Holistic comes home
With attention to body, mind and spirit, Columbia parents empower themselves on issues such as medicine, food and even birth methods.

Madeleine Carter is learning to breathe. She might be only 3, but she started yoga two weeks ago. The exercises are already making her happier. Her mom, Paula Carter, 38, works outside the home, and Madeleine attends day care. It makes for a busy life, and Carter said that based on some recent behavior, she thought Madeleine could use a little help with anger management.

“I thought she would latch right on to kid yoga,” Carter said.

She was right.

“I heard her talking to her dolls the other day,” Carter said. “She was teaching them how to breathe.”

Carter said “kid yoga” is one thing she has chosen to sample from the world of holistic alternatives, a world she discovered while she was pregnant.

“When my husband and I were born, our mothers were knocked out during the birth,” she said. “We both came from traditional child-rearing: Spank them and put them in a playpen.”

Carter also has sought less confrontational parenting methods in raising her daughters, Madeleine and her little sister, Erin, 2. Carter nursed her children, carried them in a sling and let them sleep with her.

“Everybody in the older generation thinks we’re a little crazy,” she said.

In yoga class recently, Madeleine was joined by 5-year-old Aubrielle Maginness and her sister, Savannah, 3. The children stretched out on mats for their hourlong class at alleyCat Yoga. Carter and Ginny Chadwick watched from the wings.

“Aubrielle loves yoga,” Chadwick, her mom, said. “We can’t miss it. She is very low-key, and this suits her personality. This helps her to feel at one with herself.”

Like most parents, Carter and Chadwick want their children to grow up healthy and happy — and whole.

Chadwick, 28, buys from local farmers and feeds her family organically grown foods. She doesn’t shop at chain grocery stores but instead goes to The Root Cellar, Clovers Natural Foods, Main Squeeze, Uprise Bakery and Peace Nook.

“We also want the kids to know where the food comes from,” she said.

Chadwick and her husband, Alexander Maginness, teach their children to be stewards of the Earth. The couple has rehabilitated an old bungalow with recycled and earth-friendly materials, and Maginness rides his bike to work.

They also have learned to take an active role in medical decisions that previous generations generally left to their doctors. When Aubrielle was born, a doctor told Chadwick that she wasn’t making enough milk and that she needed to supplement with formula. Chadwick instead found a nursing consultant through La Leche League who helped her solve the milk shortage.

When Savannah was born with clubfoot, the orthopedic surgeon thought her parents were nuts when they moved to Dallas so their daughter could undergo a far less invasive approach than traditional treatments. The process took a little longer and required Chadwick to help with physical therapy, but it was worth it, she said.

“Savannah is doing great,” Chadwick said.

“Becoming a parent opens your mind,” said Laurel Walter, a family physician at Whole Health Family Practice. Walter combines traditional and alternative healing therapies in her practice and takes a “holistic approach to medicine and parenting.”

Holistic care entails “searching for deeper connections between body, mind and spirit,” she said.

For a long time, traditional medicine just dealt with the body, she said. Today, more doctors are beginning to take a three-dimensional approach to treating people.

Walter welcomes her patients’ participation in their choices.

“We live in an age of information and enlightenment. We have access to science and information. Parents now have the tools to make informed, healthy choices for their children and for themselves,” she said.

Holistic parenting doesn’t look the same for every family, she said. The common thread is an “understanding of and appreciation for the complexity of our children.”

Seven months ago, Nicole K-Weber gave birth to her daughter at home. “It was an empowering experience for me,” she said. On the other hand, she said, she understands that home birth isn’t for every mom.

Some holistic parents choose to “co-sleep” with their young in a family bed. K-Weber does not. “We keep a crib in the room, but we don’t let Opal cry herself to sleep,” she said.

Recently, K-Weber, 26, moved to Columbia from Florida. In looking for like-minded parents who were open to healthy, alternative methods, she offered to revive a support and education group called MotherCraft. This week, she and Opal also attended the first meeting of a local chapter of a national parenting group called the Holistic Moms Network. Sarah Forck, a pregnant mother of a 2-year-old boy, organized the chapter. Forck is a personal trainer and part-owner of the Hacienda Perdomo Wellness Spa and Retreat. The spa offers chiropractic care, acupuncture, reflexology and massage, and homeopathic tinctures.

Forck, 30, and her business partner, Caroline Perdomo, were attracted to Holistic Moms because it takes a “nonjudgmental, open-minded approach to parenting,” she said. For instance, “I chose not to take all the tests the doctors offered during this pregnancy, but I will not be delivering at home.”

The Holistic Moms Network, founded in 2002 in New Jersey, has more than 80 chapters around the country, Forck said.

Sonia O’Donnell started a chapter in Jefferson City last June. Her group has grown to 15.

“I think there is a great interest in alternative parenting methods, be it home schooling, vaccination issues, breast-feeding, alternative medicine or healthy eating,” she said.

The national mission, according to a Holistic Moms brochure, is to “generate national awareness, education and support for holistic parenting, and to provide a nurturing, open-minded and respectful community for parents to share these ideals.”

Moms at the meeting said they want to learn more about a variety of parenting and healthy-living issues, including the use of organic foods, the pros and cons of eating dairy, the pros and cons of vaccinating, remedies for allergies, natural birth methods, and healthy foods for toddlers.

Mostly, they all agreed, they want to make educated decisions about raising their children, helping them be healthy and whole.

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Reach Marcia Vanderlip at (573) 815-1718 or mvanderlip@tribmail.com.

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