Category Archives: Health

33 Weeks

33 weeks down, ??? to go.  If we’re not already there, we’re soon to be at the “baby gaining 1/2 a pound a week stage.”  I can’t speak for baby, but I’m gaining AT LEAST 1/2 a pound a DAY, all in my feet.

Help -- my baby ate my ankle bone!

That’s really my only complaint right now, though.  I’m enjoying our childbirth prep classes and feeling more confident that we’ll be ready when baby joins us.  We’re taking Naturally Prepared childbirth classes, which focus on home births.

In two weeks, we have our in-home prenatal appointment with our midwives at River City Birth.  All of the other visits have been in their office, which is conveniently located a short bike-ride away!

Eating for two — A vegetarian pregnancy

Food is one of my favorite topics, and it’s been a bit neglected around here lately, but not for lack of eating, just lack of documentation 😉

Despite the first trimester nausea, I managed to eat fairly healthfully in the beginning of the pregnancy.  Not having to scramble to make dietary changes when I found out I was pregnant was one nice aspect of having a well-established healthy diet, though I was a little worried for the few weeks where pasta and rice noodles made up the bulk of my diet.

I haven’t had any specific food cravings, just a general craving for salt (and diminished interest in sweets).  I’m usually a bit of a salt-o-phobe, but the body needs more salt (to make more blood) during pregnancy, so I didn’t spend too much time worrying over my increasing affinity for salty foods and the salt shaker.  (I am curious about how long it will take to reset my taste buds and adjust to less salt post-pregnancy, though.  Will things that taste good now all-of-the-sudden taste way too salty, or will I have to scale back slowly to readjust???)

During the second trimester, I was pretty much ravenous all the time — packing enough food in the morning for a 9 1/2 hour work day presented a bit of a challenge.  Snacks included extra of a previous day’s leftovers, peanut butter and toast, or cheese and crackers.  Sometimes I just snacked on well-cooked beans with a bit of salt and olive oil.  In general, I picked fairly healthy snacks and tried to balance them with my other eating throughout the day (e.g., if my lunch was fairly cheesy, I would probably not have cheese and crackers as a snack that day).

In addition to needing more salt, the pregnant body also uses more protein.  Depending on weight, activity level, sex, etc., most adults need somewhere in the range of 40-50 grams of protein a day (many people, especially non-vegetarians, regularly eat WAY more than this, which is not necessarily a good thing).  When pregnant, that recommendation increases to 70-80 grams a day (some places recommend up to 100 grams a day, which is excessive).

I was fairly confident my protein consumption was adequate, but my midwives requested I keep track of what I ate on an average day and calculate the protein.  Being somewhat of a nutrition nerd, I complied happily.  Based on the one-day food record, I came in a bit above 70g of protein — right on target, no meat required 🙂

While I have continued to consume a more-or-less regular diet, I have kept an eye on the protein, making sure we’re eating legumes regularly, and perhaps eating a bit more eggs and dairy than usual (less green, I know, but we do our best).

Now that I’m into the third trimester, I notice the decrease in my stomach capacity.  Small, frequent meals/snacks is the name of the game now, which tends to be my preferred style of eating anyway.

By the end of April, I longed for the fresh produce that we’re getting from the garden and farmers’ markets now: lettuce, arugula, Swiss chard, broccoli, asparagus, strawberries — nom, nom, nom!  I’m looking forward to more of spring’s bounty in the coming weeks, as I nourish myself and the ever-growing little one (who is putting on about 1/2 pound a week now!).

Water, Purified — To Filter or Not to Filter

Having always been a straight-up tap water kind of girl, I’m not sure how I feel about this few addition to our kitchen:

Unfortunately, standard water treatment doesn’t address many not-so-pleasant contaminants that have been found in water supplies across the country, including pharmaceuticals and agriculture-based pollutants. *

Given that reality, we’ve considered a water filter for years, but I’ve been too ambivalent to take action.  The fact that the City of St. Louis apparently has relatively safe water (in the top 10 for large U.S. cities according to this 2009 report), not to mention consistently ranking as some of the best tasting tap water (though taste does not necessarily represent quality) in the country, did little to motivate me to make any changes.

While much less wasteful than bottled water, water filters still involve some waste — most need replacement filters every few weeks, or months, depending on the brand, and then there’s the plastic pitcher or the plastic housing of a sink-attached filtration system.

When Matthew came home from Home Eco with this filtration system a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t fight it too much.  I relegated it to the corner of the kitchen for about a week while we considered it and offered no resistance when he installed it after the mandatory waiting period.

The filter is supposed to last through 1500 GALLONS of water, which we estimate means at least 2 years before we even have to think about replacing the filter.

My main complaint is the mandatory (though small) water wastage that occurs because you have to have water running before you pull out the pin that switches over to the filter.  To minimize waste, I try to let the water run onto/into a dish that needs to be rinsed anyway, and fill a large jar with filtered water as long as it is running, instead of just one cup at a time.

I don’t notice a taste improvement in the water.  It tastes different — flatter — because it is dechlorinated in the process, but I adjusted to that pretty quickly.  It’s hard to be a complete convert when I just have to trust that there are bad things in the water that the filter is removing, but I guess I’m willing to give it a shot.

What are your thoughts?  Do you  filter your water?

*Don’t you dare run out and buy bottled water!  Almost all bottled water comes from the tap in one city or another, so you aren’t escaping anything — it’s just a huge scam!  In fact, you may be exposing yourself to more unknown danger from whatever chemicals leach from the plastic bottles into the water.

Back in the saddle

The bike saddle, that is 🙂  My chondromalacia (AKA runner’s knee) mostly resolved itself, no medical attention necessary.

How did I know I had chondromalacia without visiting the doctor?  Well, I’m a bit of an expert in self-diagnosis.  Since I’ve been pregnant, I’ve also diagnosed myself with an ectopic pregnancy (based on no symptoms whatsoever), spinal meningitis, and appendicitis.  Being an expert doesn’t always mean you’re right 😉  If I had any interest in visiting the doctor or the ER, I would be a burden to the medical system, but instead I usually take my chances and let things run their course.

Anyway, chondromalacia is an overuse injury that is — SURPRISE! — made better by rest.  Rest is a four-letter word around here, but I was desperate, picturing weeks of pain, weeks without biking (and by the time I returned being too big and off-balance to bike safely), and not being able to get in many of the positions that help with a natural labor.  Basically, my knee would be injured forever and the world would stop turning.  The end.

Sometimes things spiral a bit out-of-control in my head.

Fortunately, a few weeks of taking it relatively easy — almost no biking, going down the stairs by placing both feet on each step, and reduced walking — did the trick.  I put my knee to the test last weekend, and this weekend I’ve been back to normal.

Yesterday I ran a number of errands by bike, including returning a few items of maternity clothes to JCPenney, which means I can say that, other than the belly bands (which I could have done without), I’ve only bought one NEW maternity clothing item.

This morning I biked to the season opener at Tower Grove Farmers’ Market, where strawberries, asparagus, and rhubarb greeted me — welcome back, friends!  After a quick stop to drop my purchases off at home, I was out again, headed to prenatal yoga at the Y.  (I credit the yoga, as well as other general leg muscle stretching, with helping my knee as much as the resting.)

There’s nothing like sickness or injury to make me appreciate my relative good state of health, something that I often take for granted.

A snotty bicycle health freak

As a general rule, I keep work-related things out of this blog, but I happen to be in an area of work that is very related to some of what I blog about here, namely, the bicycling, active transportation, and health aspects.  So I’m going to break my rule and share a link to an article about my work over the last year-and-a-half.  You can read about it here*.

Surprisingly, the comments haven’t gotten too out-of-control yet, but they did provide inspiration for the title of this post** 😉

In other news, I completed the basic Cycling Savvy training over the weekend, which included over 20 miles on the bike on Saturday (~ 13 miles in the course, plus biking to and from the training).  My bum knee and the rest of my 6 1/2 month-pregnant-body performed quite adequately.

The training included one element that put me outside of my comfort zone (biking southbound along Kingshighway from Manchester to Shaw) and otherwise offered good opportunities to hone my cycling skills.

I hauled Baby Jake out for the article photo op and was pleasantly surprised to find he still offered a comfortable ride, and perhaps a position that is easier on my knee than BUB, so Baby Jake became my ride of choice for the weekend.  Now that it seems my knee has healed (at least mostly), I’m looking forward to biking regularly again.

*All things considered, the article came out pretty well, which means I didn’t do anything like this.  That said, I wish I had emphasized the importance of quality, comprehensive bicycle education, from which all cyclists, adults and children, those who have been cycling for years and those new to the activity, would benefit greatly.  Instead, on the questions about bicycling safety, I somehow managed to use the word “helmet” three times — cringe!

**I’m not sure how the commenter knew about my cold and the resulting snottiness I experienced over the past couple of weeks, but I’m feeling much better now, thanks 🙂