While waiting to see if I'd actually gotten pregnant naturally, I set about intensifying my mission of cleaning up my body and my environment to make both ideal for my children. Images of twin girls were definitely dancing in my head, and as we'd had names picked out for years, I already knew exactly who they were. The image of my daughters was so clear in my mind, I already felt like I knew them. I wanted them to have a perfect home while they were growing in me, and a super healthy one when they were born, too.

Though I'd already been a vegetarian since I was 20, I still ate a lot of processed "healthy" foods, mostly out of convenience. I decided to start eating more fresh foods and to eat an anti-inflammatory diet. Since I'd had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis since I was 16, reducing inflammation was always a goal of mine, but now I decided to do it through diet rather than medicine. I couldn't take my regular arthritis medicines when I was pregnant anyway, and I'd had the condition long enough that it had almost burned itself out naturally, as it often does. There was very little disease activity showing on my two most recent sets of blood work.

I purchased a cookbook called "Clean Cuisine" that was written by a woman who cured herself of multiple sclerosis through an anti-inflammatory diet. I was already following her on Facebook and had tried some of her recipes she posted there, so going all-in with the cookbook seemed like a good start. There were lots of fresh, organic veggies and no refined sugars and no gluten in these recipes. After a couple of weeks of eating from the cookbook, I noticed that the non-allergic rhinitis symptoms that had plagued me for the past year and a half were dramatically reduced. I no longer needed to flush my sinus cavities every night to stop coughing. I think the lack of gluten contributed greatly to that improvement. If I noticed a definite health improvement so soon after starting to eat this way, I definitely wanted to continue with it. What else would improve? And what else could I do to make everything perfectly perfect for my kids?