“Only doctor approved medications from this point forward”

Rich has been incredibly tolerant of everyone coming and going and accepting of things that he maybe does not put much stock into. For example, my Haw candy for heartburn and all of my pregnancy teas. By the way, if you come over to my house and I offer you iced tea, it is really organic pregnancy tea specially designed for the third trimester. Sorry to the few males that I didn’t tell that to and drank it in the last few weeks. Don’t worry; you won’t get start producing milk or anything.

As some of you may know, Rich can be very protective and he hasn’t said too much about any of the alternative medicine until this weekend when I had a little incident with some essential oils when he said, “Only doctor approved medications from this point forward.”

My Aunt Rita had sent me some essential oils to help with heartburn. She sent peppermint and lemon oil, both which are holistic or alternative approaches to helping with heartburn. And I’m desperate for anything. The haw candy was working for a while but now I have waves of heartburn accompanied by burning and nausea in the back of my throat after every meal.

The instructions I got to go with oils said that ONE drop of the peppermint oil can be applied to the sole of each foot or the chest or abdomen to help with heartburn. Or one drop of the lemon oil or peppermint oil can be added to a glass of water before drinking to help with heartburn.

So my mom was here this weekend (my mom and Rita are sisters) and she gave me a lovely pedicure and then gave me a peanut butter bagel sandwich to eat lying on the couch while she was fixing dinner. About ½ hour after eating my sandwich I had terrible heartburn and quite frankly felt like I was going to throw up. We decided to try some of the essential oils to see if that would help.

My mom put peppermint oil on the sole of each foot rubbed it in and put my socks back on before dinner. By the way, it takes me about 10 minutes to put on socks myself and entails lots of huffing and puffing and Olympic gold medal worthy gymnastic maneuvering. Anyway, about 5 minutes after “the application” I was walking from the bedroom and I almost passed out. I got very dizzy, shaky and cold and the room started to spin and I ended up sitting down on the floor next to the bed. Rich thought maybe I was dehydrated or got too much sun from being in the pool. I thought I just needed to eat (it had been about 45 minutes since my last meal).

While we were eating my mom very casually said something along the lines of maybe we should wash my feet off because the peppermint oil was maybe too strong for me. She “MAYBE” put too much oil on each foot. She claimed that the oil just ran out of the bottle and I got to a drizzle of oil on each foot rather than a drop. And then said that some oils are used to induce labor.

She assured me the oils used to induce labor are the “crazy oils”, nothing like normal peppermint oil (which just made me almost pass out). I looked at some more literature and it said not to use sage, fennel, wintergreen, or hyssop oil during pregnancy and to check with a health care professional before using oils if you are pregnant.

GREAT. I’ve been on bed rest for 36 days trying to keep the little ones in for as long as possible, only to be undone by a drizzle of oil on each foot. So I’m done with the oils until I check with my doctor when I go on Friday. I think my mom and Rita could not wait any longer to meet the triplets and it was an unconscious conspiracy to put me into labor. Those two sisters sure can be sneaky.