exhausted in between contractions I practically fell asleep and did not want to wake up to push, but I did it. The midwife had us change positions again. We moved over to a bare wall where she got her back to the wall, standing, had me back against her with her arms under my arms and my husband and doula got my feet and brought them up to me where I grabbed under my knees and pushed with her holding me off the ground and me holding my legs up, resting in between contractions. We did this for a few contractions and then I guess the head was starting to show. So she got out the birth chair and my husband sat behind me on it so the midwife could get below to catch the baby.

At this point it got even more painful, the head was at a partial crow and crowning for what seemed like days, but I think it was like 15 minutes. I did not have one tear!!!!! When it finally got past that crown it felt so much better, but then there was a complication. There was blood, alot of blood. I had to deliver the shoulders and body pretty quickly which was painful again. She had to cut the cord and give him to us to tend to the bleeding. I then was told to push the placenta out which had decided to detach itself early, hence all of the blood. That was also very hard and painful. Then the midwife had to do bi-manual compression (sticking her hand/arm inside of me under my uterus and the other hand on top of my stomach and pressing down extremely hard) to get my uterus to clamp down right then. This was excruciating. The situation was obviously serious. I was scared, because I could tell something was wrong. I couldn’t focus on the baby right then. They decided to call 911 and I had to lay on the floor and gave the baby to my mother-in-law, who watched the whole birth and has had 4 home births of her own. But thanks to God the bleeding stopped before the peramedics got there.

I thought they were going to whisk in, push my midwife out of the way put me on a gurnie and rush me to the hospital. They didn’t, they walked in, asked my status and stepped back to let my midwife finish her job. Then they left the decision to transport up to her. We did not transport!!!!! They got me in bed and by this time I had been given 2 shots of pitocin in my thigh and one IV so my uterus was clamping down very painfully. Not to mention it had to be massaged what seemed like every 5 minutes but I think it was only like 3 times. I was a little light headed and could not sit up . I was doing extremely well considering I had just lost 10 cups of blood. The largest amount my midwife has seen in the hundreds of births she has done.

By now it was clean up time I asked to watch her analyze the placenta which up until this point was sitting in one of the bowls that caught my blood. It was enormous, the size of a large dinner plate complete circle and at least 1 1/2 inches thich.

The cord was also about 18-24 inches long. She said this was also the largest pacenta she had ever seen. This expains why it hurt when I had to push it out. Well, we then weighed the baby who had already pooped so I made her add on 2 oz. He was 10lbs 2 oz. 22in long, head 14 3/4in. Well they gave me 2 IV’s of fluids I got up to take a bath at about 4:00pm the baby came with me. Then we got in bed to rest. I can’t believe I did it with a baby sooo huge. He actually fit through my pelvis. Which I had been told with my other two was just too small to let the baby through and if I ever wanted a vbac I would have to grow a much smaller baby. Well I showed them!!!!!! I still speak to my original midwife who only delivers at the hospital. I told her about the birth, the baby’s size etc. she was shocked to say the least. I am so glad I did all of the research that I did. Even with the hemmorage this was still a wonderful experience and I would/will definately do it all over again at home my way!!!!!! Thank you to everyone on this list, all the info was a blessing to have.

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Wi-Fi, Smart Meters, Radiation and Electrosmog

February 17, 2012By Katie GuyAt Home, Family 2 Comments

Some people have never heard of radiation being connected with wi-fi and smart meters and they certainly have no idea what electrosmog is. I will quickly go over the basics. Electrosmog or dirty electricity, as it is sometimes called, is the electromagnetic field and/or electromagnetic radiation that comes off of cell phones, electric wires, transformers, electric meters (especially the new smart meters) digital clocks, cell phone towers, wi-fi, computers, appliances (espcially energy efficient ones), fluorescent lights, electric blankets microwave ovens and many more things. Here is a great article that goes into more details on the EMF’s from some of these things. “So what”, you may say, “what is the big deal?”

Negative Effects of Electromagnetic Smog

Well, this pollution has a tremendous negative effect on the human body, especially small growing children. Electrosmog can cause all sorts of ailments that seem to have no explanation:

DNA: Electrosmog can even effect the structure of our DNA. The cells in our body treat EMF’s as a harmful invader, which it is. This results in the cellular level being in a state of distress for long periods of time.
Water Contaminates: Another little known fact is that EMF’s traveling through our water pipes attract contaminates to our water increasing the pollution in our water.
Mold: Additionally, electrosmog can have a profound effect on mold, increasing it’s growth rate significantly. If you have a mold allergy, electrosmog can increase your exposure to mold and make it more difficult to rid your home of mold.

The Current Electromagnetic Spectrum

I don’t know anyone without wi-fi in their homes. In my neighborhood, when I turn on my wi-fi connection on my computer, I see a list of at least eight other wi-fi connections. This means, at least, 8 of my neighbors have wi-fi and their signals are coming through my walls into, not only, my home, but mine and my children’s bodies. With smart phones becoming the rule rather than the exception I wonder how many instances of tumors we will see in all different parts of the body in the, not so distant, future. Most smart phones can not be turned off. Essentially even when you turn it off you are still receiving EMF’s from it. Smart phones utilize each other for better reception. This means that if the cell phone tower is at point A and you are at point B, everyone that is in the proximity of this cell phone tower, but further away than you will be piggybacking off of your phone to get better reception. This is great news for our reception but horrible news for our health. UGH!!!

What we can do about it

What can we do about this and all of the other exposures we have to this harmful pollution? Julie Genser’s article Reducing Electromagnetic Frequency Exposure May Improve Your Health is a great place to start. It lists 15 different ways to reduce EMF exposure.

I will go over some other things that are not listed.

It is imperative that children not use cell phones directly on their head without some sort of EMF disruptor (I’ll talk about these in a bit). Children’s skulls do not have the bone density or thickness as an adult skull and the frequencies go directly to the brain causing damage and even cancer risks. If your child must use a cell phone and you don’t have an EMF disruptor on the phone make sure they use it on speaker phone and keep the phone away from the skull and other vital organs. These risks are still there for adults, especially those adults that spend countless amounts of time on the cell phone. You up your risks even more when you add the use of a blue tooth headset.
One simple solution on an iPhone is to go into settings and turn it on “Airplane mode”. This shuts off the wi-fi and cellular data. ~~I do this every night since I charge my phone in my bedroom.~~ (I no longer charge my phone in my bedroom while I sleep, I believe even with it is on airplane mode the risk of EMF exposure is still there, not a risk I want in my bedroom while I sleep)
Put your electronics, especially your wi-fi on a timer. Set it to turn off at night and come back on in the morning.
If you can afford to renovate or are building a new home wrap the bedrooms with radiant barrier and ground it. This will not only help with insulating but the barrier actually prevents the EMF’s from entering the room. It is very important to reduce this pollution when you sleep.
Cleansing and detoxing are very important. Monthly fasts, therapeutic baths of Bentonite Powder, baking soda or sea salt are helpful in detoxing the body.

The last thing I’m going to talk about are the disruptors I mentioned above. There are a wide variety of products on the market. In the research I have done, I think the best product at the best price is the ~~Safe Space Home Kit.~~ This kit is no longer available. You can see the range of products here.

This kit comes with
3 appliance patches
2 energy strips (these can be applied to the main electric conduit coming into the home and the main water line, eliminating the electrosmog in your water freeing it from attracting more dangerous chemicals)
Cell Phone Patch
4 Georesonators to clear your property
SafeSpace II to clear small areas in the home
SafeSpace I to clear large areas…approximately a 1000 foot radius.

I have yet to purchase this but it has been on my wish list for some time. Our bedroom has a smart meter on one wall, two outdoor AC units on the other wall and a transformer on the electric poll 30 or so feet away. Talk about a polluted sleeping environment!!

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Who Am I Kidding?

November 3, 2011By Katie GuyFamily No Comments

I can’t stay like this forever!!

Can I?

Well, um, let’s see I can try, I’m pretty strong willed, uh, well, no…I can’t…Sometimes you need to change, right?

Well, I have had a few blogs over the years. I have another one where I have blogged about religion, politics, health, parenting, etc. I think the last post I did was in 2008 and since then I started to redo it and it is still under construction. This fell by the wayside because of my daughter, Lucy’s, condition and surgery. If you don’t know about this you can read about it here and here. I have also been keeping a private blog to keep family and friends updated on Lucy’s condition. Since we have been victims of a false CPS case I felt it was necessary to only put certain details on this blog about Lucy. I hope that you understand and perhaps as we move further away from this ordeal I may reconsider making that one public.

As you know, I have a passion for all things natural and have been especially blessed with learning about therapeutic grade essential oils. I also have a serious passion for writing. One day I came up with the name Swell Living and wanted to blog about the knowledge I have gained over the years. Usually, my ideas/dreams of things I want to do come and go and never get done. I always reassure myself that this is all part of being a stay at home-homeschooling-mother of 5-and one child with a chronic condition. The idea for Swell Living was sort of thrust into actual existence once it was eminent that Lucy needed to have surgery. I decided to push myself to get this up. My motivation was still rooted in wanting to help others and share knowledge, but somewhere along the line I began to feel a desperation to try and make extra money to pay for Lucy’s impending medical bills. I thought it would be a great idea to try to promote my Young Living business and use the money to help pay for Lucy’s expenses.

Well, as always, God had a different plan. I have been using Young Living products with miraculous success for over 7 years. I have always felt compelled to share what I have been learning with others and to help others heal naturally. Over the years I have had many friends and family members use Young Living products with much success, yet I always seem to give away more than I sell. I spend a lot of time introducing people to Young Living and they love them and have successes too. Then they will happen to run into someone else who is a Young Living distributor and sign up with them. I try not to take it personally. I know God has a plan. Right now it is obvious that God’s plan for me is not to make money at this business, just to share and help others. Let me clarify that making money has NEVER been my motivation. It only became a preoccupation when faced with the exorbitant, long term expenses for Lucy. Really, I just wanted to try and make enough to pay for her supplements, but that hasn’t happened either.
Why am I writing this? Well, I want to release myself from this self imposed limitation. I want to stop writing with the thought of making money in the background of my mind. It just dawned on my one day. Who am I kidding? I am not a salesman. I want to share freely with people what I know, simply for the sake of sharing what I know. God has already proven more than faithful on our financial needs for Lucy thus far. We have had so many wonderful people donate. I want to trust that He will continue to provide for Lucy’s future medical expenses in whatever way He deems, not my way. That doesn’t mean that I still don’t have a desire to build my Young Living business, because building up my business means more and more people are using these products and having the miraculous results God intended us to have from His wonderfully, intricate creation. If I had the money I would buy them and give them away all day long, simply to help. Maybe someday God will bless us this way and I will be able to do this. Who knows?

I am still going to continue to write about therapeutic grade essential oils and other Young Living products, but now I have freed myself and this blog up to write about other things as well. I plan to write more often and about all sorts of issues pertaining to living swell, from health, diet, homemakeing, parenting, how to live simply…anything to do with Swell Living!!! Don’t worry I will save the blatant political and religious articles f0r my other blog, but don’t expect those subjects to never come up. They are so interconnected, it’s almost impossible not to bring them up once in awhile. Anyways, once I get the other blog up and running I will link to it for those of you that are brave enough to venture into that part of my thought process.
Another bonus is that I now feel free to post things such as this:

Phenomenal Magnum Dancing a.k.a. Miles from Katie Guy on Vimeo.

I love my 6 year old, he is Awesome!! You can hear my older kids in the background cleaning up dinner, this is why Miles has the music to dance to. Every night when they clean up they put music on…just another example of Swell Living.

Reprehensibly, Delicious Refined Sugar

October 26, 2011By Katie GuyFamily, Wellness No Comments

Well I posted:

“Every time you eat a teaspoon of sugar your immune system is compromised for hours” on my Facebook page the other day and someone asked for more information. I liked what I found in my research so much I didn’t even put it in my own words and I wanted to put it up here.

I remember when I first started to research refined white sugar many years ago there are several facts I learned that really stuck with me, even though I still consume it sometimes!! The first is that originally the FDA classified refined white sugar as a drug, but the plantation owners knew this would hurt their profits so they bribed them to classify it as a food. The second was a study done on the plantation workers and the children of the plantation owners. The workers chewed on the sugar cane all day at work while the privileged children ate the refined white sugar. Guess who had more tooth decay? Yep, the children who ate the refined white sugar. So without further delay…

Sugar

“Sugar is without question one of the most dangerous substances on the food market today.

What we are talking about here is sucrose, the white crystalline sugar refined from cane or beet juice by stripping away all its vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, water, and other synergists.

White sugar is an industrially processed chemical not found in nature, and it is not fit for human consumption.

Other sugars such as fructose (in fruit and honey), lactose (in milk), and maltose (in grains) are natural substances with nutritional value.

Raw sugar is a coarse, brown, sticky variety made by simply boiling down whole cane juice and it too is a wholesome food, but it is very difficult to find in the Western world.

The so called ‘brown sugar’ sold in supermarkets is nothing more than refined white sugar with some molasses spun back into it for color and flavor. It is not a ‘health food’.

Sugar suppresses the immune system by causing the pancreas to secrete abnormally large quantities of insulin, which is required to break it down.

Insulin remains in circulation in the bloodstream long after sugar has been metabolized, and one of its main side effects is to suppress the release of growth hormone in the pituitary gland.

Growth hormone is a primary regulator of the immune system, so anyone who eats a lot of sugar every day is going to experience critical growth hormone deficiency and consequent immune deficiency caused by the constant presence of insulin in the bloodstream.

Furthermore, refined white sugar is treated as a toxic foreign agent by the immune system, owing to its unnatural chemical structure as well as the industrial contaminants it retains from the refining process.

Sugar thus triggers an unnecessary immune response while simultaneously suppressing immune function, thereby debilitating the immune system with a double edged sword.

Sugar is the chief culprit in many diseases and degenerative conditions.

It can easily cause diabetes and is a major factor in candidacies, both of which are epidemic in the industrialized Western world.

Since sugar is ‘nutritionally naked’, the body must ‘borrow’ the missing vitamins, minerals and other synergistic nutrients required to metabolize sugar from its own tissues.

Heavy sugar consumption therefore causes a constant siphoning of nutrients from the body. Recent evidence suggests that sugar causes dental problems not so much by contact with the teeth but rather by leaching the teeth of calcium from within.

Sugar also depletes the body of potassium and magnesium, which are required for proper cardiac function, and is therefore a major factor in heart disease.

The nutritional leaching caused by sugar can give rise to intense food cravings and eating binges, as the body seeks to replenish the nutrients ‘stolen’ from it by sugar.

Most people consume far more sugar than their bodies can possibly use for energy. When this happens, the liver converts the extra sugar into molecules called triglycerides and stores it as fat, or else produces cholesterol from the by-products of sugar and deposits it in veins and arteries. Sugar is thus a major factor in obesity and arteriosclerosis as well.

Sugar is an addictive substance. In Sugar Blues, William Dufty writes; ‘The difference between sugar addiction and narcotic addiction is largely one of degree.’

Abruptly giving up sugar invariably brings on the sort of withdrawal symptoms associated with narcotic drugs- fatigue, lassitude, depression, moodiness, headaches, aching limbs.

Its addictive nature is also reflected in current per capita consumption in the USA- an average of 130 pounds of sugar per person per year, or about 1/3 pound daily. That qualifies as ‘substance abuse’. Most people don’t even realize how much sugar they’re taking every day because much of it is hidden in other foods.

A 12-ounce can of a typical soft drink, for example, contains about nine teaspoons of refined white sugar.

Sugar consumption in the USA is so high that it has also caused a social problem through its deleterious effects on behavior, especially in children, who are displaying increasingly severe behavioral disorders and learning disabilities.

In a recent study conducted by Dr. C. Keith Connors of the Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC, a ‘deadly’ link was established between the consumption of sugar with carbohydrates (such as breakfast cereal, cake, and biscuits) and violent behavior, hypertension, and learning impediments.

In other studies, chronic violence in prisons was remarkably reduced simply by eliminating refined sugar and starch from prison diets. Singapore in 1991 banned sugary soft drink sales from all schools and youth center’s, citing the danger that sugar poses to the mental and physical health of children.

If you or your children have a sweet tooth, you can easily satisfy it by concocting treats with honey, molasses, and barley malt, which are not only sweet but also nutritious and therapeutically beneficial.”

Source: Daniel Reid