Being Gentle: Pregnancy Edition
Being pregnant has been a roller coaster. I've been sparing you details, hence the radio silence.
One thing I struggled with early on, especially so early in recovery for a restrictive eating disorder, was eating "junk" food. It made me keenly aware how ableist and toxic our modern discussions are about food and food-health connections.
I had been struggling already to follow my doctors' orders about eating whatever sounds good, however much of it feels good, whenever I want and need to. After a decade of self-imposed eating restrictions, it was a difficult adjustment. But one I needed to start before I got pregnant. Because I was already getting better at it when I was suddenly thrust into "morning" sickness and all my careful food choices became impossible to manage.
I knew my OB was the right one for me when she said, and this IS a direct quote, "I don't care if you live on mashed potatoes and Sprite until the day the baby is born, just eat whatever you can get in your face and don't worry about it."
Meal planning? HA! I haven't been able to plan more than 30 minutes ahead, let alone hours and days ahead. It's starting to get better though, thankfully.
So the biggest adjustment has been with beverages. I LOVE plain tap water, the fetus has decided it's poison. I can do carbonated water, but if tea has no milk or sugar added to it, it gets violently rejected by the end of the cup, despite "morning" sickness being pretty much gone. It's like my body just really can't handle beverages without substance.
But on top of that, needing to drink constantly and spending the last 20 weeks in a haze, I was really struggling to drink if it involved anything more than opening a cap. We ended up buying a flat of Gatorade from Coscto, but then saving the bottles & refilling with bulk batches of the powdered stuff to save money. We're just buying fizzy water in bottles because frankly we can't keep up with stocking it from the Soda Stream, because once it's opened it's flat so quickly. I finally broke down and admitted that even having a pitcher or jug of something in the fridge is too much to handle, not least because I can only reach the top shelf of the door of the fridge right now. So we bought a flat of apple juices, and now I can refill them with juice and iced tea.
It's the environmental and financial aspects that really threw me for a loop with these single serving drinks. It feels so wasteful! The fact that we're continuing to re-use the bottles helps. Let's not get into any discussions about storage though. I haven't seen my dining room table in months.
This whole bring pregnant thing has been an adventure, and I know it will only get more interesting with parenting an infant. Let's just hope we're up to the challenge.
One thing I struggled with early on, especially so early in recovery for a restrictive eating disorder, was eating "junk" food. It made me keenly aware how ableist and toxic our modern discussions are about food and food-health connections.
I had been struggling already to follow my doctors' orders about eating whatever sounds good, however much of it feels good, whenever I want and need to. After a decade of self-imposed eating restrictions, it was a difficult adjustment. But one I needed to start before I got pregnant. Because I was already getting better at it when I was suddenly thrust into "morning" sickness and all my careful food choices became impossible to manage.
I knew my OB was the right one for me when she said, and this IS a direct quote, "I don't care if you live on mashed potatoes and Sprite until the day the baby is born, just eat whatever you can get in your face and don't worry about it."
Meal planning? HA! I haven't been able to plan more than 30 minutes ahead, let alone hours and days ahead. It's starting to get better though, thankfully.
So the biggest adjustment has been with beverages. I LOVE plain tap water, the fetus has decided it's poison. I can do carbonated water, but if tea has no milk or sugar added to it, it gets violently rejected by the end of the cup, despite "morning" sickness being pretty much gone. It's like my body just really can't handle beverages without substance.
But on top of that, needing to drink constantly and spending the last 20 weeks in a haze, I was really struggling to drink if it involved anything more than opening a cap. We ended up buying a flat of Gatorade from Coscto, but then saving the bottles & refilling with bulk batches of the powdered stuff to save money. We're just buying fizzy water in bottles because frankly we can't keep up with stocking it from the Soda Stream, because once it's opened it's flat so quickly. I finally broke down and admitted that even having a pitcher or jug of something in the fridge is too much to handle, not least because I can only reach the top shelf of the door of the fridge right now. So we bought a flat of apple juices, and now I can refill them with juice and iced tea.
It's the environmental and financial aspects that really threw me for a loop with these single serving drinks. It feels so wasteful! The fact that we're continuing to re-use the bottles helps. Let's not get into any discussions about storage though. I haven't seen my dining room table in months.
This whole bring pregnant thing has been an adventure, and I know it will only get more interesting with parenting an infant. Let's just hope we're up to the challenge.
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