Monthly Goals - May 2011

Hooray, hooray, hooray it's May!!!  Finally, it's here.  Down to the last 8 days before baby's arrival.  Hopefully the first week in May will fly by :)  As you can imagine my goals for this month were kind of hard to make.  After May 9 life will be kind of crazy/just see how things go.  And I don't have my normal pregnancy goals anymore...on to post partum.  But I do still have some goals - largely health related.  I will still continue on my journey of healing my gut/mind via GAPS.  I'll just have to see how things are going with the baby as far as how into it I get.  For now I'm planning to stick to full GAPS.  I don't intend to do any major work in the kitchen this month.  Don't think I'll have the time or energy for that.  My goal will be to still get nourishing meals on the table.  But not much extra stuff.  And in our free time just enjoy getting outside and having fun.  Here goes.

FOOD

1. Eat full GAPS-legal food (no grains, no dairy except butter, hard cheese, kefir and yogurt, no sugar except honey and fruit).

2. Eat plenty of healthy fat daily (coconut oil, butter, lard, EVOO).

3. Reduce sugar intake.

4. Eat broth/soup regularly.

5. New probioitic - possibly start my new probiotic at a very low dose at the end of the month.

6. Avoid foods that I'm sensitive to:

potatoes, oats, rice, raw apples, bananas, carrots, raw spinach, beans, tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, any raw food at the moment.

7. Continue Sunday night fun/finger food night, and do breakfast one night a week.

8. Keep my kefir and sourdough going!

9. Digestive enzymes - this is another very critical part to gut healing that I've read about in GAPS.  I would like to get some digestive enzymes and maybe start using them at the end of the month to see if that improves my digestion.  You take them with each meal.  Maybe I'll do a separate post about them sometime.

10. Fermented veggies - I already eat fermented food each day.  But it tends to be stuff on the sweet side.  I would like to start eating fermented veggies daily.  I have a batch of sauerkraut fermenting.  Hoping to try it this week.  But I would like to try others as well.

11. Order beef and pork.  It's that time of year.  Time to get our beef and pork ordered so we can restock the freezer in a couple months.  Hoping to get the details figured out before baby.

HEALTH

1. Get enough sleep.
2. Breastfeeding.
3. Adjust to baby/new routines.
4. Recover from c-section.
5. Healthy lifestyle series - possibly digetstive enzymes, omega-6/omega-3.

FAMILY/PERSONAL

1. Activities and Outings

a. BABY!!!! - hospital May 9 - 12
b. Kindermusik family night - May 18 (if I'm up for it...Justin and Rebecca will go for sure)
c. MOPS (last meeting May 6)
d. OB appt. (last one!!) - May 4
e. Family wedding near Detroit - May 28 (we'll play this by ear...see how I'm doing and how the baby is doing if we're up for it)
f. Mother's Day - not planning on doing anything since it's the day before my c-section.  I might even stay home from church since sitting for that long is killer on my legs/swelling.  We'll see.

2. Rebecca - some things to do with Rebecca this month:

a. Keep working on potty training (hoping progress doesn't go backwards after the baby comes).
b. Keep working on letters, numbers, spelling/sounds, counting, math, etc. (a friend gave me a pre-k book to look at...might try some stuff).
c. Adjustment to baby.
d. Make sure she gets plenty of attention/some one-on-one time.

3. Baby

l. Start cloth diapering by the end of the month.
2. Plan baptism.
3. Birth announcements.