Pregnancy, Parenthood & Playtime

Every year, many of us make a bunch of nonsense New Years Resolutions just to make them, knowing in most cases, we won’t have to adjust anything in our lives to actually accomplish them. But why not take some time and make some real changes in your life that not only will benefit you, your health, and family, but also our planet? With the abuse of resources we currently have in our world, why not take time to cut back on some of the things we take for granted?

Yesterday, while I was loading my dishwasher, I noticed one of my own abuses. I use an incredible amount of paper towels while i am in the kitchen. Whether it is cooking, doing dishes, or just cleaning up after the animals.  So I made it a point to tell myself, there is no reason to use so many, and I will be cutting back. But what are some other easy cut backs that we can make?

• Cut back on water use. – When washing your hands, turn off the water when you are soaping up, only run your washing machine or dish washer when they are really full, turning off the water while soaping dishes… just simple little things that can help conserve your water use.
• Skip the plastic bottled water! – Change over to a re-usable water bottle and invest in a water cooler or water filter for tap water. Since we invested in a water cooler, we have increased our water intake by double which is important for your health, but we have also decreased our spending on water by nearly 75%!
• Recycle!  It isn’t too hard to use that blue bin you have instead of just throwing that can or milk container in your garbage can.

These are just simple cut backs that are very easy to make!
But what about health changes?
There are the dreaded changes to our well being, health, eating habits, and overall just maintaining our health care instead of seeing the Doctor only when we are sick.

A couple changes that you could make for your own well being are (that can help in the money department) :

• Cut back on your soda!  (If you need it, cut it back to 1 can a day, or 1 glass.  (This is a big challenge for me!)
• See a Chiropractor for maintaining health care. You will see a world of difference in the first couple visits!
• Switch your average ground beef for hormone free ground turkey. Hear me out! I did this a couple weeks ago, testing it with our family taco night. NO ONE NOTICED it wasn’t ground beef!!!  My husband was shocked when I told him he was eating ground turkey instead!  (Ground turkey is also much cheaper)
• Take a walk… If its too cold out, go to the mall. Go to your local grocery store or walmart. There are a lot of options for indoor walking this time of year.
• Cut back on your fast food intake. Once and a while is ok, but eating it daily for lunch or dinner is not going to do your health any good!

Again, all simple things we can do to help!

Now, I know I wanted to focus on resolutions, but there are some things I would like to see in 2010.
I just wanted to include them as a tail end of this blog.

• I would like to see women NOT being threatened with court ordered medical procedures when they do not follow Doctors orders.
• I would like to see women who have had previous cesarean sections able to get insurance without having a “pre-existing condition”
• I would like to see changes in the way we handle maternity care in our country.
• I would like to see an increase in midwifery care and education in pregnant women.

I hope that new years will also bring me a nice stay at home work position so I can help out with some of the bills around the house.

Happy New Year!