Hello, Readers! I’ve been MIA for some time now, and with a pretty good excuse — Greg and I (but mostly *I*) are pregnant! This is a murky ultrasound of Dax at only 8 weeks and some change, but I am now at 14 weeks, and the little guy or gal has shed his or her tail and become quite a bit more human in the past several weeks.
Dax, through no fault of his or her own, made me quite ill through the first trimester and I am only just coming out of that now. The consequence of the nausea, headaches, fatigue, and picky taste buds (picky is actually an understatement) was that I fell off the vegan wagon entirely and not even in a casual way. My body was saying NO WAY to green foods and whole grains and even beans, so the lack of nutrients unfortunately started to signal the need for all those old foods in my life, cheese and meat, to fill the gap in my diet.
I’m writing here today to simply say that it was very hard to be in this state, and Greg struggled with it too as we momentarily lost our bond in eating. I felt sick to begin with and the food that I was eating was not helping me feel better. I felt strange, too, having to eat against the principles that I had developed over the course of being a nutritional vegan.
It’s a little disconcerting to be in that state and to open a book or a website that tells pregnant women to eat their greens and their beans to keep healthy. Even my favorite nutritionist, Dr. Fuhrman, doesn’t really offer a lot of good advice for this dilemma, although I will let you queasy readers know that a homemade fruit smoothie (Fuhrman has a bunch of recipes for these in his books) with some spinach added in is a fantastic way to trick your body into consuming some greens, because you can’t taste the spinach and you can’t smell it either. Also, while I once sort of scoffed at the idea of a multi-vitamin, I realized that I needed to be consuming all those vitamins and nutrients that had once been included in my daily meals. Going on my sister’s advice, I chose this prenatal vitamin
I have a lot to say about pregnancy and diet, and a lot more time to put in being pregnant, so now that I feel better I will be updating about topics related to this more often. I’ve been able to put aside most of the cheese and meat and start to get back to a plant-based diet, but I will not forget this time in my pregnancy, and I really have to imagine that a lot of you out there are experiencing the same thing. Although everyone I talk to in person seems to have had a really easy, no quease pregnancy, studies say that nearly 75% of women get nausea in the first trimester — so from the perspective of this blog, I’m going to update with some things that you can have around the house to make you eat well and feel a little better!
Related posts:
Did you enjoy: Vegan Pregnancy? Then subscribe to The Casual Vegan by Email or you should follow me on twitter here.
The Next Post: Getting Kids to Eat Healthy
The Previous Post: Marine Daily 16
Comments About Vegan Pregnancy
// 1 comments so far.
Chandelle // January 07th 2010
Congratulations!
I know exactly what you mean about falling off the “vegan wagon.” I planned homebirths for both of my children and had very supportive midwives who encouraged me to maintain any dietary habits that seemed beneficial. I was a lackluster vegetarian before my first pregnancy and I ended up basically on a fast-food diet by the end. That was a terrible experience and I really regretted that, but I just could not convince myself to eat anything else.
When my daughter came along two years later, I’d just finished my first very healthy, wonderful year as a vegan and I really wanted to have a healthier pregnancy. I didn’t manage to stay vegan, though. I don’t know what it is about pregnancy, but anything the least bit healthy turns me right off. Greens, beans, grains, tomatoes, most fruit – all of these things grossed me out during both pregnancies. It was infuriating to know what I SHOULD be eating and be so completely incapable of doing it! I might have been convinced that I needed whatever I was craving, except that most of my cravings were for things that NOBODY should be eating, not arguably healthy in any way. I still got through that pregnancy much better than the first, but I went through a few weeks of eating almost nothing but cheese and grapes. Hang in there! As you are soon to discover, babies are amazingly resilient.
Green smoothies are a terrific idea. I wish I’d known about them during my pregnancies. I also had terrible nausea for both pregnancies and crippling exhaustion with my second. Nothing seemed to help. After I had my second baby (after, of course!), I did a lot of research and found that B vitamins get depleted very quickly in pregnancy, especially B-6, which is strongly connected to fatigue and nausea. I’m not having more kids, but if I were, I would plan to take a multi-B complex with high levels of B-6 and B-12 to plan for that nausea and exhaustion.
Good luck with your pregnancy! I hope you’ll share more details as you progress.
You can follow any responses to this entry via its RSS comments feed. You may also leave a trackback by clicking this link.