My Candida story – how I beat Candida

Part One

I have been wanting to write a blog post for some time to explain how I came to discover Candida overgrowth and also share some of my personal experiences about how much it affected my life at the time. I want to share this part of my story because I hope it helps other women in the same situation I was. There is also research and information that I learned and I must share it because it isn’t easily accessible.

Everything really changed in my health when I became pregnant. I fell pregnant with my first child when my hubby Simon and I left Australia. Up until that point I

had been living in Australia for nearly four years and believed it was my new home but circumstances in our lives at the time meant that we needed to come back to the UK. I’ll be honest, it was a stressful time in our lives. We came back to the UK with very little; a few things and a bit of money to get us by. I was already pregnant with Jack and we were lucky that Simon found a job pretty much straight away. At the time, we decided that I wouldn’t work but stay at home growing our baby and getting ready for the birth. But this was a massive shock to me. I had spent most of my adult life working and then all of a sudden to be out of work and pregnant, emotionally I struggled with the loss of identity so I did what I had always done in the past, I turned to food for my comfort.The long days at home trying to amuse myself led me to eating. I chose sugary treats and foods loaded with carbs but being pregnant wasn’t as fun as I hoped. My pregnancy symptoms were elevated and I was extremely unmotivated. I had all good intentions of walking, jogging whatever I could to get going but most of the time I couldn’t be bothered or I didn’t feel like it. With my lack of mobility and my choice of a high sugar diet, I noticed that I was gaining the pounds. By month 8 of my pregnancy I was weighing in at nearly 100kgs (although some was

At week 38, I was struck down with yet another UTI. This one was painful and I remember crying on my husband. I couldn’t believe I had another UTI. I didn’t

want to take any more antibiotics so I went to the shop for cystitis treatment. I prayed it would work but still the pain continued. A couple of hours later and I was really uncomfortable. My entire body was swollen and I couldn’t leave the toilet because I knew I’d be back in a few minutes later. I eventually called my midwife and she said it sounded like I could have gone into labour and that a UTI close to due date could do that.

She came out and examined me explaining she thought I was in early stages of labour. At that time she booked me into be induced two days later. Now, from someone who tries to live her life as natural as possible, this was awful for me. I wanted my baby born naturally, and had until that point, planned a home birth. I agreed that I would be induced if my baby didn’t come naturally, so spent the next 48 hours walking, eating curries and anything else I could do to bring my baby into the world but nothing worked, and it’s only now that I realise that my little boy wasn’t ready to be born.

Two days later I went to hospital to be induced and then left to go home to have my baby at home as I planned. But the labour was intense and my body was struggling to cope. My legs and feet swelled to double the size and I wasn’t coping.

 

15-hours later, trying to give birth at home, a different midwife sent me to hospital as an emergency in an ambulance. As soon as I got there, I was given an epidural (everything that I didn’t want) but I needed the relief. I then spent another 14-hours being examined, trying to push my baby out, but he wouldn’t come and that’s when I eventually had a c-section. When my baby was passed to me I wanted to be excited and glad to welcome him into the world but I was so exhausted I just wanted to rest.

My husband left Jack and I in hospital and I was lucky enough to be able to breastfeed. In the hospital, the room was noisy and Jack kept waking. He seemed to be in distress. A few hours later, he was feeding on me and I fell asleep. It wasn’t for long maybe a minute or so but something woke me. I looked down at Jack and he wasn’t breathing, he had turned purple. I pulled him up off me and made sure oxygen was available to him. He regained his colour and then I called for help.

A paediatrician checked Jack over, his breathing was poor and they rushed him off to ICU. Jack had developed a lung infection. I was mortified. My beautiful baby boy, who I wanted everything so natural for, had ended up becoming unwell and needing every sort of medical intervention that I could never have imagined. For the next three-days, he was in an incubator in ICU. He needed antibiotics, oxygen and to be fed through a tube. After a day, I was desperate to get him my breastmilk and the doctor’s agreed, so at night when he woke, I asked the nurses to call me so that I could go back to ICU to feed him. I have never experienced anything so physically tough in my life. I was in incredible pain because of my c-section and I somehow pulled myself along the corridor every hour to get to Jack so that I could feed him my breastmilk.

After a couple of days Jack showed good signs of improvement and was able to come back to the ward with me. I was so happy to have my baby with me. Seeing all the mums on the ward with their babies was heartbreaking for me, as I knew that my little boy was down the corridor. I had so much guilt, and still to this day I carry that guilt for him having such a traumatic start to his life. Of course I have much gratitude to the doctors and nurses who saved Jack’s life, because without them it could have been a very different story.

I don’t usually carry blame for anything and tend to see things as experiences. I don’t blame the Candida for what happened but I do believe that Candida played a massive part in how the events evolved.

When I studied Candida, I discovered that being pregnant alters the microbiome of the gut. This information was released by Ruth Ley at Cornell University [1].

Knowing this information now, makes me understand more about the importance of gut health and how if I had taken better care of my gut health during pregnancy, then I would have been less likely to experience UTI’s and therefore I would have no need for antibiotics because we also understand that antibiotics kill off all bacteria’s harmful and beneficial, so these events combined meant that I was a perfect candidate for Candida to grow, especially as I kept feeding it with my addiction to sugar.

Here are some of my tips to help you look after your own gut health when you are pregnant.

• Eat a diet rich in whole foods such as grains, leafy green vegetables, root vegetables.

• Eat lots of leafy green vegetables such as spinach because it’s high in folic acid.

• Eat prebiotic foods such as asparagus, dandelion greens, garlic, kale, leek, onions, seaweed, inulin (chicory root powder), flaxseeds. All these foods are powerful prebiotics which means consuming them helps to encourage beneficial bacteria’s to colonise and grow [2].

• Eat a higher protein diet and include more white meat and fish over red meat.

• Limit sugary treats and stay away from refined foods such as white bread, cakes, crisps and more.

• Be sure to take a high strength probiotic. Choose a probiotic that has a high CFU count 30-50 billion CFU is good.

• Exercise for at least 30-minutes a day, a brisk walk is good or join a pregnancy yoga class.

• Eat fermented foods to help colonise new strains of beneficial bacteria’s. If you are new to fermented foods eat them in small amounts first.

• Drink or eat bone broth daily.