Milestones
We’ve reached a milestone today. My two boys, who are 6 and 4 at the end of this month had their first ever steak! I’m not sure if I’ve ever explained why my two children and I went vegan / plant based in the first place but I’ll go in to it now... Unfortunately (or fortunately) I didn’t have the healthiest newborn. My precious little formula fed angel had every illness you could think of, a mother’s nightmare.
As a baby he had eczema, asthma, croup, constipation, nut allergies, dairy/poultry and meat intolerances. He had this painfully red and blistering patch of eczema on his cheek, legs, arms and bottom from 10 weeks onwards. No amount of steroid cream helped. He was severely constipated that I’ve lost count how many times my doctor gave me suppositories to use. He had croup, bronchitis which turned to asthma where we used steroids so many times which sadly never helped. Only made him more sick. My poor sweet little boy had every illness you could think of and I was so desperate to do anything to help my baby.
On top of all of this, he was vaccine injured, left non verbal until he was over 2. We worked with paediatricians, psychologists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, dieticians, nutritionists but we saw no changes. I’d seen so many specialists at this point who had recommended all sorts of different medications and I remember crying... bawling my eyes out if and when I had to give him panadol- let alone these heavy medications that didn’t sit well with my 20 month old. And like every special life changing story, one day, it just hit me. I was HIS mother and ultimately I knew MY child better than anyone with a degree. I knew him, his cues, his reactions to certain foods, his discomfort and pain. I knew it all. So off I went on my own journey to research whatever I could to help him. I remember the day I took him off dairy and within 24 hours he had bowel movement which didn’t include a scream or bleeding. Within a few weeks his bloating and gas went away, he started to try more different types of food, started to exploring more, still non verbal but he was on the road to recovery.
Within a couple of months, his eczema was gone. By 6 months it was like I had a completely different child. I had done a blood test through the children’s hospital and promised myself I would get him to where he needs to be HOLISTICALLY. Because like most mothers, I had full faith in my paediatricians and the medical system that let me down and left my family broken. From pregnancy, to birth, to my child, I was let down. As mother with a vaccine injured child, I have every right to say this. If this offends anyone, before you want to say anything.. first put your empathetic self in my shoes or any other parents shoes who have dealt with vaccine injury or the death of their child. Vaccine injury is very much real and it can leave children with many different auto immune diseases (that my son had) many different disabilities and intolerances / allergies etc.
Now that I’ve made that clear, moving on to my sons intolerances and why I chose to have him completely off dairy, meat, gluten and sugars. We started seeing our naturopath. We did different tests and detoxes. My son still tested positive to almost every animal product on the list and I wasn’t going to keep meat and dairy in his diet when he wasn’t reacting well to do. I was not going allow my innocent toddler to continuously eat something that was making him sick. I already had so much guilt with MY decision an actions that led to my sons illnesses, the least I could to do help him was to cure him. If this triggers any mothers, please look in to why you’re feeling this way on a deeper level. I too was once really fragile and extremely uncomfortable with the truth. But for the sake of my children, my marriage, my health- I had to change.
To live a healthy and holistic life, you need to also think that way. It’s not just about your diet... you could eat all the kale in the world but if you’re mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually unstable and broke- the kale just isn’t going to help. I did a lot of soul searching. Started my low tox journey with household essentials (and people). We were vegan for 2 year’s. After that, every year I started to slowly introduce organic butter/ghee, organic cheese, biodynamic eggs, seafood and lastly red and white meat. In 4 years we’ve learnt so much about our health and I say we because we did it together. My son and I. As a mother I couldn’t have my son on a diet that was so different to the rest of the family so I went vegan with him and my second born was vegan from 6 weeks till he was 2. Even though I’m an O positive blood type, I am clearly living proof that you can thrive on a plant based diet- regardless of the blood type you have! My sons healing journey has brought me to where I am today. How far we’ve come and it was truly was a blessing from God to show me the way to heal, with his guidance, sincere prayer and the years of hard work and dedication in to finding what was right for my boy- we are finally at a place that feels so right. My 6 year old now is such an intuitive eater and he has so much love and respect for our planet and animals.
It feels so right to have gone down this path to follow this diet and lifestyle. It fits perfectly for our Muslim family. It feels right for us ethically, morally and islamically. My boys and I have never been healthier and happier. We thrive off this diet. We eat what we want, when we want. Regardless of the “title” it’s generally given a title because it’s so much easier to say you’re “vegetarian” than to sit there and say oh I don’t eat chicken, fish, eggs, beef, lamb etc etc etc which is why we had always labeled it as “vegan” because I didn’t want to have to have a grocery list of things to say when I could just use the label. The past 12 months I feel we’ve healed the most. I’ve tapped in to prophetic and medicinal food and it works best for me and my children.
We’ve never been too strict, we’ve always had animal products for special occasions like Eid, anniversaries and generally when we travel, but that is only a few times a year. We don’t over do it by no means and eat animal products respectfully I want my children to have a good and strong relationship with food and to know that if something doesn’t sit well in your gut, look in to it a bit further, go deeper...find what’s wrong so you can make it right. Like tonight, we eliminated so much over the years because it didn’t feel right for him to now eating the same thing which now feels right in his belly and heart.
I’m feeling so proud tonight. Not because my boys are sharing a piece of steak together but because my boy who was once extremely sick and couldn’t tolerate most things is now a boy who’s healed. Mamas big heart is so full
