End of Month Recap - July 2010

Wow, is today really the last day of July???  The last week was so crazy that I kind of lost track of time/what day it was.  I didn't even realize until 2 days ago that I hadn't given a thought to my goals for August!  So I'm a little behind.  And a bit disorganized.  But I'll do my best to sum up the month and think about what's to come.

Obviously this month was focused on fertility/IVF.  That's been my life the last few weeks.  How did it go?  Well, not exactly as we had hoped.  I could tell that my body was working differently and defnitely pumping out more of its own hormones.  So that's good.  But on the flip side I got severe hyperstimulation.  Not so good.  But we're through the worst of it.  And praying that in the months to come we'll see evidence that it was successful.

Unfortunately due to the hyperstimulation my diet over the last week and a half has not been the best.  I was doing all I could to get anything down.  Hormones can take everything over.  So I just had to eat whatever sounded good...and sometimes it was all I could do to just get a little toast down.  And pretty much anything fermented, probiotic, etc. sounded so disgusting.  I couldn't even think about them.  So I have to work now to get everything back on track.  I still don't have my normal appetite back completely.  One good thing about it is that sweets don't sound that great.  I'd rather have salty food for the most part right now.  That's a trend I wouldn't mind keeping :)  I was eating tortilla chips immediately after waking up in the morning some days over the last week.  I had to get something in my stomach to ease the nausea and that was all I could handle.  I practically lived on them.  Crazy.

Anyway, that's the general recap for this month.  Here are the specifics.

FOOD

Fertility

1. Eat plenty of full fat dairy - check.
2. Eat plenty of animal products/fats - check.  I even tried beef liver.  But since I was starting to get sick from hormones when I ate it the thought of it is now revolting.  Hopefully someday I can try it again.  I still have chicken liver and liverwurst in my freezer to try sometime.
3. Eat more seafood - I did pretty well eating seafood about 2x a week.
4. Cod liver oil - I did take CLO for a few weeks.  But when the hormone nausea kicked in I just couldn't stomach it anymore.  I'll get back to it soon.
5. Eat more veggies, less fruit - check.
6. Eat plenty of lentils, nuts and beans - check.
7. Use unrefined sea salt each day - check.
8. Use natural vitamins - check.
9. Eat bone broth - check.
10. Naturally Knocked Up eCourse - This has been going for 3 weeks now.  Very interesting.  Lots of good info.  I'm excited for the rest.
11. Flax seed - I haven't had any in a few weeks now.
12. Exercise - I have cut back.

Gut

1. Continue taking a probiotic - check.
2. Eat cultured dairy daily (i.e. yogurt, kefir) - I did this up until I got sick.  So far neither has sounded good to me again yet.  It will at some point I'm sure.
3. Eat fermented foods and drinks daily - again, I did this until I got sick.  I have just started to add a few things back in.  Hopefully it'll pick up soon.
4. Reduce sugar as much as possible (sugar feeds bad bacteria) -  Right now I'm eating more salty food and fewer sweets.  I hope I can keep this up.
5. Don't overdo on grains - what I do eat must be whole grain that is soaked, sprouted or sourdough - in general I did well with this.  But while I was sick I lived on toast and tortilla chips.  Getting back to it now.
6. Nothing refined, no chemicals, preservatives, nothing synthetic, etc. - only real food - check.
7. Eat bone broth - check.

Misc.

1. No microwave - I've only used the microwave two or three times this month.  I only use it as a last resort now.
2. No oven - Doing my best with this.
3. Research/replace pots and pans - I bought one basic stainless steel pan to use for everyday stuff.  Hopefully over time I can replace more.
4. Cast Iron Skillet - I did not get around to using this.  But hopefully next month.
5. Carob - I have made quite a few recipes with carob.  It doesn't taste 100% like chocolate, but it is good.  I still need to find some chocolate extract to try with it.
6. Food preservation - I've been keeping up best I can with our summer produce.  I froze almost 20 lbs. of blueberries.  I froze about 8 gallon bags of beans...so far.  They are still going strong.  I think I'm going to run out of space in my freezer :P  I only had time to do one batch of corn.  Hopefully I can stock up on a lot more of that next month.  I've done lots of dehydrating too.  And I froze some zucchini.
7. Pickling Lime - I have not even looked for this.  No time.  Maybe sometime soon.
8. Long term goals - My long term goals still remain: stop using miralax, overcome OCD, have a successful IVF cycle/pregnancy - still working on these.
9. Continue all of the healthy food prep and shopping - sprouting grains, sprouting beans, sourdough, fermenting, cultured dairy, bone broth, seafood, liver, homemade food, co-op, farmer's market - check.

COST REDUCTION

1. Continue recording spending and sales - check.
2. Food budget - I think I'll go with $150/week during peak produce season - I've been sticking to this so far.
3. Continue to plan meals based on sales/what we have on hand and on what's in season and doesn't need to be cooked in the oven - check.
4. Continue to make as much food as possible from scratch - check.  Here's the rundown of July's kitchen work:
ww chocolate chip cookies
ww zucchini chocolate chip bars/cake
breakfast cookies
blueberry crumble
sourdough bread
ww graham crackers
granola
blueberry zucchini bread
bulgur flour
thousand island dressing
ranch dressing mix
sourdough crackers
cream cheese fruit dip
dairy and water kefir
raspberry topping
fermented punch
carob sauce
popsicles
vanilla and mint carob chip ice cream
fermented pickles
fermented ketchup
mayo
basil pesto
5. 2nd hand shopping - when the need arises - didn't need anything.
6. Simplify - continue to minimize where possible - no new cut backs.

MISC.

Other than that we enjoyed spending time as a family and visiting family.  Justin and I celebrated our 7th anniversary last week.  We spent the whole day at my Dr.'s office getting a check up and at a cancer center getting an infusion to help with the hyperstimulation (nothing to do with cancer, but that's where I had to go).  Not quite what we had in mind, but at least we got to spend the whole day together and have a lunch "date" :)

This has been a very long and difficult month.  I am so ready to move on to things to come...hopefully more positive things!  For today I'm just trying to keep up with things and keep recovering.  I've lost almost 3 inches in my belly so far.  But there is much more to go :P  Check back tomorrow.  I'll try to come up with some new goals for August :)