Picture
Glowing Goddess Kraut

Home fermented veggie medley sauerkraut provides excellent probiotics to keep digestive systems healthy and balanced, enhance optimal nutrient absorption in the body, provide a variety of vegetables. 

Eating fermented veggies and foods through pregnancy helps to prevent Group B Strep in pregnancy (which if a mother tests positive for, she is then usually required to take antibiotics during labor). When mothers eat healthy balanced probiotic foods during pregnancy and breastfeeding it enhances our digestion and keeps our bacteria in balance, so that our babies have healthy guts for their lives too! 

Fermented foods in pregnancy may help prevent or stave off morning sickness or nausea and satisfies that common pregnancy craving for pickles (where were traditionally fermented).  

The picture above shows Glowing Goddess Kraut on the left and Spicy Goddess Kraut on the right. 

Both are delicious and awesomely pink!

Glowing Goddess Kraut: 

  • Organic red cabbage
  • Organic green cabbage
  • Salt
  • Spring Water

Reserve the large outer leaves of the cabbage. Chop or grate your cabbages fine. Mix together green and red cabbage shreds in a large bowl, sprinkle lavishly with sea salt or pickling salt (not table salt). Press down in the bowl with a heavy object (I use the bottom of a mug or a jar) or massage the veggies until they start to break down and release the juices. Pack cabbage into a large mason jar, cover with outer cabbage leaf, and hold down with a large washed stone that fits into the jar mouth. If the cabbage at the top is not covered with liquid, than add a brine of salt water made with salt and spring water to top the veggies with an inch of liquid. Cover with a cloth and keep in a warm kitchen in the winter, or a cool cupboard in the hot summer, and check each day. Press the stone and veggies down from the top each day. Ferment for 3 to 5 days depending on temperature. Check the taste toward the ends until you like it. Then enjoy and store in the refrigerator. 

Spicy Goddess Kraut:

  • Organic red cabbage
  • Organic green cabbage
  • Daikon root, grated
  • Two carrots, grated
  • One beet, grated
  • One jalapeno pepper, sliced
  • Chili powder
  • Salt
  • Spring Water

Make the same way as the above recipe, but include the extra veggies and spices. So delicious and spicy! Plus hot pink because of the red cabbage and beet! I love this!

Did you eat fermented foods during your pregnancy or do you now? Let me know what you think and what your favorite fermented foods for mamas are in the comments below. 

Blessings, 

 
 
Picture
Birth is an intrinsically natural and primal experience of the creative expression of life. It is the basis upon which life emerges from the womb to the world. Humans have birthed instinctively for millenia in homes, dwellings, in the water, and on the land all across our Earth. It is only today, now that human culture has domesticated us that we go to a hospital, the place for injured and sick people, to give birth. We are created with the integral wisdom to birth naturally just like all living beings.

Today we are on the cusp of a new era of human civilization in which a vast amount of humans are being born traumatized from medical intervention in birth. Women in labor are rushed to the hospital to be monitored, drugged, and intervened with agressively. The Cesarean section rate is over 30% in the United States, and 50% in China. The surge toward surgical delivery is a huge shift in the last 40 years that may very well effect the evolution of humanity.

Through surgical delivery, babies bypass the birth canal and the inoculation of the mother's natural healthy bacteria that colonizes the babies body during birth and creates the foundation of the baby's life-long immune system. Surgical delivery also decreases the amount of breastfeeding relationships that are initiated or successfully established, thus limiting babies access to colostrum, the first breastmilk which also is a foundation for the babies immune system. This is producing a vast proportion of humans with immune-system compromise who are more susceptible to epidemics. This is just one factor of concern in the multitude of risks to the health of women and babies through unnecessary interventions in childbirth.

In the wild, animal mothers find a quiet private place to labor and birth. Animals are amazing teachers for they instinctively know what is the right food to eat, how to sleep, socialize, and live naturally, as well as give birth. Animals will often give birth at nighttime, when it is quiet, they are alone, and relaxed. We need to remember that we too are animals, we are wild beings, and we too need dim lights, privacy, safety, and a cozy natural environment to birth in.

At a homebirth, a family may create a sacred space in their home for the labor and birth. It will be warm, comfortable, private, dimly lit, and the woman will have room to move freely, shower, bathe, eat, walk around, and even be outside, in the sun, under the stars, or walking in the yard. In many hospitals, you can't even open a window, you are under bright florescent lights, hearing strange sounds, and people you've never met walk in and out of the room, while you are restricted from eating or drinking and are confined to the bed, tubes, and monitors. It is the elements of privacy, comfort, and freedom that are integral to instinctive birth.

When babies are born naturally at home, they are inoculated by their mother through the birth process and the first food of colostrum to be naturally immune to what the mother is immune to. The mother's naturally defense system is built to be prepared for what is in her natural environment, such as her home. Hospitals are places where sick people go and is a foreign environment to the mother. The mother and baby are exposed to strangers coming in and out of their room, as well as the doctors and nurses going from room to room of other patients. Therefore, from an immunological perspective, the baby is safest born naturally at home, where they immediately receive the mother's immunity to the environment as well as the benefits of immune-boosting vaginal birth and colostrum which is Nature's Best Food.

Mothers - tap into your wild nature and find your private sacred space to birth for the integrity of your family and your baby's health. It is our imperative to re-wild ourselves to strengthen our bodies, spirits, health, and the health of our children. Natural birth is a gift to your child for a life-long healthy body, immune system, and soul - as well as being a profound rite of passage and ecstatic experience for mother and father.