On staying humble as a 'natural mumma'.

Dropping the ego when it matters.

Quick one before I take my eldest daughter on a date on this rainy day!

My youngest child is on antibiotics this week.

Not ideal. Definitely my last resort. But sometimes it’s the right thing.

I am a ‘natural mum’. A bit of a cringey term thanks to social media but you know what I mean.

All three of my babies were born beautifully at home. I’ve breastfed for 7 years and counting. I co-sleep. Have a non toxic (as much as possible) home. I reach for natural remedies and homeopathy and we see a chiropractor as our family practitioner.

I also have studied German New Medicine, and the psycho-somatic relationship between symptoms and our internal mental conflicts.

As you’ve probably read, I also view symptoms as a spiritual thing and my views on illness and wellbeing aren’t conventional. You can read about my journey and my wellness philosophy in my book Body Luxury.

Many of us are naturally minded because we’ve had experiences that caused us to distrust the medical system. Many women my age are still healing from those three Gardasil shots we got when we were in high school. I feel lucky that I seem to have swerved any side effects of it personally— I conceived quickly, I have pretty easy periods, and all that.

Many mums are pissed off at how often they feel bullied by the medical system, particularly around their pregnancy and births. Naturally, they dig deeper, find alternatives and once you follow the yellow brick road it’s not hard to discover how much the medical institutions have been corrupted.

Mothers just want to do the best thing for their babies.

For me, my tendency towards doing things the natural way was intuitive. When my first baby was born at home in 2017, and we declined many of the routinely offered up medical things afterward, people thought I was mad.

I didn’t decline them in some crazy act of rebellion, I declined them because they didn’t make sense to me. I was also a first-class-honour science graduate so I had a science brain as well.

You don’t need to be a world class researcher to notice that medical interventions and treatments that were often reserved purely for life saving situations (antibiotics, C sections) are now often abused and used in unnecessary circumstances.

We are right to be suspicious.

We are right to be discerning.

We are right to learn the true nature of healing.

We are right to try the path of least interference and least damage first when treating our kids for minor, acute things.

But there are also times when we need to be ok with leaning on the medical system when we need it. When it comes to caring for our kids— our ego’s need to take a back seat and we need to do what needs to be done.

It’s similar to birth. We all know beautiful naturally minded mummas who did everything right in planning for their home birth— only to need to be transferred to hospital. We also know the sad situations where mothers declined medical attention in times when they needed it and life was lost. I say that with the utmost compassion for anyone who’s experienced anything like that.

There is simply no room for ego when it comes to our children.

Intuition? Yes.

Discernment? Yes.

Critical thinking and research? Yes.

Advocacy? Absolutely.

But ego? No.

One thing I’ve learned though as a ‘natural mum’ is that you’ve got to stay humble. We should for sure live with our convictions, our beliefs and by our God given intuition— but we have to leave a little room for open mindedness, softer thinking too.

When we are too rigid in our thinking, often life will soften us by humbling us.

Sometimes we resist the medical institution because we fear it. I know this has been true for me. I witnessed my nanna die because of medical clumsiness. That stayed with me.

I’ve had my own experiences with hospitals like when I was 24 weeks pregnant with my second child, living in London with severe food poisoning, sitting on the floor of the labour and delivery department violently vomiting in a paper bag. Women were walking up and down the halls in front of me literally in labour and I was trying to cover my face so they didn’t have to witness a barfing woman in the most vulnerable moment of their lives. A nurse would frequently come and check the hardness of my abdomen to make sure my baby was ok. The hospital was so busy, I ended up discharging myself and riding it out for 5 days at home.

That isn’t a traumatising story, to be clear. Just one I felt like sharing. I’ve been admitted at the age of 18 for pylonephritis, a secondary kidney infection— now that was not fun. But again, not traumatising.

I remember when my first born Sol was 5 ish months old, the hemangeoma she had on her chin burst. We took her to the doctor immediately because it wouldn’t stop bleeding. The doctor told us to come back if the gauze had bled through in 24 hours. Well, we turned to walk home and within 5 minutes it had bled out. We took her to emergency and it was cauterised. This was the first out of FOUR times in different hospitals around the world, we ended up in emergency with her needing to have it cauterised. One doctor told us she would need plastic surgery. She wasn’t even one !!

We decided to weigh our options. It was scary that she could scratch the spot at any time and we would need to race to the hospital, so we weren’t ignoring it, that’s for sure. But plastic surgery? No.

I did some research and tried a little something. I put apple cider vinegar on it (that old chestnut) and covering it with a cotton ball and a bandaid. I was watching her every night regularly because I was terrified it would bleed unstoppably again. After about nine days and on her first birthday, the spot fell off.

This one night, in one of my frequent checks on her, I realised it had started bleeding. I picked her up, put her on the boob with the spot resting on my boob so pressure applied— in the morning it was fully resolved. It disappeared. She has not a single mark there now.

I mean, if we had to choose between apple cider vinegar or plastic surgery…

When my middle child Pax was 2.5, he swallowed a coin in rural Italy. You can read about it here. I won’t go into details because I wrote about it in 2022 when it happened but we spent a night in a rural italian hospital (they were incredible doctors and nurses by the way— I was so grateful for them).

Here’s my little babe, still breastfeeding, having IV antibiotics and anaesthesia. They even gave us a course of strong probiotics to take home and rebuild him. They have a really good health system over there.

Anyway my point is— when it’s an emergency situation, you do what you need to do.

In moments like these, you realise how dam grateful you are for emergency medicine, and although you don’t choose it for lifestyle medicine, you appreciate the enormous good it does in the world.

Yes, it has been infiltrated by money hungry thugs.

Yes, it causes a lot of harm and death. I believe that.

But also, there are absolute angels on this EARTH in emergency medicine jobs and THANK GOD FOR THEM.

When it comes to antibiotics— no, they’re not something any of us would dose our kids with without it being necessary. We definitely should not abuse them like many do. Antibiotic resistance is rampant now and I think many mainstream doctors are recognising this.

But if you do find yourself in a situation where your child needs them— remember that they have been a blessing in many life saving situations too.

They’re not always abused. They have saved a lot of lives also.

You know how to rebuild your child. You know all the natural mumma tricks.

My little babe Figgy is healing swiftly. She’s still on the boob at two and a half. I understand the emotional implications of skin situations (separation conflict) and I am also aware that this happened the day after we started night weaning (which is now off the table. Still feeding in the night!) so…

But I know as a mum I made the right call in her having the support of a very short course of antibiotics this time. I know it wont be a regular occurrence. I know she will be built up and with a sparkly inner flora again.

I have been saying to her what I have always said to my big kids too — Figgy, your body is so clever. It always knows exactly what to do. It’s always doing what it needs to do. What a clever body you have.

I am so grateful for the amazing self healing mechanisms inbuilt in us by God. I am so grateful for all of the knowledge of the true nature of healing and illness. I am so grateful for all the down-the-rabbit-hole knowledge i have and for all of the clever teachers who have taught me across many health and wellbeing modalities. I am so grateful to live a healthy, natural life and to give that to my children.

I am also so grateful for modern medicine when I need it.

Love,

PK XXX

PS. You can find all of my books AND my new class on reclaiming your creative territory on my website www.petakelly.com.