Better Beginnings is a series that I started last year that follows my daughter’s eating during her first few years.  I try to document some fun and different ways that I find to get healthy foods into her diet to set her up for a healthy life!  If you want to catch up here are the last two installments:

• Better Beginnings Part I
• Better Beginnings Part II

Disclaimer: This post talks about poop so if you don’t want to read it come back tomorrow!

When I was young I had some serious bowel issues.  So much that I was scared when the time came to go to the bathroom, and I would hold it until my stomach started to hurt.  My mom tried everything to get me to go to the bathroom more often.  I even remember a time when she made me eat bran cereal (the stuff that looks like tiny twigs from a tree) and when I wouldn’t eat the whole bowl, she put it in the fridge for later.  Ever had cereal after it’s been sitting in the fridge for a few hours?  I’m sure you can imagine.  Luckily, I think she was using it more as a “don’t waste food” tactic because I don’t remember actually having to eat the soggy bowl of bran.

These bowel issues followed me into my adult life and when I was about 21 I decided that I needed to do something about it.  The problem was that I had gone so long with these GI issues that it was hard to get my colon back on track.  I tried eating a LOT of fiber, and then I started taking Metamucil 3 times a day (to this day I still take a glassful of Metamucil at night).  I started seeing a little improvement, but mostly I started to get an obsession with the topic of poop (my family will tell you that a conversation always comes to poop with me).

When I was 25 I decided that I was going to try getting A colonic (click here for more information, if you really want to know what it is).  The colonic specialist I went to suggested that if you are having bowel issues you should get 4 colonics in 1 year, and you will see a major improvement in your GI tract, and strengthen your colon because it is forced to expel the water, which is like a workout for your colon.

Let me just say that the story of the colonic is one of my Dad’s favorite stories to tell people about me.  My family laughs ever time I mention it just because it was a HORRIBLE experience!  The reason it was horrible is because I should have done some prep work before I had it done, and when I went into it I had no idea what was going to take place. (if you want to hear the story, or if you have questions about the process you can email me at shrinkingcarriewww at gmail dot com).  But I will say that my colon had a 180 difference and I would do it again in a heart beat.

What this whole post has to do with Better Beginnings for my daughter

I am bound and determined to not let my daughter have these same issues.  They were painful, and pretty traumatizing for me as a child.  I go as far as to cheer a little when she poops, and make sure to not make a big deal of changing poopy diapers.  I don’t want her to think pooping is negative or secret.  EVERYBODY POOPS!!!

One thing that I have noticed is when my daughter has dairy products she gets constipated.  When I started to do the 21-day Vegan Kickstart I decided that I would have Hanna follow along as much as she could (although, she still LOVES yogurt and it is the only dairy product she is really eating right now).  I switched her over to Soy milk (she was never a fan of whole milk anyway, and she actually LIKES the soy milk), and she eats almost everything that I eat.  The only problem is that I have to keep it interesting for her.  She is not like her mama and she can’t eat the same thing for most meals, she craves variety.  Especially at breakfast time.

This morning I decided that I was going to find an egg-free, dairy-free french toast recipe and I found a good one!  I found it on the website Must Follow Recipes.  She doesn’t blog on there anymore, but she has left up the website so that you can still make her recipes.

I assembled my ingredients. Great Harvest Cracked Wheat bread, flour, canola oil, vanilla soy milk, unsweetened applesauce, and cinnamon.

This mixture turned out VERY thick so you need to be careful when you dip the bread that you don’t overcoat it.  You can also scrape some of it off the bread before you put it in the skillet.

Finished product.  I don’t know if it’s because my stove sucks or if it’s just the recipe, but they need to cook for quite some time.  I cooked them on Low (learned that anything higher will burn them) and had to cook them for almost 10 minutes on each side.  Which is why I made an entire batch today and then froze them for future breakfasts.  It made 5 slices.

The result:

Happy baby that poops at least twice a day!