As of today I am officially 21 weeks pregnant which means I’m over halfway there! Wahoo! It also means that I STILL don’t have any control over my: thoughts, emotions, energy level, eating habits, sleep pattern, bladder, or immune system. HA!
The second trimester is definitely going much better than the first, energy-wise. Minus the holidays, gym renovations, and a 10 day stint of strep throat, bronchitis and a sinus infection, I have been working out (fairly) regularly– about 3 times per week doing a combo of boot camp and CrossFit at my home box, CrossFit Unite. I am modifying pretty much everything, but it feels SO good to be moving again!
The diet stuff however is…eh…so-so. I’m still struggling to eat my “norm” of limited starches/sugars and have definitely been eating more bread-y type-foods than I, and my body, prefer to eat in order to FEEL best. But I just take it one day at a time. Some days that’s salads and veggies and fruit and eggs and chicken…other days it’s pizza and Taco Bell.
I DO NOT LIKE MC DONALD’S and yet, it was like I had been possessed. Seriously, there was not one ounce of me that wanted to be there, to order a burger from there, or to eat anything from there. I LOVE a good fast food burger, but not from McDonald’s, yet this is what this pregnancy has brought me to.
I can’t help but worry about the weight gain– for several reasons…
1) My goal is to have the healthiest pregnancy possible. For me that means avoiding gestational diabetes, storing too much extra fat, maintaining as much strength and stamina possible and most importantly, delivering a healthy baby.
2) No matter how much I KNOW that I am pregnant (and growing a freaking human) it’s still very hard to watch my body change so much while feeling like I have little to no control over it. This isn’t guilt or shame, it’s literally a lack of control over the physical changes– mostly due to weight gain– which, unfortunately, is NOT ALL baby, I promise!
3) Eating a REASONABLE amount of food seems nearly impossible– and if there’s one thing I know best, it’s food!
For example, I ate 1800 calories yesterday (the number that I’m aiming for each day based on my pregnant BMR and activity level on non-workout days) but after going to bed, I woke up at midnight STARVING and could not sleep because of it. Even when I’m not pregnant I don’t believe in going to bed hungry, or avoiding food when true hunger hits, so it’s not that I would normally ignore it, but this is a whole new level of hunger that I can’t even describe.
I was tired, I didn’t want to drag myself out of bed and walk downstairs. I wanted to stay warm and cozy and just SLEEP, but that wasn’t an option. I ended up standing in front of the fridge eating 2 left over meatballs dipped in ranch dressing– feeling like, physically, I needed to eat more, but I had no interest (mentally or emotionally) in actually eating food. And physically, I KNEW that I didn’t NEED the additional calories, so I also KNEW that those extra calories would be going straight to the fat stores for later use. Apparently this baby can only survive on fuel that’s in my blood stream and is incapable of thriving of the stored energy ALL OVER MY BODY!! GAH! (Don’t worry, I’m smiling as I write this) 🙂
Yes, I know that I will be able to lose the extra stored fat after the baby comes, but that doesn’t change the RIGHT NOW. That doesn’t help the health of my pregnancy, and it doesn’t make me feel like I’m IN control– because clearly I am not. Baby M has ALL of the power right now and he is very demanding!
4) Eating the foods that I want to eat versus eating the foods that sir M wants to eat. This goes back to feeling in control– which I’m a huge believer in, when it comes to making choices that allow us to feel our best- physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Another example, the other night I made a beautiful dinner of roasted lemon and garlic chicken, sweet potatoes and broccoli, which I had planned to eat with a side salad as way to enjoy a delicious, nutritious meal. BUT, as soon as I took the food out of the oven I was instantly repulsed. WHAT THE HELL LITTLE DUDE??? Out of no where all I wanted was a big hamburger– like a thick patty, grilled. No bun, or cheese or ketchup or whatever, just a thick, grilled hamburger patty. I don’t think I’ve ever craved JUST that. (this is probably why the midnight meatballs were what did the trick– a red meat craving for protein and iron perhaps?) Anyway, I had an appointment that I needed to attend and didn’t have time to thaw ground beef and turn on the grill and blah, blah, blah, so I ended up eating two baby bell cheese rounds and pickles. A fine snack, but not exactly nutrient dense. Grrrr!
5) Cravings– I have had very few cravings, so far. The burger is one of 3 that I can think of– the other two included a burger as well and yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
YELLOW CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE FROSTING ALMOST MADE ME LOSE MY MIND
Yes, yellow cake with chocolate frosting– and NOTHING else would do. The craving started on a Friday a couple week ago and I managed to ignore it for 4 days. It would surface here and there, but because I’m lazy, the thought of going out and finding yellow cake with chocolate frosting required much more effort than avoiding it all together. But by the fifth day it was consuming me– like LITERALLY consuming me. It was the craziest thing. I could not think of anything else. I couldn’t concentrate at all. I couldn’t even have a conversation with Brett without thinking about cake. I finally decided it was time. It was time to indulge the craving so I could move on.
We went to THREE different stores– drove 15 miles to find the RIGHT yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Chocolate cake, my usual favorite, wouldn’t do. White cake with chocolate frosting– oh hell no! YELLOW CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE FROSTING was the ONLY cake that would do. Period.
I was literally laughing at myself because of the ridiculousness of the situation. I have never in my life felt so obsessed (that word doesn’t even seem strong enough) to eat ANYTHING, EVER. It was all I could do to wait the five minutes it took to get home from what ended up being the closest store to our house (should have gone there first) to take a bite of the freaking cake. 1/4 of the cake later, I was finally satiated and I slept like a rock that night.
I think what’s most frustrating about the food thing is that I feel like I’m hungry A LOT, but it’s rare that anything really sounds appealing, and often times, things I normally love just sound repulsive. The times when my normal foods, like fresh veg, fruit, and cheese don’t sound repulsive, I make sure to get them in so I know I’m eating something nutritious SOME of the time, and the other times are filled with random shit, like pickles.
One thing I am doing, that I feel good about, is drinking LOTS of water— because from what I learned on Thanksgiving, constipation ain’t NO JOKE. I’m fairly certain I now I have good idea of what labor will feel like, seriously.
According to our most recent ultrasound (3 weeks ago) all is good with Baby M. He’s right on schedule size-wise, so YAY!
The best thing about being pregnant right now...and this is most definitely the coolest thing ever, is that I get to feel him move in my belly. That is pretty dang magical and something I promise not to complain about until he is keeping me up at night and kicking me in the ribs and bladder, then I will complain all I want! 🙂
Here’s the latest picture of that little booger…
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Hi Andrea:
I don’t think I’ve ever commented on your blog before, but something about this post made me want to! I am about 21 months out from a vertical sleeve gastrectomy, I’m 40 and I am almost 9 weeks pregnant. Before this pregnancy, I had three back to back miscarriages, so you can imagine my wildly vacillating feelings thing go-round! Anyway, I am struggling with FATIGUE like never before and the desire to eat eat eat but also feel repulsed by things that I’d normally be all over..so crazy. I can’t help but wonder if the intense fatigue is related to my age… but it’s a weird place to be, wondering if I feel nauseated because of my sleeve stomach reacting weird to something (things seem to change every few months) or if it’s pregnancy-related. Also, yellow cake with chocolate frosting is THE BEST cake in the world, but thank god it doesn’t appeal right now. Harrrr.. Hope you keep having a healthy pregnancy and thanks for your blog!
Hey Shawnie! Thanks for commenting today! 🙂 Sounds like we are in very similar boats! Not sure how many of my other posts you’ve read but I’m 38, had WLS four years ago, had a miscarriage last year and suffered through extreme exhaustion my first trimester. I never threw up but always felt nauseated unless I had food on my stomach until I started upping my fiber, specifically with beans. I wrote about it here http://imperfectlife.net/pg-11wks/
I hope you things get better for you, soon and that you are able to experience a healthy, full-term pregnancy. Please keep me posted! <3
Try not to stress the weight too much. I was a nut about my weight during my pregnancies. I was afraid my doctor was going to yell at me, my blood pressure would go up every time I got on the scale. They thought I had high blood pressure and wanted to induce me! I gained 35 and then 38 for both my post RNY babies, I was at my pre-pregnancy weight by my 6 week appointment. I wish I wouldn’t have put myself under so much stress over nothing. I was laughing about your cake craving. I had to have a toasted sesame bagel with olive cream cheese, I obsessed about it. Those food craving are killer! Take care.