With our first baby I was sick sick sick the whole 9 months. I was the perfect weight for my height when I got pregnant with our first baby, but that made no difference. I was sick the whole time. It started with a dinner of macaroni and cheese... but that is something that can get a bit graphic... I'll stop here.
With our second child I was sick at the beginning and again at the end. I only worshiped the porcelain god a handful of times, but I was nauseous aplenty.
When our second child was about 6 mos old I switched our family over to a whole foods way of cooking and worked on an elimination diet for our first child. I didn't know it at the time but I was cleaning house! Yep, getting rid of the candida that had been looming inside of me (and the rest of us) for ages! So, when I was pregnant with our third child I had NONE of the symptoms I had with our first two... other than some slight nausea which went away as quickly as it came upon me.
Speed up to 7 years later and we were having our 'second family'... baby 4 and 5 were back to back. They are now almost 2 years and almost 2 mos old. I had gestational diabetes for both of them (Dr says my age has a lot to do with that) which brought on nausea from about 21 weeks along on... It happened only when I didn't follow my diet plan. As long as I watched my carb points I was good to go. WHEW! Cause at 40 something with 3 (and 4) others to look after (one being differently abled) I needed a break from that morning sickness gig for sure!
This is what I found really helped me out a lot. And I mean a lot!
I kept the good high protein - high Omega 3 foods coming.
Raw nuts and seeds - bring them on!
Go Coconut!
Hello Pineapple!
Meal Plan
The following is my basic daily eating/meal plan.
1) drink lemon water upon rising
2) eat two eggs (real butter, onion, mushrooms [oyster or button], cheese)
3) about 2 hrs later ~ small plain yogurt with fruit I added
4) lunch - salad with fish or chicken - my fav is spinach (freshly chopped) added to tuna salad. I get the tuna packed in olive oil as it has nothing else in it, add real mayo, pine nuts or raw sunflower seeds, and the chopped spinach. Sometimes I add a touch of honey or my home made pickle relish.
5) an hr or two later I'm feeling the muchies... raw sunflower seeds, raw cashews, raw walnuts, and a small amount of low sugar pineapple rings (maybe 1/2 a ring) or one/two whole madjool date/s or dried cranberries.
6) when hungry again maybe some cheese or yogurt with fresh fruit and carrot sticks or shredded carrot & red cabbage or even a small salad
7) Dinner ~ high protein again... steak/roast, chicken, fish... with some kind of raw veggie salad, baked sweet potato with butter and cinnamon, cream of something soup and a veggie side. Maybe not all of those in one sitting... but choosing at least three.
8) snack a couple of hours later consisting of some sort of nut/fruit combo... maybe even some home made raw milk ice cream or fruit sorbet.
One thing I noticed was that if I didn't always have something heading for my stomach I would get sick more frequently. So, eating lots of small meals/snacks - esp the nuts and seeds throughout the day was a lot better for me than the typical gorge - fast ~ three meals a day thing.
Lemon WATER WATER WATER all day - lots... no sodas, etc. If I cheated and had a soda or a mini reeses peanut butter cup I knew it... I would get sick and be that way for 12-24 hrs.
Gestational Diabetes
When I think back on the first two pregnancies I remember when I was tested for gestational diabetes and it was borderline. I'm typically hypo-glycemic. Diabetes is Hyper-glycemia. So I wonder how that effects the glucose screening for gestational diabetes. I also wonder if that isn't why I was so sick from the very beginning with our first children. This last pregnancy I only had a couple of episodes where I felt nauseous as I kinda did a preemptive strike sort of thing - watching my carb points from the beginning and making sure to eat the right stuff at the right time and keping my belly happy. Eating lots of coconut products helped too as they are low in carb points.
This is what I was allowed on the GD diet plan [1 point = 15 carbohydrates]: Breakfast ~ 2 carb points, snack 2 pts, lunch 4pts, snack 2 pts, dinner 4 pts, snack 2 pts. When I wrote it all out it was twice the amount of food I was accustomed to consuming! WOW!!
I never did eat all my breakfast carb points unless I really put on the cheese. I noticed I was far better off eating scrambled eggs or even a chicken breast for breakfast rather than trying to get in those two carb points.
Probiotics
Coconut Kefir was fairly new to the mass market as was coconut milk by the carton. Those things helped me out tremendously as they contain a fraction of the carbohydrates than that of regular milk and kefir/yogurt.
Wonderful for your digestion. Coconut aids in keeping the population of candida to normal levels.
What a blessing ~ the power of coconut!
Whew! I could continue to get my probiotics through food, even with gestational diabetes. One of my typical smoothies could easily contain 8 carb points so they were OUT! I had to find an alternative and Coconut came to my rescue. Smoothie city once more!
Keeping the good gut flora population up is hard to do when your body is under stress, as is the case when you are pregnant. So, I try to eat a lot of kefir and yogurt. Sometimes in smoothies and sometimes straight with fresh fruit and nuts and maybe a touch of raw honey, xylitol, coconut nectar, or maple syrup.
Kefir water is something that I haven't tried yet, but have heard a lot of wonderful things about. A friend of a friend of mine sells the grains to grow your own. Some day I'll order some. But for now the raw milk kefir and yogurt I make and the coconut kefir I buy are what we use to get our probiotics.
Ginger Soda
As far as ginger and soda are concerned I found one beverage that I felt passed my test (and didn't make me feel badly). It's called Outrageous Ginger Ale. Pretty much a 'clean' soda with a very high concentrate of ginger in it. If you are not used to high quantities of ginger I highly suggest that you mix it 50/50 with some fresh water. That stuff will take the mucous off the back of your throat lickety split!
I've looked and looked and looked - there really isn't another soda or ginger beverage out there that does what this one did for me. And best of all it doesn't have all the garbage in it and being that I mixed it half and half with water I could nurse one bottle all day long and that was good for me.
Supplements
I found these Supplements helped a LOT!
* Rainbow Light Prenatal (it is food based and has some anti nausea stuff built into it so you don't have to take that extra :D It also contains the right form of vitamin K so baby doesn't need to have the K shot! Big Bonus! ) http://www.vitacost.com/Rainbow-Light-Prenatal-One-Multivitamin
* B12 complex (dropper under the tongue - I use Now Foods but there are lots of good ones out there - just ask the hf store owner to help)
* Barleans Flax Oil (Omega Swirl is my choice most recently... it is GREAT!)
No comments:
Post a Comment