Winter Wellness Essentials

Hello! How is your week going? Mine has been like this:

The plague has been going around Eloise’s school and it was finally our turn to catch it. It has been a tough week or so. Once you don’t have a newborn anymore :( you underestimate how torturous sleep deprivation feels. If you are currently sleep deprived for one reason or another, I feel your pain!

Thankfully, Amelia, Nick and I were spared this time around, Nick has been a huge help as always, my mom switched her “Cookie Thursday” to come up earlier in the week (part of which was spent with her playing with the girls outside while I sat in the kitchen and ate my lunch alone, sobbing with exhaustion), and starting yesterday sleep has begun to return for all of us.

I’ve been meaning to write about our winter wellness essentials for awhile now, so now seems like an appropriate time! I have a kitchen cabinet or two devoted to these goodies, and bust them out any time someone is starting to show symptoms of illness. Is it the worst thing in the world to catch a cold? Of course not. But ever since becoming a mama, I have learned that there truly are no sick days anymore, and that sleep and sanity usually suffer when you have a house full of sick people, so why not try to prevent whatever I can? (That was my justification for being a huge hypochondriac—did it work? Like one of those people who will cross the street holding my breath if the person in front of me sneezes.)

Vitamins + probiotics—daily for Eloise and me. I started giving her this multivitamin, this immune booster, and this probiotic when she was about two, and will start Amelia on them around that time as well. Nick is supposed to take this multivitamin but is the household wellness resister so he usually goes without. I take a multivitamin (prenatal for nursing), probiotic, vitamin D, B complex, chlorella, and omega 3.

Elderberry syrup—1-2 tsp. for everyone in the household once a day when someone is coming down with something. It’s part of my midwives’ anti-flu recipe (we all get the flu shot too). You can make your own elderberry syrup but Nick and the girls prefer the taste of this kind.

Apple Cider Vinegar + Emergen-C—one glug of this kind in a juice glass of water. Nick and I also take 1-2 packets/day of Emergen-C when we’re sick, and the other day I read the ingenious idea to add ACV to Emergen-C to help mask the flavor, which I know Nick will be happy about. He does comply with my ACV mandate when he’s sick because he knows how well it works (balances the body’s pH, Google it!) but the taste makes him gag. I’ve been drinking this for years now and the taste has grown on me.

Salt water—for a scratchy throat Nick and I will gargle with warm salt water, which my grandfather has been doing for years.

Essential Oils—lots more on how we use them here! Especially thieves + frankincense + lemon + myrrh. I have actually started to make rollerballs of this for family and friends for convenience--so much quicker and easier than using all four oils separately. Eloise will take our rollerball and rub it on the bottoms of her feet before school, and I swipe it on both girls' spines and my throat if someone is sick.

Zicam—SO helpful. I don’t think we’d survive a cold and flu season without this tool. I like the nasal spray + swabs (but they leave a white reside around your nostrils so if you go to preschool pick up and end up chatting with another mom who is looking at your nose funny, that’s why) and Nick will take the dissolvable tablets.

New-to-me remedies that I will be checking out this season are grapefruit seed extract and water with baking soda + lemon. And of course the macro things like rest, lots of fluids, hand washing and sanitizing, and avoiding/limiting dairy, sugar, caffeine and alcohol (sad).

I know I didn’t do this topic justice—it’s one of my favorite things!!—so if you have any questions, or know of remedies I’m missing, I’m all ears!