lbb (Liz) wrote:I am so grateful to be newly pregnant.
But with that, comes waves of nausea and strange cravings and some habits I hope to not sustain.
The past few days I have been caught standing in my sister's kitchen eating Ruffles out of the bag. Licking the salt from them.
Today with friends I polished off the box of wheat thins while they all ate salads.
Tonight in the drive-thru at Wendy's with my kids, I scarfed fries driving home.
The common denominator: breaking every No-S rule known to man.
Question: for all you preggies or have-been, or those with just good advice, shall this phase pass?
Or do you let 'er ride...
During my pregnancy, I've been glad that I was on No S for a year before I got pregnant. I had already learned from that experience that ignoring or postponing food cravings would not hurt me. I had also learned that cravings do not come because you're deficient in some nutrient, like some people think. If they did, modern Americans would not crave sugar or salt, since we get too much of those things in our diets as it is. But we do crave those things, as we all know. We crave foods that don't provide many nutrients other than sugar and salt.
I got some candied ginger from Trader Joe's to eat when I was feeling nauseous. I count those as medicine, not food, so eating one or two of them does not count as a snack, any more than taking any other medication would count as a snack. But they weren't something I would tend to eat a whole bag of at a sitting- I might have had to do things differently if I had found that I did tend to do that.
I stuck to my mod of not eating out of food containers (except single-serving packages) and of not eating standing up. I gave up my mod of using 9-inch plates on N days, because I was just too hungry from that. You may have to modify things if you really are feeling hungry all the time when you're pregnant.
If you do add more food to your diet, you want it to be at least mostly meal-type food, not snack food or sweets. If you're like me, you know you eat healthier at meals than at snacks or desserts. You want more of that kind of food, not more crackers, chips, and cookies.
Even before my pregnancy, I have tried not to have much snack food or sweet foods in the house. That way, my laziness can help me resist junk food cravings, by saying, "yeah, I want X, but not really enough to get in the car and drive to the store to get it". When I do buy snack foods or sweets, I buy the
smallest package I can find, and never have more than one package of the same foods at home at the same time. That way, if I do go totally off the reservation and end up eating the whole container, there's at least some damage control. You're not going to be perfect all the time, because nobody ever is, was, or will be. It's good to reduce the harm that can come from the inevitable slip-ups.
I didn't go to mini-meals, because I'm barely organized enough to plan to have nutritious things for three meals a day, let alone five or six. I know that, if I go to mini-meals, a couple of those mini-meals are
going to consist of convenient junk food. Be honest, even brutally honest, with yourself and how any modifications you're planning to make are really likely to affect you. If a modification you make isn't working for you, even if it sounds like it should be working in theory, or even if what's keeping it from working is something you don't particularly like about yourself, be willing to admit that it's not working and try something different. A diet that works only for someone with no character flaws is not going to work for a real person. And you're just going to be frustrated if you try to eliminate all your character flaws at once.
I stopped doing No S in my ninth month, and don't plan to resume it until I've got breastfeeding well under way. I'm still trying to tilt any increases in eating more toward meal-type foods than snack- or dessert-type foods, though.
One thing I've learned during my pregnancy: I can't always keep myself from vomiting, and it's not the end of the world if I do. I can eat something that I crave and that I think "no way will this upset my stomach", and still vomit shortly afterward.
One thing I've done to cope with the vomiting is that I went to a restaurant supply store and got a couple of big plastic sleeves of 32-ounce paper cups. I keep one of these paper cups with me at all times, especially when I'm in the car. That way, if I do vomit, there's something to contain the vomit (I found that those cups are almost always big enough). Better yet, they don't have to be washed afterward- I just throw them away, ideally in an outdoor trash can. It's also a good idea to keep a roll of paper towels in your car. I have decided that I will keep having paper towels in the car after the baby comes, since babies make messes in cars, too.