**Spoiler alert! To get to the really delicious cookie recipe, you have to read through lots of stuff about babies and what they do to your body. If you are squeamish or eating your breakfast, skip to the end!**

Friends of ours have just had a perfect, squishy, smiling, amazing-smelling baby and I confess my ovaries felt a little lively. So much so, that I opened our first family album to reminisce. That was an effective contraceptive. For all 365 days of 2008 I wore an expression of bewildered exhaustion as if someone had engraved “WTF!” on my brow. It’s the look that comes with understanding a) what it takes to get a baby out of your you-know-where and b) that sleep as you know it, is over. I lost that expression after a year or so but largely because I had learnt to fake it. Obviously I adored my children — I mean I would literally lay down my life for them — but it took me a while to come to terms with my new reality.

Eventually I understood that while people say wonderful things to pregnant women, they also tell them Barefaced Lies. “Don’t worry, you can sleep when the baby sleeps!” HAHAHAHAHA! When Chloe was sleeping I was pumping. I don’t mean iron. I mean, I literally attached a milking machine to my chest while my LH sat next to me supportively. And when I say “supportively”, understand that he sat next to me and proceeded to say “moooooo!” under his breath (while giggling like a schoolboy). If I hadn’t been so worried about spilling those precious golden drops, I would have suffocated him with a breast pad.

Lie number two: “You have the kind of body that will bounce back.” A nice thing to say, but also FALSE. Admittedly I have been lucky with the outer shell. But nobody told me about the demolition on the inside. I still remember my surprise the first time I got into a hot tub. Also, it’s been seven years and I still can’t bounce with my kids on a trampoline without wearing Depends. Please don’t tell me to do kegels — because I do those religiously every day on the school run. My children think I am listening to them reading, but really I am counting sets of 20.

I could go on. But my intention here is neither to put you off having children, nor to appear flippant about the amazing enrichment of our (exhausted, financially crippled) lives. Life as I know it is over and love as I know it is over too. But not in a bad way. We all know the love for our spouses is conditional. In our house it’s conditional on serious things like trust, and not so serious things like putting the top back on kitchen items (anyone else have that problem?). But having kids was the first time I experienced completely, openly, honestly unconditional love. I imagine this is true for most other parents too. Sure there are days when we don’t like our kids (when they are playing endlessly with annoying toys, or refuse to talk and spend the whole day barking like a dog), but we always love them. Even when we are drowning in homework and laundry and lunch boxes and life, we know we would shatter without them.

Given those sentiments, kids’ nutrition is obviously something that’s close to my heart. The tricky part is when our children are young and feel invincible. How do we get them to understand how precious those little bodies are? We certainly don’t want to clip their wings and yet we are programmed to protect them too. I know many parents who are torn between letting their kids do “awesome kid stuff” and wanting to keep them in a bubble. Whether it’s adventurous activity or simple nutrition, I think the same conflict applies.

Most of our kids haven’t had the bad luck of experiencing poor health. My own epiphany came when I was almost 19. I had been working in Uganda and contracted giardia and amoebic dysentery. The combination of the parasites and the drugs used to treat them left me with an outrageously sensitive stomach. I also became completely lactose intolerant then too, so it was fun times in the bathroom all around. I didn’t want to drive my car in case I got stuck in traffic. I was scared of going out with my friends in case the toilets were out of reach. Ultimately I was scared I wouldn’t make it in time. Not very glamorous.

I’d basically been left with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. To me it seemed less of a diagnosis and more a description of symptoms of unknown cause. My weight dropped and my anxiety rocketed. I was ready to try pretty much anything. So when a nutritionist gave me some liquid vitamins and a healthy but restrictive meal plan, I didn’t complain. Although I’d been brought up with healthy family meals, I also had years of drinking blue cocktails and eating Supernoodles under my belt. It was a massive adjustment, but it was also the beginning of my recovery — and as it turns out, the start of my career. My weight and quality of life had improved so radically that I was completely won over.

But while I’ve experienced how good nutrition can help recovery and prevent disease, it’s hard to package that up and give it to my kids. Like any life-lesson, they will likely have to learn it for themselves. So what do we do in the meantime? It’s tempting to say “let them be kids” and give them a free-for-all at all the “fun” stuff. But based on US produce and culture, our food environment is crazy at the moment. With antibiotics and growth hormone in our animal products, suspect GMOs throughout our oils and grain, pesticides all over our produce and dyes in practically everything …. I’m not sure apathy is the best thing. I’m tempted to say that we should treat nutrition as a health and safety issue. We give our children helmets, we strap them into cars, so should we not help them avoid dietary damage too?

So where do we begin and how do we find the fine line? The line that is effective, without blanketing food in fear. I honestly think it has to start with cleaning up our own diets. As parents, caregivers or influencers in our children’s lives, we are their first role models when it comes to food. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting there should never be any treats (on the contrary) but perhaps we can show them a better way to make them.

If you’re open to it, then this recipe is a great example of how to clean up a classic chocolate chip cookie. I just road-tested it with some mums who loved it and I hope you will too! At the end of the day, it’s still a cookie and it does contain sugar, so it definitely falls into the “moderation” category or the “yellow light” category as we call it in Natural Kids. But it’s also packed with oats and a healthy dose of chia seed. This provides lots of fibre to help create a more sustained energy release rather than a vicious peak and dip. This recipe is also gluten-free, but just uses a mix of almond and brown rice flour (in addition to the gluten-free oats) so there are no highly processed “alternative” flours or fats here. If you don’t need to be gluten-free, you could try replacing the flours with white wholewheat.

Chia and Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes approximately 14)

Ingredients:

DRY:

1 scant cup small oats (gluten-free if need be)

½ cup almond flour or ground almonds from the baking section

½ cup brown rice flour

½ cup sugar (I used organic cane sugar)

¼ cup mini chocolate chips (gluten/dairy-free if need be eg Enjoy Life)

1/8 cup chia seed

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

WET:

1 large egg

½ cup safflower or grapeseed oil (you can use melted coconut oil if you like the flavour)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

1. Using a hand whisk, whisk the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the wet in another.

2. Combine the two bowls and stir well with a wooden spoon, using your hands if necessary to completely form the dough.

3. Chill the dough in the fridge for 1-2 hours.

4. Preheat oven to 355F. Lightly oil a large baking sheet.

5. Roll the dough into small golf balls (should make approximately 14), flatten halfway and space apart on the tray.

6. Bake for 12 minutes, at which point open the oven briefly and lightly flatten the top of each cookie again, this time with the back of a fork.

7. Bake for another 2-3 minutes until very lightly golden.

8. Leave to cool COMPLETELY on the rack before transferring to a plate or storage.

9. Enjoy!

The advice given in this article is not intended to replace medical advice, but to complement it. Always consult your GP if you have any health concerns. Catherine Burns BA Hons, Dip ION is the managing director of Natural Ltd and a fully qualified nutritional therapist trained by the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in the UK. Please note that she is not a registered dietitian. For details, please go to www.natural.bm or call 236-7511. Join Catherine on Facebook: www.facebook.com/nutrifitandnaturalnutritionbermuda