For such a tiny little guest, he or she sure is demanding a lot of food.
For the first four or five weeks that I knew I was pregnant, I snacked all the time to keep my sugar levels steady and stave off nausea. But big meals didn't really sound good, so though I was eating constantly, I wasn't eating a ton when I added it all up. Since then, though, it's grown into a more desperate, gnawing, all-encompassing kind of hunger. You know, the kind of hunger where you stash an apple in your purse because you aren't sure you'll make it all the way through library storytime (all 30 minutes of it) without something to eat, and then find yourself hiding behind the stacks stealing bites and hoping the children's librarian won't bust you? That kind of hunger.
This week I'm filling out a diet log for my midwife as part of her prenatal care (pretty standard among the midwives I've worked with). While it always feels intrusive to me to do them at first, I do appreciate that it forces me to take a hard look at my real eating habits (not the ones I've created in my head because I know that's how I should be eating.) For the first couple of days, for example, I noticed my entries were heavy on grains, milk and fruit and seriously lacking in the "green stuff" department. That inspired me to hit the produce stand and load up on veggies, which I'm now scarfing down with alarming speed. Awareness is good! And a baby-greens salad with walnuts, pears, dried cranberries and raspberry viniagrette is even better!
But the other kind of awareness I'm gaining is the holy-cow-do-I-really-eat-that-much? sort. On day one, I didn't abbreviate anything and wrote in my normal half-print, half-cursive scrawl. I ran out of room in the box before 2 PM. By now, day 5, my normal breakfast entry has changed from "8:00 AM: Two pieces of whole-wheat toast with peanut butter, glass of half-percent milk" to "8am: 2 pc WW tst w/ pb, c mlk." and it still barely all fits by the time I get around to my bedtime snack. I've taken to leaving the paper laying on the dining room table so I don't forget to record that impromptu half-sandwich or apple I always grab before I go anywhere, (lest I get stranded someplace where food isn't immediately available and have to wait--gasp--more than fifteen minutes for a snack.)
Between the extra glasses of milk I'm guzzling in the middle of the night because I wake up starving, to the extra pieces of fruit and nibbles of cheese and crackers I graze on to ease those between-meals hunger pains, I'm sure I'm going far beyond the Dept. of Health and Human Services-recommended increase of 300 calories a day. (who created those guidelines, anyway? I seriously doubt that person was pregnant at the time...or had ever BEEN pregnant.)
I know pregnancy isn't supposed to be an eating-for-two free-for-all, but what's a gestating girl to do? I'm hungry, and if there's anything I've learned from going through four pregnancies and births, it's that your body usually tells you what it needs if only you pay attention. And right now, my body needs to eat. And eat and eat.
Between myself and my two oldest boys, who, at 9 and almost 11 are entering the 'consume everything in sight, then ask for more' stage, our grocery budget is taking a beating. But only six months to go before the baby's out and the hunger returns to normal. I hope this little guy or girl is hungry: I fully expect him/her to eat enough to take off all the pounds s/he's helped me gain.
But for now, I'm feeling a familiar and unmistakable pang in my middle that tells me it's time for a snack. Some yogurt sounds good--maybe with a little sprinkle of granola on top.
Okay, a big sprinkle of granola.
I think the baby likes it.
---Meagan Francis is a mom of four (soon to be five) and writes about pregnancy, motherhood and more. Find out more about her here.
