An Introduction

Thank you so much for clicking over to my new venture: Growing Green Sprouts.

Join me as I slowly become the hippie I never thought I wanted to be :)

To begin, in case you don't know me at all--

my name is Audrey and I live in Small Town Connecticut, USA. I have lived here all my life except for a brief stint in Texas. I started dating my now husband at 15 years old. We got married in August 2009 on our 7th anniversary, and had our first and so far only child on July 27, 2011. More than anything, having our daughter and learning how to become a parent has changed me so profusely that there is seldom anything else I do anymore. She is my hobby, my passion, my life!!

That being said, I honestly do not know where we would be if it weren't for the internet and it's resources. So many times I looked at the tiny creature in my arms and thought something is different about me, something is different about you... I want to do things so much differently than what I had heard, seen and done previously that I was in a constant state of confusion. I am combining, here, in this condensed version of our lives, my feelings on gentle/peaceful/natural/Attachment Parenting and also my anxiety of diagnosing what I had dubbed my "high needs" baby. I, like so many in my generation, reached out to the internet for answers, advice, community and friendship.

For us to continue, you must know about my daughter's first 5 days of life and the sequence of events that followed. I will stick to the facts and keep this brief- if you would like to know more about our experiences with vaccine injury, developmental delays, and Sensory Processing Disorder, I welcome you to check out my personal blog You, Me & Sophia, a complete chronological  description of events mentioned below.

From a blog post on You, Me & Sophia:

"Starting with: The first week of Sophia's life (July into August, 2011)

Sophia was like all newborns in the hospital that week, except she was one of the only vaginally birthed ones on our floor (I specifically remember a nurse telling me that all the other moms were either in the OR or recovery). I didn't want her to go to the nursery at first, but seeing as she wasn't eating and I hadn't slept in, 24? hours, at one point the first night I decided to let her go. She came back just as I was falling asleep, supposedly hungry. But I didn't have anything to give her, this being my first baby, I didn't even have colostrum yet.  So she kind of yelled for awhile and then... dun dun dunnnn... we gave her a pacifier. We got released later that day. I was pumping some colostrum, since Sophia still didn't want to nurse, or didn't want to try to, anyway. We fed her with our fingers, dipping a finger into the bottle and letting her eat it off our finger, since the LC told us to. Once we got home, we had to wake Sophia up to feed her. She had no interest in eating. We blew in her face, shook her very gently, took off her clothes, dribbled milk into her mouth... nothing. It was sort of like talking to a rag doll. My milk took 5 days to come in due to this cause and effect relationship.

We finally had to "force" feed her some formula, because her jaundice was coming back, and I of course had phrases like "failure to thrive" bouncing around my head. Out of sheer will and determination, we got the knack of breastfeeding, but only because I am one of the most stubborn people I know, and refused to give up."

 Sophia's "rag doll" symptoms were alarming, scary and at the time: Confusing as hell. Even though it passed, and my milk came in, and she began to thrive, I still questioned this period and deemed it not normal. Come to find out, Sophia had a somewhat common to the vaccination given in the hospital- the newborn Hepatitis B vaccine. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: lethargy, excessive sleepiness, unwillingness to suck, root or latch, and/or aversion or non-attention to environmental stimuli. Despite reporting this to her then pediatrician, who reported it to VAERS (the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), we (regrettably) continued to vaccinate Sophia as I was still unsure. The next two years of her life were more than just a struggle, they were some of the most devastated times in my life. My baby wasn't like the others; she couldn't walk and didn't until after her 2nd birthday.She was diagnosed with "a perfect storm of SPD (sensory processing disorder- namely, vestibular {balance, motor planning}, hypermobility {super flexibility}, and low muscle tone."

Her way of getting around from age 1 to age 2

My baby wasn't like the others; she couldn't walk and didn't until a week after her 2nd birthday. 

I will stop there for the people who have heard all of this before, and encourage those curious to ask questions if you have any. What ended up being a saddening time in our lives ended up being triumphant: I am happy to report that Soph is catching up beautifully. She was evaluated for autism and the conclusion was negative. In the end I think it's so important to say how lucky we truly are. Things could have been so, so, so much worse. I know of several babies whose official cause of death was in fact the Hep B vaccine- a sobering reminder that we are astronomically fortunate. This is why I DO talk about it so much - It is hard to talk about these things, I think you will agree- nobody wants to hear about babies dying, period, and when you bring something as large as vaccination rights into the conversation, forget it. But hopefully this brief history of our experience will help explain why I have some of the passions I do- why I am loudmouthed, opinionated and sometimes downright argumentative. I may not have "almost lost" my baby (as my brain tries to frighten me late at night), granted, her reaction was actually somewhat mild, though scary as it was at the time. She has lasting neurological damage, however, and whether that's from Hep B or some/one of the other vaccines I allowed her to get before stopping all together, I do not know.

But this is where it all started- my mission to keep things green, organic, natural- whichever of those you want to call it - and I am a completely different person now than I ever thought I would be.

Through this blog I hope to share our experiences with the green or "crunchy" side of things- the things I like to do and have a bit of knowledge about. I learned SO MUCH from the internet in the early days of my parenthood and I would love to pass some of that knowledge on. I was extremely lucky to find a group of friends that were also into the things I was interested in: Breastfeeding, Cloth Diapering, Babywearing, etc. It would have been VERY lonely if not for them! I felt like such an oddball at first!

Where are you on your journey? What do you hope to learn more about?