Finding Your Style: Natural Parenting

People often ask me how I managed to come to the decision of having a homebirth. My short answer? This is Dallas, and one of the benefits of living here is having at least 3 great hospitals within 5 minutes of my home. For my family me, our healthcare has become a sort of marriage between natural/alternative treatments to illnesses coupled with the safety net of world-class doctors and hospitals there to catch us in the (hopefully!) unlikely event of a fall.

Having grown up with a mother who worked in a hospital, and having two of my first jobs at the same hospital, from a young age I learned the importance of being your own health advocate. For instance, although I had my first daughter at Baylor Dallas with an OB/GYN, I came to the hospital for an induction with a flexible birth plan and an arsenal of knowledge so that I would feel comfortable with whatever decisions had to be made. And, while at the hospital, with a moderate amount of stubbornness heel-digging, I managed to get a hep-lock instead of an i.v., and asked the doctor to give me more [and more] time to go into labor before we tried pitocin. Luckily the baby started labor within mere seconds of the mention of the word “pitocin” and I was able to have a very fast natural birth inside of the hospital.

Now, as my firstborn has gotten older and we’ve added two more children to our lot, I’ve continued to try and stay as informed as possible about medicine and how it affects my children. For me this knowledge has meant finding various reference books for the home as well as finding physicians with whom I can have very open and honest discussions with.

With regards to my various reference books, they have become some of my most important go-to items in the house:

1. Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child by Janet Zand. This book was first recommended to me by Dr. Bain in Frisco, and I’ve found it to be a wonderful reference book. Not only does it outline almost all illnesses from newborn to the teenage years, but it gives various treatments organized by genre. They include conventional medicine, homeopathy, herbal treatment, dietary changes, and general recommendations.

2. The Baby Book by Dr. Sears. This book was my special helper for the first two years of my first child’s life. I learned the importance of “hosing the nose” – which means squirting saline into the nostrils followed by bulb suctioning – for any kind of runny nose your child has. Does it cause them to be intensely angry? Yessir. But does it almost always stop the problem from becoming yellow and antibiotic-needing? Yeppers.

3. The Portable Pediatrician by Dr. Sears. The newest addition to my arsenal. Dr. Sears expands his advice beyond the baby years, and it couldn’t have come sooner!

4. Sambucus. A combination of echinacea and elderberry, this is available at Sprouts, Whole Foods, and almost any shop in the area that sells vitamins. It’s only for short term use, but it can be used on children ages 1 and up. During the fall and winter months I use this whenever sniffles or a fever surfaces.

5. A trusty physician. Due to changing insurance companies, we’ve had quite a few pediatricians in the last 6 years. Dr. Deborah Bain in Frisco, whose website you can visit here, is a fantastic pediatrician if you’re interested in more natural childcare. Another great choice is Dr. Daniel Chartrand in McKinney (who can great the whole family), whose website you can visit here. What both of these doctors offer are more information and more collaboration in treating your children than I’ve experienced at a lot of other offices. This can mean trying to solve stomach problems by dietary means instead of first reaching for the prescription medication, or giving an ear infection the chance to resolve on its own while you treat the pain so your child is still comfortable.  [For the record, I used both of these physicians until Dr. Chartrand moved to McKinney from Allen, and the birth of our third child made it too difficult to get to appointments in either McKinney or Frisco.] [And I’m receiving no benefit from recommending anything in this article. Donations, however, can be directed to…just kidding!]

No matter which path you take for your child and their medical care, Dallas has options for every parent.  Do you have any natural remedies or hints that have served your family well?