Saturday morning is pancake morning

In the book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" it is declared that Saturday morning is pancake morning. The bee of course takes all things literary as fact, so of course in our house Saturday morning is pancake morning.

But the problem is pancakes aren't good for you. White flour, sugar, and fried up in some sort of grease. They are completely void of fiber, nutrients, and spike your blood sugar quickly. In little people blood sugar spikes are the things nightmares are made of. So I had to figure out a way to make pancakes that delivered protein as well as pancakey goodness that was supposed to be for Saturday mornings. This way I won't have to worry about blood sugar spikes and dips that make people lose control of their bodies and emotions! Two eggs and 1 cup of ricotta cheese gives this a lot of protein and balances out the straight carbs of regular pancakes. My kids eat them up and are getting a good dose of protein to help control their sugars and prevent behavior spikes. You can also add 2 T. peanut butter to this recipe and make peanut butter cookie pancakes

Pancakes:

1.5 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c. whole raw milk
1 T. whey or 1 t. raw apple cider vinegar
3 T. butter melted and cooled
2 eggs`
1 c. ricotta cheese
3 T. baking powder (take care to find some without aluminum, Rumford is a good brand)
1 T. sucanat
1 t. salt

Mix the flour, milk and whey or vinegar the night before. Cover and let it sit at room temperature all night. The next morning add the rest of the ingredients and fry in coconut oil. Top with maple syrup, berries, fruit compote. Never ever ever top it with nutella, pecans, and whipped cream. That defeats the entire point of a healthy breakfast. Trust me. You'll never want to stop eating that.

an update

Thank you all for your concern.

We are fine, though have had a rough go of it.

I had severe pre-eclampsia and was on bedrest for three months. The ninja made an appearance when I was 35+5 weeks pregnant and is beautiful and healthy. Since we knew he was going to come early we were able to prepare his lungs with steroid shots. He breathed on his own from the beginning and didn't ever have to stay in the NICU. He was very small when he was born, but is nursing wonderfully and growing on schedule. He is catching up with his adjusted age nicely.

His brother and sister are thrilled with him, and I'm so glad for them to have another sibling. They are doing wonderfully with him.

We have had a rough couple of months. December was me recovering from a c-section and dealing with a preterm baby, and in January we were hit with the flu for myself and the bigger kids and the baby was hospitalized with RSV.

However it seems we are all getting healthy again and looking forward to spring as a family of five.

Infertility sucks

It does. Even though I'm halfway through a healthy surprise pregnancy, infertility sucks.

I don't fully believer I'm pregnant. I've seen the ultrasounds, heard the heartbeat, know the gender, and feel the jabs that are getting stronger by the day.

And I don't believe I'm pregnant.

I have lost the innocence of rejoicing in those first flutters of movement and being excited and thrilled over every little thing. I lost that because of the decade of loss that I had.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm happy to be here, and to be pregnant.

I fear for the loss of this little one in such a deep way, because it is all my body and spirit have ever known. The loss of my biological children.

And even now, after the infertility cycle has seemingly been lifted for a brief moment, infertility still sucks. It has left a big deep gaping wound on my soul that I don't think will ever heal. It will just scab over, for a while, and then be ripped off again and again.

How I got here

I have PCOS, Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome. This is an endocrine disorder where your ovaries produce tons of cysts and your entire endocrine system is out of balance. It is closely tied to Insulin resistance and thyroid issues. PCOS is the leading cause of infertility in the nation, affecting almost 10% of women in the United States. It has some additional fun side effects to the infertility including male pattern facial hair, chest hair, a difficulty losing weight, some fun gastrointestinal side effects, and fatigue. My husband has very low sperm motility and those two things combined made doctors think it was pretty much impossible for us to conceive. And according to medical science it was.

After we decided not to pursue any more fertility treatments, ever, I started to really concentrate on finding health for my body. I was specifically looking to cure, or at least calm the effects of, PCOS with my diet. After a lot of research as well as trial and error I discovered more things about my body and food tolerances/intolerances. First, like most women with PCOS, I am gluten sensitive. I am not intolerant nor do I have celiac. However gluten does tend to slow my digestion, give me gas, and destabilize my blood sugar. One of the first major dietary changes I made was to eliminate wheat and other glutens from my diet on a regular basis. I still milled my own grain, and my kids still eat fresh bread, but it wasn't working for my body anymore. I didn't look for hidden gluten, nor did I give up the occasional treat, but bread and gluten heavy products were no longer a part of my regular diet.

And as soon as I made that change I started to drop weight.

The next thing I looked at was fruits. Fruits are an incredibly healthy food, and should be a major part of the diets of most people. But I was experiencing major sugar highs and lows over even something simple like a nectarine. The first thing I did was eliminate fruit all together, and that wasn't my brightest day. I love fruit, and am much more likely to get my nutrients from fruit than veggies. So I started to make sure that my fruit intake was limited to only times when I was consuming protein too. For breakfast I'd have eggs with pesto and 1/4 of a grapefruit. No more stand alone fruit, but instead I would have my fruit with a balanced meal and I would eliminate the sugar highs and lows. Since I was not eating many grains it was important that I still get carbohydrates, but in a balanced way.

I vastly increased my protein intake also. I was eating 80 or so grams of protein a day. Eggs for breakfast every single morning, and red meat for dinner every night, except a couple of days a week of fish. I do not like Chicken well, nor do I feel well when I eat it, so I don't. I think that most food aversions like this are indicators of foods that are and aren't good for us.

The final dietary change I made was to drastically increase my intake of cruciferous vegetables. These are veggies from the cabbage family, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc... I would make sure that I had something from this family every day of the week. More often than not it was cole slaw, since I'm also a big fan of a high fat diet.

Over the course of changing my diet I lost 20 lbs and started to ovulate on a more regular basis. My cycles were about 40 days in length. The longest I'd gone in the past without a cycle was almost three years.

And that, is the story of how I started to ovulate based on dietary changes, and got pregnant very unexpectedly.

25 weeks

25 weeks from now, give or take a week or two, someone new will be coming into our lives.

I am pregnant. 15 weeks pregnant.

After multiple miscarriages, and being told that we had a 1% chance of ever conceiving a baby, even with treatments I'm pregnant. No treatments. Total and complete shock.

I think that extreme fatigue of the first trimester is a valid reason to avoid blogging.

I have a ton of emotions ranging from fear to elation. I worry for my two children that they won't transition well. I worry also about their emotions related to their adoptions and navigating those waters.

I do believe that a big part of my ability to get and maintain a pregnancy was finding out, by trial and error a diet that worked best for my body. I had recently lost quite a bit of weight because of my diet, and I believe this also factored into it.

But more than anything God chose to open my womb.

I'm still here

I still mill my own flour.

I still make my own breads, and dehydrate food and can for the winter. I'm knitting, and quilting and thinking about taking up sewing for my daughter.

I've been absent for a while for a good reason, reasons.

I'm not sure I'm ready to share yet. Perhaps after a week from Thursday I'll be ready to share in such a hugely public place.

Dehydrating vegetables

I'm growing broccoli this spring. Hopefully I'll get a bunch of it. I love broccoli. Well let me clarify. I detest vegetables, all vegetables. However of all the vegetables that I detest I can stomach broccoli. I'll seek it out. I like broccoli soup with chicken stock and lots of fresh pepper and onion and a little bit of cream.

But I'm growing a lot of broccoli. I've got twenty plants right now. All going to arrive at the same time. And limited freezer space. So I was trying to think of some alternative ways to store said broccoli. I could make big batches of the soup and can it, and I'll probably do some of that. But I'll still have more broccoli.

So I've decided to dehydrate my broccoli. I'll steam it for a few minutes, and then pack it into vacuum sealed jars. I'll reconstitute it for soups in the winter months. I'm really excited to see how this works!