What’s up my baby makers. So today was another very low energy day for me. I am about 6 months pregnant and for the last couple days I have barely moved out of the bed. I think it has a lot to do with the cold weather here in Georgia that is settling in.
Even though I want to move somewhere warmer, during this pregnancy I am not too enthusiastic about traveling all over the place. we did a lot of traveling last year around this time, on and off, for 6 months straight. So I feel like I just got back. I just don’t know if I’m really ready for that again, especially with a big belly in front of me–traveling around in a car.
Even though we could do the hotel thing again, that just doesn’t seem realistic to me anymore. The last time we traveled there were certain places in certain states that just did not have any reasonable hotels because they were either too touristy, like Key West, or just not visitor friendly enough like L.A.–specially with a big family. Something to keep in mind if you plan on having more than three or four children.
I Stopped Washing My Rice
Anyways let’s talk about food! Food is the main reason why I even want to make this blog. I have noticed that as I’ve gotten older I cannot eat some of the same things that I used to. It may not be that I can I eat them, it’s just that maybe when I was younger I was adhering to more rules. My mom would say, “wash the rice” and I washed it religiously–for years.
Now that I’m more independent and I’m testing out different ways of living, I’ve noticed that not washing rice has led to me having the worst migraines. In fact, I may have actually figured out what has been causing my migraines my entire life by doing this little experiment.
For example when I don’t wash a certain particular type of rice, mainly white rice, I notice I get headaches and it doesn’t matter if I have been eating rice throughout the week or if I haven’t eaten white rice for a whole month. I haven’t ate rice for about 2 weeks and last night when I ate rice before I could even finish my plate, which wasn’t a big plate. Actually it was pretty big. My second oldest daughter shared out of big plate for me but I was only going to eat a quarter of it. Before I could finish eating even a quarter of it I got a headache.
So let’s back up a bit. So we made some black beans last night and it was time to make the rice and my daughter wanted to make the rice, so I let her. I helped her to measure out how much rice we needed, made sure that she put enough water in the pot and that was all good. Except she did not rinse the rice!
Now I’ve noticed that I can get away with eating jasmine rice without washing it all the time, but with white rice I have been noticing that I have to wash the rice no matter what. And that was a big mistake that we made last night because she did not wash the rice although I told her to.
Even though she volunteered to cook the rice, I feel like she kind of just fell off halfway through and decided that she didn’t want to do it anymore, because there was still time for her to wash the rice. She had just put on a pot and came in the room and I sent her back to go and rinse rice and she said she could not because she put it on the stove. But realistically, there was still time since the water wasn’t hot. But I let it slide, thinking that “I haven’t ate rice for such a long time maybe this time wouldn’t hurt”?.
Wrong! Before I knew it I was holding my head, with a bowl of food in my lap, ready to go to my bed with a headache. It slightly went away but not long enough before it returned and I was out for the night.
I had this headache all night long. While I was asleep I had it. When I woke up in the morning I had it, all the way up until very recently. And it’s about 6:24pm right now.
Why I Stopped Washing Rice?
In case you’re wondering why I ever stopped washing my rice sometimes… Traveling and being on the road had a lot to do with it. Sometimes using water to wash rice was just not a priority. But when you change your routine, it can be a challenge to get back on top of things. But I am. Turst me!
I don’t know if this had anything to do with my pregnancy and I highly doubt it. But having food related headaches doesn’t make it easier when you are pregnant. When you’re pregnant this far along, there’s things that you need to do, things that you really want to get done and you don’t want to put off because you know once the baby comes you can’t.
It’s now or never. Almost every second counts and every day counts and today is no different. So combined with my already decreased energy that I’ve been experiencing over the last week or so, and the cold weather, plus having to deal and prepare for other things going on around the house, having a headache is just something I did not want to deal with.
Am I A Sucker For Pain?
Listen, I have not taken any type of Tylenol or over the counter medication for, I don’t know how long especially for headaches. I stopped taking Tylenol for headaches when I was 15 or 16. I realized they were not working for my periods or my headaches and that I was just taking more pills and more pills. More Tylenol or Advil and neither of them was doing anything. So I had just quit taking them all together. I said I’m just going to deal with this headache or this cramp myself.
Being pregnant doesn’t make it any easier, like I said, but there are some things that I do now to avoid just having to suffer in pain. There about three go-to things that I do.
Peppermint Essential Oil
The first thing that I might do is take a drop of peppermint essential oil under my tongue. This usually provides relief within a few minutes and last for maybe up to 20 to 30 minutes or if I’m lucky it’ll just wipe the headache right out. But sometimes it doesn’t work so I have to try something else.
Sea Salt
The second other method that I might try is some salt water. I mix about one table spoon in a tall glass of water. I’ll drink about two of those. But today something different happened because I thought we didn’t have any sea salt. I could not find a sea salt since last week so I’ve just been using regular table salt until I can remember to get some sea salt.
There were two bottles of regular iodized table salt which we rarely ever have.
Of course when I need it there’s two non bottles of sea salt in the house. But surprisingly I found a sea salt and I wasn’t even looking for it! We were just organizing the pantry. I was just trying to do anything to take my mind off the headaches which helps too. Then we just so happen to find the sea salt.
It was exactly where I had looked for it previously but it wasn’t there but this time it was there?! So usually I drink about two tall glasses of this. That amount often might do the trick. I should have kept that in mind because I didn’t drink two Tall Glasses of sea salt this time.
The reason being I had drank one small glass of about 22 oz of the sea salt water and then another glass of the sea salt water. Combined, that was just like one glass total and one glass wasn’t even sea salt. So that didn’t work this time.
I don’t know what it is about me and pain–especially labor pain. When it comes to me in pain it seems as though all my remedies go out the window. Like I just forget about what works and I just go into a zone of just suffering the pain. I had to work really hard this time to say, “you know what, I can’t just sit here all day in pain.” I finally said okay let me try some peppermint essential oil and next I actually tried cayenne pepper.
Cayenne Pepper
Cayenne pepper for headaches is something I’m pretty new to but I learned about this from my children’s father because he loves cayenne pepper and loves pepper.
Cayenne pepper give me relief from a headache 99% of the time. However, I might have to do a second application because I usually wipe or blow it away for reasons I’ll tell you below.
In order to do use it you have to either dip your finger in a bottle of cayenne pepper or pour cayenne pepper in your hand and stick your pinky finger up both nostrils once its been saturated with cayenne pepper. And then let it burn–for about 5 minutes.
Cayenne pepper just seems to give you the illusion of pain from the burning sensation but for me, it gets rid of real pain. It has a sort of pain numbing quality and I think that has something to do with its ability to open your capillaries or your blood vessels.
So that is what I’ve been going through today! I’m not sure if I have what is called syliac disease, but I do think I may have always been allergic to arsenic even in low levels. We ate a lot of rice growing up and I’ve had headaches since I was about nine years old.
Changing Grains
Now that I have been eating less rice and more ancient grains and colorful carbs, I am able to identify certain foods that trigger different things in me. White rice is definitely a major culprit. But it’s a bit hard to curb since we get it free and nobody else is affected but me.
I’m also the only one who is willing to go long term eating other types of grains like quinoa, kamut and spelt. Or even colorful carbs like pumpkin and other winter squashes. I love them, but most of my children aren’t crazy about it unless I season it just right which I’m not always up for a. I can eat them plain by itself.
I hope you found this information useful and maybe even prevented a headache during your pregnancy or journey. I will look forward to making more blogs like this with just little updates of my pregnancy journey. If you want more definitely subscribe to my blog, and my newsletter and look out for more. Thanks for reading. Peace!
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