Climbing Tree

Today is Thursday. We will have been doing GAPS for one week today!

Gosh it’s been a healthy week! haha! Like, SO healthy. Like, I can’t tell if my very real and very strong desire for a piece of sourdough right now is 1) Rebellion 2) A normal part of GAPS and part of the bad gut bacteria shouting and yelling for food before they die or 3) Pregnancy cravings.

All three seem likely to be honest. I’ve been telling the kids when they complain to me about wanting bread that it’s option 2. And I guess it probably IS primarily option 2, but freaking hell that does NOT make it easier.

As a side note, I’ll mention that we’re doing this in combination with a homeopathic mould detox (we’ve nearly finished 2 out of 4 weeks of the protocol).

On day 7 of GAPS I am feeling tired, a bit sick of so much cooking, headachey, generally healthier, full and regulated, and less weak feeling.

I’m sure if I were checking my blood sugar and wearing a CGM the numbers would be GREAT – I’m not feeling ups and downs from blood sugar at all. The weak, “low blood pressure” episodes I was getting for quite a few weeks before this diet has started to subside a bit (I am still supplementing with iron tablets, but obviously my diet has dramatically improved as well). Iron needs are very high in the second trimester.

Because I’m not feeling 100%, the constant cooking aspect is weighing on me. I’m feeling tired of having to think of interesting meals my kids will like, because I am unintentionally raising foodies who won’t settle or boring or repetitive foods.

I’m finding it okay, but a little difficult to be the ONLY cook in the house. Others are fine to keep going with the cooking once I’ve started and the dish is basically set, but previously if I was feeling a bit under the weather someone else could just make pasta or something. I guess people could just make soup fairly easily… maybe I’m just not setting high enough expectations of the others!

Pregnancy is a really interesting time to be doing this. I do feel like it’s important to do – that I’m setting my baby up for good health when it’s born, and also setting myself up for an easier postpartum time. So, go me!

The other day someone said to me “Oh it’s hard doing this when you’re pregnant – you normally get to justify just eating what you want when you’re pregnant!”. I thought this was interesting, because while I feel like culturally, and definitely in film and TV that’s a big theme – pregnant women eat weird and wonderful things – whatever their taste buds desire with little consequence. But I realised in speaking with this woman that that’s not really the message I’ve ever personally been given in a medical or alternative medical sense.

Actually, particularly in the alternative medical world I mostly live in of Ayurvedic medicine, TCM, energy healing, and things like this, there’s a huge focus on eating healthy in pregnancy and postpartum. Even with this focus, and my TRUE desire to eat healthy and do the best for my baby… I would (figuratively) kill for a slice of sourdough (Homemade, no additive only. Haha).

It leads me to think of other times in my life when I’ve had to make big food sacrifices like this (as in, postpartum with at least 3 out of 5 children due to their own food intolerances). I’m always aware that I’m only able to do this because of the baby I’m feeding (the awful gas pains these will get later meaning their pain filled screams will haunt me and I won’t get any sleep). I’ve tried possibly hundreds of times to stop eating the foods I’m personally intolerance for my own personal health and I’ve never succeeded. Even when I’ve paid a lot of money for someone to tell me I really REALLY do need to stop eating it. And again I feel like this time I’m doing it partly for my unborn baby, but also for my here and now walking talking children who will really benefit from this diet.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Six weeks until Rosh Hashanah, which is our self imposed review/end/re-intro date.

BzH, change is on the horizon!

Not just because I’m 22 weeks pregnant with our next little boy, but also because we plan to adventure next year. Yes, with a newborn. Yes, with 6 kids (BzH). Yes, even though we live a pretty cushy and enjoyable life right here on the Sunshine Coast.

Pregnancy is a big transition time. It’s the prep time you need before the big change. And babies always are a big change. It’s perhaps a little rude to say that an entirely new person making their way earth side ISN’T a big change. Their life is big! Their life is worth celebrating and making space for! That doesn’t mean they have to tip everything upside down, that they’re hard, or that they’re chaotic. Big changes doesn’t have to mean big pains. Sometimes big changes can just mean big love, and big growth, and little adjustments.

But a new baby isn’t the only area we anticipate change with. My husband recently finished his masters of teaching and is now registered as a teacher. Exciting! This is a big change for our family and we’re looking at the possibility of doing country service, and moving somewhere else in our big ol’ state. It would be exciting! An adventure! A chance to save a good amount of money, and for Saadia to really get his feet wet teaching.

It’s not so simple for us as it is for other families.

One, we’re a BIG family these days, and finding housing could be difficult.

Two, we’re Orthodox Jews, and therefore have things we need to access regularly like kosher groceries, kosher meat deliveries (we would need to travel to only a couple of cities in the state periodically to collect our order), and access a Mikveh. Plus we probably don’t want to be alone for Chagim, so we would want the ability to travel somewhere and stay near other Jews for those times.

Three, we have older kids that won’t be happy in a place with nothing much to do, and no friends for a year or so. We need to find somewhere that at the very least is day drive distance to a “hub” of homeschoolers or at least other older kids and teens!

So it’s not so simple right?! And that’s becoming a little bit of a road block. But, still, there’s possibility and hope here and it feels like a medium level change.

And on the other hand we’re still contemplating and dreaming and yearing for Israel. For Aaliyah. For home. This has been on our mind for… years. SO. Many. Years. We actually made the decision to go with the specific Beth Din we did for our conversion because we knew they were well respected and the conversion was accepted in Israel. We’ve prepped the idea with the kids, and everyone is on board with getting eat kosher food easily, and be around other Jews (a novelty for us!). Not everyone is on board with the FOREVER aspect of it, but everyone could be on board with a year long trip.

Oh how we have been back and forward on the year long trip vs. making proper Aaliyah! Are we making our lives harder by just thinking of going for a year? Am I, and probably the kids, just scared of making a big huge mistake? Would this be a big huge (expensive) mistake? Would this be a dream come true?

How could I leave my parents and rob my younger kids of growing up with their grandparents living 200m from them, and popping in casually to see them most days.

But then on the other hand, how can I rob them of a RICHLY Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael? Of Jewish friends, not having to explain their culture, religion, holidays, clothes, and food requirements to everyone they meet. There are lots of things my kids miss out on here because they’re Jewish – parties, end of year celebrations, concerts etc. I could gift them this part of childhood they don’t get that so many people take for granted.

In talking about Aaliyah I have to be realistic about that fact that it’s around a 20K investment for our family to get return flights Brisbane – Tel Aviv, and that coming back to Australia to visit would also mean paying for accomodation, as we wouldn’t be able to all fit at my parent’s place or anything like that. So coming back to visit definitely isn’t a “once a year” thing, or honestly even a “once every 5 year things”. It’s my parents coming to visit us, and at some point they will get too old to do that. Plus, it’s a big cost of them to come also (or for us, should we pay for them so they can come more regularly). Making Aaliyah really does mean leaving Australia.

Last night we realised that either way really does mean leaving the Sunshine Coast. Forever probably. As soon as leave this house that we rent cheaply from my parents we would be super priced out this area.

So really I have no idea what 2027 will hold at this stage. But I do feel like even though I’m quite scared of any change (and it’s important to be honest with myself about this if I seek to move through it!), I feel that it is somehow our destiny. But how to prep kids (and ourselves!) for change we can sense is going to happen, but is still fuzzy. Like an old school TV coming into focus. There’s no colour, no defined shape. I just know it looks different.

Mostly I’ve been prepping the kids that SOMETHING is happening next year.

Sitting down with kids and having a big proper talk about things is good. Necessary. Important. Respectful. But sometimes it’s all the small subtle hints that help pave the way for the big announcement and the big change.

Let me use pregnancy as an example again. My big kids are 14, 12, 10, 6 & 2. We didn’t tell them I was pregnant again until 13 weeks – after I’d had an ultrasound and we felt confident things would be okay. I had a miscarriage before our youngest kid and all the big kids knew about it, and it was TOUGH on them (and on us!), and in the reflection time after that a few of them said they never wanted to know about any future miscarriage. So we took that on board and made sure we were at a lower risk point of the pregnancy before telling them. But we didn’t just tell them out of the blue. No.

Well before I was pregnant with this baby we’d been planting seeds. Telling kids “You know, we MIGHT have another baby one day. We’ll see what Hashem has planned for us”, “Ooh, look at that little random baby, so cute!”, “I feel like someone’s missing. Who’s missing” (disclaimer: This often occurs to me, and that’s when I’m sure there’s another soul waiting to join us at some point in the future), and “I wonder if we had another baby who would sit next to them in the car” (Queue arguments about who gets to sit next to non existent baby, because at the end of the day all my kids were absolutely BORN to be part of a big family. They are all completely in love and adore babies and little kids. Yes, even my teenage sons).

And so how am I prepping them for THIS 2027 big change? With the little things – “Remember when we went on that trip and went to Springsure? Wasn’t that cool to be out in Central Queensland? I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere like that?”, “Wouldn’t it be cool to live up north near Cairns and then go snorkeling on Sundays!”, “I’m so ready for an adventure!”. Or, “Imagine we could just go out for dinner tonight because there were so many kosher restaurants around!”, “Ooh, wouldn’t it be nice if you could take a dance class and then do the recital at the end because they won’t put it on Shabbat wherever we live in Israel”, “Remember when we got those cheap flights to Cyprus last time we were in Israel? I’d love to be able to get some bargain flights like that again!”.

2027, I’m not really ready for you, but I’m prepping for you anyway!

I hope you’ll allow me to be a bit tongue in cheek and borrow the Jewish term – minhag (plural – minhagim) and apply to my own little family, in a very non-religious way. A minhag is a Jewish custom that groups of people follow, but it is is not Halacha (law). One of the most well knows ones is during Pesach. Ashkenazi Jews have a minhag to not eat kitniyot (beans, rice, etc.), while other groups of Jews do not. The actual Halacha of Pesach is to not each Chametz (Leavened Wheat, Spelt, Barley, Oats or Rye), and then there are “extensions” on this by various groups. A minhag usually forms over time in a particular area because of something cultural or environmental that’s happening around. Another example of a minhag is in the clothes various Jewish groups wear, or how a woman covers her hair – she often follows the minhag of her mother. Anyway, I am loosely borrowing this word to talk about some of the little “traditions” I have for my kids.

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I knew we planned to have quite a few children (4 was the plan), and it was important to me that there be an element of fairness. I knew that over the span of all these children there would be plenty of things I couldn’t control – technology would change, my skills would change, our situation might change, but I wanted to set up a few things that I felt would be doable both the first time and the last time.

One of my favourite traditions is the monthly photo. Once my child has been named I buy either a wooden name plate, or a letter to match their name, and paint it white. I use this to take a photo every month for the first 12 months. They even all have the same background – a quilt my Nana made Saadia and I as a wedding gift. Along with this photo (I take two – one of them lying with the name/letter so I can see how long they get, and the other of their face from above so I can clearly see this beautiful little face at every age!), I also write them a letter detailing how in love with them I am, and their various milestones and things of interest that happened over the previous month.

These two “minhagim” (the photos and the letters) are the only ones I am super strict on. Other things like homemade birthday cakes, baby scrapbooks and gold foil number balloons on their birthdays are nice, and I try to do them every year, but I wouldn’t feel like I’d “failed” if I didn’t do them.

Let me go on a slight tangent to say how under-rated it is to think through this kind of stuff when pregnant with your first baby. I don’t really know anyone else who did this (please tell me I’m not alone!). Maybe I have some childhood hang up about fairness that led to me doing this, but I think it’s important! And so simple to do! Just spend a bit of time thinking about what your family might potentially look like in 10 years time, and what simple things you can gift your kids (and lets be honest, yourself!). Family photos every year is another one I stick to fairly rigidly…

Do you have a family tradition you keep up with for all your kids?

There are certain things for sure that you do better the fifth time then you did the first four times, and there are other things that are universal. I don’t think it would matter if you’re on your 12th baby, they’d still be the way you feel and what happens.

Here are some of my motherhood truths from my fifth time around the new baby block:

1. Babies are just so… ugh! Scrumptious! I mean, this is quite possibly why I have so many of them. This latest one in particularly… he smiles all the time, and it has a very serious effect on my ovaries…
2. We all doubt ourselves. Everyone! If you too periodically doubt yourself, don’t worry. We’re all in this together.
3. Speaking of being all in this together, mum friends are a game changer. When I had my second and third babies I had a really close group of friends I saw very, very, very regularly. This was amazing, and it soothed my weary sleep deprived mind, soul and body. This time I also have a wonderful group of mum friends (though none of them are having babies. But they are still wonderfully supportive friends, and we match kids at other ages!), and it’s so nice to just have other people to sit and have tea with while kids play, and have a little complain to, and most importantly to see other people really care and love on your kids is just so amazing.
4. It really is amazing what you can do with no sleep. Like seriously. I’m 37 years old. The thing I was most worried about when having this fifth baby wasn’t how to cope with five kids or something like that, it was how to survive (and thrive! and parent!) on very little sleep. Number of my kids that could sleep for more than an hour and half stretch at night from birth to 1 year…. *drumroll*…. one. And that’s a sad little story about starving and conserving energy by sleeping. So no, I did not have high expectations that this baby would be a good sleeper (I’ll admit, I did have a very small hope that this would be some sort of miracle sleeping baby, but alas…), but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how functional, and quite honestly, how supernaturally patient I have been on jack all sleep for the last 6 months.
5. It’s never too late to say sorry, and make amends. This one isn’t so much about the baby, but just something I really believe passionately the older I get as a parent. Kids need to be apologised to when you overstep or make a mistake that affects them. It really makes a huge difference. I don’t like to give excuses for my bad behaviour, but I do sometimes offer an explanation as to why Mummy just lost her shit, and hope that this calm and reasonable approach helps them to forgive me, and maybe even help play their part in insuring it doesn’t happen again!
6. Everyone loves babies. Other kids love babies, other adults love babies. Almost everyone will say yes if you hold them a non-crying baby and say “Could you hold him for a sec while I do ___________”. It’s just your job as a parent to work out if this person is someone you need to protect your baby from (I’m looking at you toddlers with sticky fingers, or sisters with not great upper body strength), or someone you can palm them off to while you go pee.

Hello! It’s me, Talia.

Recently I gave birth to my fifth baby – a boy to break the tie between boys and girls in our family. My eldest is 12, my youngest before the baby is 4, and it’s been a rollercoaster ride being a new mum again.

A lovely rollercoaster ride of course. Like the low grade little kid ones at Aussie World. Not the Joker ride at Movie World, OR the most terrifying roller coast I’ve EVER been on in my life and highly regret – the Scooby do coaster, also at Movie World *shudders*.

All my big kids love their baby brother, and well, so do my husband and I. He smiles more than I think a baby normally does, and this is just like honey for the soul. I often hand him over to a sad faced big kid and ask if they want some baby therapy. It almost always perks their mood up (except for that one time someone got peed on and they thought it was the most disgusting thing in the entire world, and thought they needed to burn their clothes now because they were ruined forever…).

I think the most common thing people say to me when they know I have five kids is that I have my hands full. And that is unequivocally true. I do have my hands full (though they’d be a lot less full if they were at school instead of homeschooling. I’d literally have 2-3 days a week with just me and the baby!), but I don’t feel… overrun, as I imagine a lot of people think they would feel if they had five kids. Part of this is that I’ve had them one at a time, so you sort of get your footing with 3 and then have the fourth. Get your footing with four, then have the fifth, etc. It’s also because they’re MY kids, and I know them pretty well. Despite my near constant worries of leaving them with unending childhood trauma every time I raise my voice or swear under my breath, I think my husband and I actually have a pretty close relationship with all of them. Room for improvement I’m sure, but every now and again I get pleasantly surprised at the personal and brutally honest things they tell me about themselves. So yeah, I’m busy, but I’ve got this.

The last few weeks I have had thoughts of needing to up my game in a few areas though, and so I feel like I am on the precipice of a new version of myself. Me with a diary. Haha. Seriously though, I’m getting a diary. I need to write some stuff down. Baby brain + no discernible sleep + homeschooling 4 kids + running around to a kazillion appointments and activities = Needing somewhere to collect my thoughts. I anticipate writing lists of things to do, and collecting notes from various allied health appointments, and maybe even a bit of on the go curriculum planning.

Anyway, welcome to my ramble, ramble blog. I’ve been a blogger since 2005, and I had a break for the last few years, but I’m back baby!