Christmas with Crohns

Christmas is overwhelming for a fair few people.

It really is a time of over eating and indulging in our favourite beverages. However when you have crohns or live with someone who has crohns it can be even more overwhelming.

As well as the usual stress of buying gifts, and the stress of trying to keep up with the hectic pace AND the stress and pressures of eating healthy, we have to ALSO consider still making time to "chill out" and self-care as all this extra stress can cause havoc on Crohns and my to be fair own mental health.

For the last few years a typical Christmas dinner was something that feared us. At these times Ben was couldn’t eat vegetables and it was likely they would react badly and he’d end up in hospital or having a flare or blockage. Both terrible outcomes. Typical because one of my favourite meals is a “banging” roast (as my family would say).

Forever having to explain to family and friends what is suitable to eat and what isn’t can get tired-some at times and it feels like we are being picky and difficult. Trust me when I say we aren’t.

I was a bit more excited this year because the Modulife diet means that Ben can now tolerate and has no excuse not to eat his veggies. (Yes Grandad, there is no excuse to not eat your veggies, not for you or Ben!).

However, the modulife restricts all things processed. That is so so hard for the best Christmas foods like “pigs n blankets”.

Not to mention the desserts as well theres very limited desserts we could of actually had, unfortunately I did not have the time to make something (busy-busy). I did find some gluten free cake desserts some all natural “Ella” branded ones were recommended by someone else on Instagram who has also done the modulife diet.

Im grateful for the suggestion and it's one of the many reasons I love my acocunt. ❤️

That being said, I have lovedddd this year’s Christmas. With all the restrictions I was grateful to have a quiet one with no rushing about and no faffing no extra visits.

Usually around Christmas you see the family you don’t get to see all the time. Which is absolutely lovely, don't get me wrong. But you do tend to get those awkward and frustrating conversations that revolve around hospital.

Are you okay now? How's your health? What's your diet? Are you back at work yet? How was hospital? How is being home, bet it's nice being home isn't it? Are you better now? Is your Crohns treated? What happens now? Are you cured now?

We love and appreciate the concern and we do understand that people can be worried and do want to know everyone is okay. But its CHRISTMAS!!! We, (especially myself) don't need to be reminded that things haven't been great.

Very few people were actually messaging at the time of things being bad. So don't ask over the festive period because to be quite frank we don't want to be reminded we want to enjoy ourselves in our own little way.

That's kind of why I am thankful for Covid Restrictions this year, because there was no awkward get togethers where the conversation is always about Ben and his Crohns and hospital stays.

(Yeah I'm fine thanks for asking, lol.)

If you are the concerned ask and check in whilst its happening, the amount of times Ben and I have tried to change conversations for people to bring it back up again is frustrating we are trying to enjoy ourselves.

Living with an illness over the festive period is frustrating and tiresome. But we just got to get on with it. Just because we live with the illness doesn't mean we want to discuss it over the festive period, because at the end of the day we do live with it everyday. There's more to us than Bens Crohns.