Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Thankful Thursdays: Count Your Blessings and Link-up

Psalm 107 (NIV)

¹Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving day. ML is busy cooking us up a turkey and I am working on the sides and desserts. We are having a small celebration at our house today with close friends but will miss spending time with our families.

After the friends and food are gone we will be getting our Christmas on. Carols will be playing, decor going up, and hot chocolate will be served! Watch out Noah. Your parent’s may go a little crazy tonight.

Now it’s your turn. Link up your post sharing what you are thankful for. Not a blogger but still thankful? No worries, leave a comment below sharing what you are thankful. I look forward to hearing from everyone. It is such a blessing each week! I’ll be back next week with our final Thankful Thursday post and linkup.

Don’t forget to join Color Transformed Family every Thursday in November as we give thanks for all the blessings God has given us. Grab a button on the sidebar and spread the word.

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Linking up at:

Davonne Parks, Great Peace Academy, Imparting Grace, New Life Steward

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Thankful Thursday’s: Freedom

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Happy Thanksgiving! For this final post in the Thankful Thursday’s series, I wanted to share how my life has dramatically changed since last Thanksgiving.

Ever since I was nine, I have suffered from migraines. I’m talking about the kind that put you in bed and make it incredibly hard to think because the pain is so bad. With the help of preventative drugs, I was able to reduce them to around 2-3 a week. I also took up to nine “triptans” a month (medicine you take when you have a bad migraine) and muscle relaxers for my TMJ and neck pains related to the migraines. You would expect that with this much medication, the migraines would have been fewer than that. They weren’t though. I didn’t really complain but just accepted it as part of my life. I found comfort in the fact that I wouldn’t have this problem once in Heaven.

Last fall, when Michael Luke and I started to plan to expand our family, we also began to look at our options for migraine pain management. I wouldn’t have been able to take any of the medication I was on while pregnant and needed to come off of everything before we even started trying. This completely terrified me… I knew my migraines would only get worse, and I didn’t know how I would function. My neurologist suggested I try a nerve block… it didn’t work. We were left wondering what to do.

Meanwhile, we started noticing trends that might be triggering the migraines. One of them was food around the holidays. Christmas of 2009 I basically had to skip out on because of a two day migraine. I just traveled from house to house, found a bedroom and hoped the pain would stop. The same thing happened last Thanksgiving. Even causing me to miss work the following week.

After beginning to question the effect of food on my migraines, I started doing some research. I found the book Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain. The reviews on Amazon were great, so I decided to order it and give the program a try. Dr. Buchholtz does an incredible job of explaining why we have headaches and how we could be making the problem worse.

What does the program consist of? First, you have to come off all your medicine… cold turkey. This part made me nervous. Even the reviews I read said this was the worst part. And it was. I had to give up everything I had ever found any relief in. I remember having one of the worst migraines I had ever had after doing this; and to top it all off, I couldn’t even take any medicine to help ease the pain.

Thankfully, step 2 was simultaneous with step 1 and helped to decrease/eliminate the migraines. Step 2 was to remove any foods that could be a trigger for migraines. It was a long list of food… a list that contained many foods I loved and depended on for cooking, such as chocolate, onions, cheese, and citrus fruits. Can you imagine giving up chocolate during the holidays? Do you know how much willpower that takes for a chocolate lover like me? I seriously doubted myself at first but really wanted to know if a life without migraines was possible. So I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try.

The elimination of medication and trigger foods was a way to detox the body. All possible triggers had to be eliminated for eight weeks. I went twelve for good measure. Within 2-3 weeks of being on the diet, my migraines were almost completely gone. And if I had any pain, I was able to treat it with plain old Tylenol. Tylenol had never worked for me before!

This new found life without pain was amazing! I didn’t wake up every morning wondering if the day would be pain free or not. After eight weeks of the diet, foods can be added back one at a time each week to find out if they are triggers. My triggers are MSG, soy, pork, and nitrates/processed foods. Since MSG is in so many foods (not just Chinese food, people), we eat a more “whole foods” diet. At first, it was a little difficult because I had to tweak the way I cooked, but now it feels natural. Plus we are eating healthier.

The best part of the whole diet is that I didn’t even need step 3. Step 3 was to add a preventive medication if there were still occasional migraine headaches.

This program allowed me to try and become pregnant without suffering from migraine pain. The diet that I once dreaded I now find gives me freedom. Freedom because I don’t have to worry about when my next migraine will be anymore. How crazy is it that I don’t even need medications to prevent my migraines? If you suffer from them and are looking for freedom, give this diet a try.

Note: I’ll be back next week with more design projects!

Update: Heal Your Headache: The 1-2-3 Program for Taking Charge of Your Pain can be found to the right on the Products I Love Amazon Affiliate Link.

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Thankful Thursdays: Noah

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I did not intend to skip last week’s Thankful Thursdays post but we had a surprise last Wednesday… I went into labor. It really wasn’t that much of a surprise to Michael Luke and me since we had had several signs to let us know it wasn’t far away, but still we didn’t know what day everything would happen.

My biggest fear all along was that my water would break while I was at work. I just didn’t know how I would handle it if it did since I work with a lot of guys. I just kept picturing scenes from movies where the woman’s water breaks and fluid goes everywhere. What a way to say goodbye to all my coworkers.

Well, thankfully there was no big gush, but I was at work when my water broke and labor started. It happened while I and a coworker were in a meeting with one of our clients at their office! I knew as soon as it happened, so for the remaining two hours of the meeting, I just tried to remain as still as possible, hoping the rest of it would stay inside. It worked.

Some people have been surprised that I kept working, but what was I supposed to do? Blurt out, “Uh… I think my water broke. Is it ok if I go check?” Yeah, that would have been embarrassing. Especially if it had been a false alarm. I was still two weeks away from my due date, and in all honesty, the contractions weren’t that bad… at this point. I was never able to time them, but I did know they were coming in a rhythm and getting more intense.

On my way home from work, I called Michael Luke and asked him what he thought about November 10. When he asked why, I replied, “I think our little girl may be born then!” Once I was home, we finished packing the last few things and then started some of the labor exercises we had practiced. We planned to use the Bradley Method as a form of relaxation and hoped for a natural birth.

Of all days I forgot to take a snack to work, it was the day that I went into labor. I had always planned that I would eat good before I went to the hospital to prepare for the hours without food. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the stomach for anything… especially the left over pizza we had. I did have a craving for chicken noodle soup though. But since I can’t eat canned soup my chances of getting some were slim. I finally decided that maybe egg drop soup would satisfy my craving since there is a Chinese restaurant less than a mile from our house. So Michael Luke went and picked up an order of egg drop soup. Well, they must have misunderstood him because we ended up with sweet and sour (mostly sour) egg drop soup. I wonder how many people get a craving for that before going to the hospital. Haha. I wasn’t able to eat but a few bites.

We weren’t quite sure when to head to the hospital. They advise to come when the contractions are four minutes apart, one minute long and for one hour. Mine had been two to three minutes apart, thirty seconds to a minute long but still a little varied. So around 9:00 that night, we packed up and headed to the hospital.

I was already 5 cm dilated when I got there. The labor pains were really intense laying down and I was ready to break down for an epidural in the triage room. Thankfully, I remembered that sitting up was another position to try. So for the rest of the night, I sat up on the bed and worked on relaxing my entire body and taking deep breaths. Michael Luke was an incredible coach and encouraged me the entire time. I think he was as tired as I was by the end of the night. He massaged my back for almost five hours straight and was standing the entire time after being on his feet all day at work. The nurses were all amazed at how well I was doing. They said by looking at me they wouldn’t have known I was already dilated that much because I was handling the pain so well. At 3:00 Thursday morning they checked me again to let me know I was 6 1/2 cm dilated. The pain was starting to get worse, and I was tired. I knew at this point I would have been up for twenty-four hours by the time she arrived, so I decided to take the epidural.

I don’t regret it at all looking back. After the epidural, Michael Luke and I were able to sleep for forty-five minutes. I wish it could have been a little longer, but I was already dilated at 8 1/2 to 9 cm once the epidural was started. Even that little bit of rest was nice though. So we got our little nap in, woke up and started pushing. About forty minutes later, I was holding our little girl Noah in my arms. What a blessing!

Our new happy family!