My text down below is somewhat unorganised and unstructured. Maybe you would like to read it anyway, maybe you don’t and that is fine as well. I hope this article may help other women in the first trimester of there pregnancy, who are having a hard time.
As I mentioned in my previous post I am currently pregnant with our 4th child and by the time the 9th week of pregnancy ended I was doing really bad, but before writing on about this some information on forehand.
What did I eat as a child?
As a child and young adult I ate a lot of candy, cookies, chocolate etc. I also had some teeth problems and very sensitive teeth, reacting with cold and with very sweet.
Changing my diet
At some point I tried to reduce the amount of sweets I was eating. Especially during my previous pregnancies I would eat muffins and chocolate. The more processed sweets (like chocolate with caramel) made me feel sick, so that was easier to do without. After my third child was born the corona lockdown came and we reduced doing our groceries to the organic store in our neighbourhood. Since the organic sweets are ratter expensive we stopped buying sweets, cookies where a treat now and then and a cake I baked myself now and then. We are really cautious with sugar containing products for our kid’s, since I know how hard it is to get away from that again and we really notice on there behaviour when they eat something with sugar. I was really informing myself about nourishing ourselves healthy. I got the book “nourishing traditions” and was partially really shocked over the information in there and a little afraid to buy anything that is processed in some sort of way.
Well not buying anything that has been processed is not something you can do over night, but more like a change in progress. Baking bread has been a changing process from yeast bread to sourdough bread, back to yeast bread and back to sourdough bread. Meanwhile I have managed to bake tasting sourdough bread and my family does not what to have yeast bread anymore. I also use the same dough for pizza crust. We love pizza. A totally different thing is making sauces. With the mayonnaise it was a long journey with a lot of waist, since the taste was so terrible in the beginning I threw it into the compost. Meanwhile I can make a mayonnaise that meets our taste for use as a dressing in salads, but we do also still buy mayonnaise for convenience and as a dip for the French fries.
Meats we eat
But I am drifting away from the topic on hand. An important thing I want to mention is that I pay attention to the meat I buy. We eat a lot of meat and I used to buy all organic grass fed meat, which is very, very expensive. We have met a farmer in our neighbourhood who raises cows, pigs and poultry. He is not organic, but put only his own manure on his fields and only uses medication on the animals when really needed. The animals are kept mostly free-range. The way he farms is good enough for us, we can visit the animals, have them butchered the way we like and we save a tremendous amount of money. Last fall we got a cow from him whom we had butchered and just recently we got some chickens ready to be eaten.
Morning sickness and exhaustment during pregnancy
Now back to the theme on hand. I had been noticing some nausea from the beginning, but it was manageable. At some point I was graving greens and fruit and orange juice, so I got that covered with the next groceries. We where busy planting, so I did not do much baking (meaning pies, bread is a must, since we do not buy any). I eat grapefruit and oranges, which I was really craving for. The citrus was making my belly blow up like a balloon, so that was not very useful and I just let that be again.
Nausea, sick and exhausted around the 9th and 10th week of pregnancy
Coming into the 9th week of pregnancy I was nausea up to feeling really sick from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep at night gradually getting worse and worse.
A lot of food was not doing me well at this point. Bread was a no go and beef just took to much energy to digest. I actually had to take several naps during the day, just to digest the food I had eaten. As time went on I started craving for chocolate cream cake of some sort, or something else with a lot of sugar in it. Then the point came where I thought my body was going to break down and I could only cry. I talked to my husband and thought back with him what I used to eat while pregnant.
Food that helped me back on track during the first trimester of my pregnancy
Well, he went to the grocery store and brought me back some Belgian waffles with chocolate (sugar content 26%). I would say, these saved my life. I ate the entire package within 2 days (8 pieces). After that I could manage with less, luckily. After a few days (when I was starting to feel better) I looked on the Ingredients list and was reminded as to why we normally do not buy processed foods. After a week I was able to do without the waffles. I have 3 waffles left from 4 packages which are still in storage for emergencies, but these can easily also wander in the trash….
Obviously I did not only eat these waffles, they where merely extra. I somehow managed to make simple meals and when my family eat bread in the evening I eat leftovers from lunch (like plain rice) or something else easy to digest.
Fruit
My husband also bought nectarine and peaches, which did me very well. My question is why they do me so good; since they have about the same fructose amount as an apple (we usually eat apples), but apples did not appeal to me at all at that moment. I started eating apples again when I was doing better again.
Vegetables
I was craving vegetables though and regularly made broccoli out of the oven backed over with cheese and bacon. Carrots, spinach, lettuce and cucumbers where good as well.
Homemade soup from homemade chicken bone broth
A homemade soup from homemade chicken bone broth with some vegetables is great. I have always craved carrots during pregnancy and this time is no different; raw, but also in the soup.
Soft cheese/ quark
Soft cheese/ quark (I am not sure what the correct English phrase is) with a bit of maple syrup stirred in also did me well, as breakfast with some fruit, but also as a snack.
Cheese (Gouda) with honey
Surprisingly cheese (Gouda) with honey made a great snack as well. Usually when I would eat a slice of bread with honey on it, I would feel unpleasant afterwards, but now honey in this way is great (or could the combination with bread have been the problem?).
Schmalz
Another thing I was craving is schmalz, but what to buy if you do not want any “bad” ingredients? Well after checking on the internet it is very easy to make yourself. My husband cut a big piece of white fat from a pigs belly in small pieces and I cut an onion and an apple into small pieces. Cook at low heat (stir, stir, stir) until cracklings are nicely browned, fill into jars and let cool down. We loved it. Bread was doing me no good, but a slice of bread with schmalz now and than was ok. Apparently I was in need of fat. The kid’s also love the schmalz.
Caramel/ toffee
Another great snack is caramel/ toffee, but of course a homemade version. My husband had found a recipe online and helped me make it. With the first batch I let the sugar burn, but the second batch turned out great. Now and then, when I feel like I need something, I eat a small piece.
Teeth
With all of these sugary foods my teeth started hurting again. The caramel I have to suck, because when I chew on it I experience an extreme jolt of pain. Luckily this became less again after reducing those sugars.
What does my body needs during pregnancy?
I assume in time of greater needs, what during pregnancy the case is, my body falls back to the habits out of my childhood. A question I have is what my body actually does with all the food (I thought is good for me) I put in it. My body apparently needs sugars in some sort of way. I try to eat foods which naturally have sugar in it or use maple syrup or honey in whatever food I prepare if the food calls for a sweetener. Obviously the caramel calls for refined sugar; in that case I use raw cane sugar.
My kid’s where very supportive and accepted without any mooning that they would not get any of the very sugary “bad” food.
A great tip for getting trough the very difficult time in the first trimester of pregnancy
After waking up, eat something easy to digest and lay back down for half an hour again. After that a normal breakfast is due, what ever that is for you.
This tip helped me a lot. After a night sleep, without any supply of nutrients, the body’s easy accessible reserves are used up, especially during pregnancy. So you need to give the body something to start the day on and give it a moment to digest so the energy is available to the body.
What to drink?
Now to drinking. As a child we drank Cola, Fanta, some kind of fruit syrup with water and juice. Trying to be a good example for my kid’s (and not wanting to withhold them something I do eat or drink) I got used to drinking water and sometimes enjoy a glass of apple juice together with my kid’s. We have apple juice from our own apples, so that is great. Well, the wetter was hot and drinking a lot was important, but I just could not get any water down, so I started drinking a lot of our apple juice, sometimes with some sparkling water mixed in. Now and then a glass of water is needed, but mostly I drink apple juice at the moment, which is doing me very well (Official authorities state that you should not drink more then 1 glass of juice a day).
What is important to go by during pregnancy?
All in all it took over 2 weeks for me to recover to a somewhat useful state again. Obviously the pregnancy is still very exhausting and I am very careful as to what I eat. Only easy to digest meals and homemade snacks, so I know what is in there. But most important, relax and don’t try to do too much physical work. The baby growing in my belly takes a lot of energy and I only have available what the baby does not use.
What would “healthy eating” during pregnancy look like?
Coming back to my question as to what “healthy eating” would look like, well that is different for every person and every situation. I am not saying other people should do similar as I did, but you should listen to your body and its needs (which is not always easy). In my opinion, the way I brought myself back on track is always better then going to the hospital and get some sort of infusion.
Beautiful Chaos 