Starting Again - From the Ground Up

I'm giving it another go. My container garden flopped last year, and I'd nearly decided I wouldn't bother with it this year. I had figured the distraction of being pregnant and getting ready for the birth would keep my interests occupied elsewhere. But I was only fooling myself – as April rolled by, visions of color were flooding my mind. Vegetables and ornamentals bursting out of pots arranged in a loose border around the patio, complete with a lovely pergola overhead and a couple of cheap-o lawn chairs planted in the middle. Can you just see it? I was intoxicated. I couldn't help but try to create this vision, even if it'd be a far cry from the picture in my head.

I shake my head in wonder at how, initially, I was a chicken to try because of the life growing inside me. And now I feel more strongly about trying BECAUSE of this life growing inside of me. Maybe it's the connection of miracles in the womb to miracles in the soil – lessons in biology long forgotten and never fully understood. I have trouble believing all started from nothing for no real reason when I see a sprout of life budding through the ground. Or a life growing in my belly.

So to the nursery I went. Last year I tried seeds, but this time I was cheating with starters. A mental wince at the check-out counter, but a chuckle once home – I'd treated my trip to the nursery like a trip to the produce department of the local PCC. Sometimes the only thing – besides cost – that is able to turn me away from a luscious piece of produce is the label beneath it, “Guatemala” or “Chile.” The rainbow of bounty found on those produce counters, seductive in their textures, shapes, and aromas, is similar to the enticement of the nursery. And there I didn't even check where any of the plants came from. Oops.

With my husband out for the evening, I engrossed myself in pots, soil, worm castings, perlite, rocks, and the little starts that seemed to be watching and waiting for me to set them home. I realize I may be romanticizing the experience, but mixing together ingredients in each pot felt a bit like a ritual, a ceremony of reverence. A song got stuck in my head – darned if I can't remember what it was now – and I sang quietly to the plants as I worked (it helps when no one is around!). I did a lot of talking, too, conversing the matter over with myself to make sure I was doing everything right. Maybe the plants could count as listeners for all the talking I did to myself!

I felt – and still feel – the tension of nervous excitement, as I don't yet have the confidence gained from years of experience with successful plantings. But I'm savoring the nerves. I try to remind myself: Experience is gained through living in wonder and humility, not worrying or trying to control nature. If I am blessed with one Black Russian heirloom tomato this summer, I will be overjoyed.

So I'm giving it another go. Engaging in life is an intoxicating experience.

Listening to the Baby... Through the Belly?

I have been working on an essay for school entitled, “The Mystery of Cravings.” It explores the reasons why some women have strong cravings for certain foods during pregnancy and others do not. In it I compare two viewpoints, one that says a pregnant woman should be allowed to eat whatever she wants, whenever she wants, because it is the baby speaking through her, telling her what it needs, and another that says that, even though a woman's intuition is heightened during pregnancy, it doesn't mean she should follow every whim and fancy – she still needs to ensure a balanced and nutritious diet, regardless of what she may “want.”

I would like to believe that every woman does have a heightened sense of what she needs to eat when she is pregnant. However, my own experiences thus far have made me wonder on more than one occasion. When nausea was commonplace in the first trimester, ice cream, toast, and cheese were mild foods that seemed to soothe both my belly and my mind. But then I discovered that my body did not tolerate them so well anymore. So I was left thinking, DOES my body really know what it needs?

I wonder if there were emotional, rather than nutritional, reasons for wanting some of those foods. While my desire for ice cream MAY have meant that I needed more protein, calcium, or magnesium, it could have also simply been an addiction to something sweet, with a creamy mouthfeel and nostalgic memories of ice cream during childhood. While my inability to eat other foods MAY have had physiologic roots, it could have simply been me looking for more attention from my husband and peers. After all, women are told it is normal to go through extreme changes in appetite during pregnancy, almost to the point that is not only expected but thought of as “cool” or “hip.” Could this make women feel pressured to change their diet in extreme ways?

I'm just wondering. I'm wondering if my initial changes in appetite were really founded on anything the baby may have been trying to tell me - or if it was, so to speak, “all me!” I hope that I am listening to my body honestly, and that the needs of my baby are being heard and met. I have no doubt that my body is putting the needs of my baby above my own, and indeed I don't want to obsess over every bite I put into my mouth (I think that's called orthorexia!), but I DO want to be consistently hearing the needs of my baby. I have heard of couples who, when given the opportunity to sit down, close their eyes, and mentally ask the baby what it needed, came up with the same reply, instantly. Maybe I need to do that more often – not just assume I know, but actually sit down, close my eyes, and ASK the baby. Because, after all, I am feeding the TWO of us, aren't I? It's now about more than MY needs.

Digging through Worm Poop

This past Sunday I went through my worm bin for the first time.

Don’t worry, I had only begun using my worm bin last September, after being gifted with a free bin in my organic gardening class, which we prepped ourselves during our “final exam.” But, needless to say, it had still reached the point of overflowing – the lid didn’t quite latch like it’s supposed to anymore, and it was clear that the worms had been living it up.

So I spread out the tarp in the garage, got a few empty, flattened cardboard boxes, and a few yogurt containers for scooping. Then I began the process of scooping out the leftovers of the worms consumption and separating the not-yet-consumed food bits from the worms, from the worm castings. It was a lovely process – surprisingly fulfilling!

I confess I didn’t get as much “out of it” as I could have (in the way of actual worm castings), because, when I would spot a family of worms lingering together in a clump of soil, I would leave them alone and not bothering picking through them. The whole clump was just added them to the growing pile of “worms NOT to be disturbed.” And there were so many of them! Back in September, I started out with probably just 8 or 12 worms. Boy, have they been busy reproducing!

So now I have a lovely 3 gallons worth of worm castings, and another 2 gallons or so of compost “tea” (the liquid that filters out of the food decomposition/worm consumption/etc process).

The experience of digging through the work of my beloved worms reinspired me to make use of the containers I have out behind the house. In fact, visions of a flourishing container garden, out on our background concrete porch, with a trellis arching over it, came to me mind, and I found my senses tickled with a sense of longing and determination. Even though my attempts at growing food from seeds failed pretty miserably last season, I am now bound and determined to try again! Not from seed, though – not this year, anyway. I’ll “cheat” this time around.

If you haven’t tried digging through worm poop before, I highly recommend it!

Feeling the Weight

I must confess that in the last week or so I have been really feeling the effects of growth. Belly growth, that is. And I am loving it – I mean, I am loving my growing belly, knowing there is a growing baby inside. But I suffer from just enough vanity to make those shifts from normal pants to larger and still larger pants a bit worrisome.

I know, I know. Get over it, right? No one wants to hear about somebody else's self-absorbed vanity complexes. But despite the fact that I tell myself I don't care what other people think, weight is still a sensitive topic. I've never kept a scale in my house for that very reason.

Now I realize, yes, that as a pregnant woman, I am expected to gain weight – I NEED to gain weight! I WANT to gain weight, to support my baby's development. My “fears,” if you will, regard the “after-birth” weight.

My GOAL is to be a woman at peace with her changing body, able to calmly adjust to its changed status after birth and able to moderate her habits so as to bring her body back into balance and good health. But I know I “haven't seen anything yet,” and I'm already nervous about it!

I'm fully prepared to gain the weight needed to prepare my baby for life outside my body, and I intend to eat healthfully to support his/her health after birth, too. It's all just vanity, I guess. I've read that pregnancy changes a woman's body permanently, and I want to be at peace with it when it does! I guess I better start being mentally proactive about it now, so it doesn't come as an depression-inducing shock after-the-fact. My hope is that by practicing good nutrition and physical activity now, the habits will be set in place for working through the changes I know are to come.

I would love to know what other moms have learned about practicing good health prior to birth, in an effort to help the post-birth changes. Thanks for sharing your experiences!

My Problem with Wheat

Well, that makes it sound like I really know what's up with wheat. It sure is a popular topic these days – all sorts of writers and health professionals are out there sharing their two cents about whether or not it is a good grain to consume anymore, with it's extensive breeding and common genetic modification. And of course wheat is carefully avoided by those steering clear of gluten.

The truth is I don't really know where my problem with wheat comes from, or how serious it is. I do know that I have long loved wheat bread and was unaware of any trouble with it until I became pregnant. And only now do I have any idea there might be a problem because even sugar doesn't seem to pose the problems to my system that wheat does, even though, as wife of a home-brewer, I know sugar feeds yeast. It is quite honestly a mystery to me.

The only clue before pregnancy that wheat might be problematic was the fact that I chronically experienced white spots on my nails. I have always figured they indicated a zinc deficiency, but then learned in school that they can indicate many other things, including fluctuating blood sugar levels and wheat allergies. Hmmm! Makes me wonder.

My current “white spot status” is much lower than “normal,” so maybe there IS a connection there...!

That's one thing I gotta say I love about nutrition and food. The mysteries take time to unravel, and they keep coming. Whenever I think I “KNOW” something, a dozen other things come along to question those “facts.” Helps keep me humble, I guess.

I'm interested in knowing how wheat has affected your life, both pleasantly and less pleasantly. Let me know!

Trial and Error

The first few months of pregnancy saw multiple shifts in my diet. After the initial discovery, back in January, my appetite was low, perhaps due to the shock and awe of realizing I was now a “mother-in-becoming.” However, decreases in blood sugar every 2-3 hours led me to eat regularly anyway to avoid the consequential bouts of nausea. My energy was decreased and attending school full-time and commuting 3 hours a day on the bus was enough to wipe me out completely by the evening.

I fell in love with citrus – oranges and grapefruit, especially – and enjoyed the daily bowl of ice cream, which felt soothing to the stomach and sweet to the tongue. Following the recommendations of others, saltine crackers and slices of cheese were also kept nearby. Within several weeks, however, I began to fall into trouble with the diet my own appetite had led me to follow - a diet uncharacteristically high in refined carbohydrates, fruit, dairy, and sugar, and simultaneously low in protein and vegetable matter. I was following my “instincts,” but oh did they fool me! They were leading me on a rather painful learning curve and there was no avoiding it!

I don't usually have yeast issues. But these changes in diet combined with the altered hormonal environment inside me seemed to open the door to a whole rainbow of new internal imbalances. And, as usual for me, an “extremist's response” was triggered. In this case, a “candida diet” was implemented and dozens of previously-loved foods were avoided. Probiotic supplements were also popped on a religious basis. I had messed up, and now I was on a warpath to fight this!

Initial symptoms subsided and healed within about a week, and I walked away from that experience impressed with the power of diet. I continued to avoid wheat, gluten and yeasted products, and also minimized or otherwise avoided vinegar, uncultured dairy, cheese, sugar, refined grains, fruit, and even nuts. What did I eat? Basically, eggs, lean animal protein and legumes, rice, and vegetables! My midwife thought that avoiding wheat was a worthwhile endeavor, but encouraged experimenting with fruit and the moderate use of organic, raw vinegars, as both can be potent and beneficial in small quantities. So the experiments began, and I have since determined that many of the foods I initially considered off-limits are not my source of trouble. Used mindfully, fruit, nut products, organic vinegars, and even a small and infrequent amount of sugar are all okay - my real sources of trouble are wheat, yeast, and – perhaps – gluten.

To come, “My Problem with Wheat.”

Introduction and Welcome

Welcome to Eating Expectantly!

My name is Holly Crow, and I am nearly halfway through my first pregnancy. I love to eat, cook, and think about good food, but I have found certain changes to my diet necessary for both the wellbeing of myself and the health of my baby. In the midst of this journey towards motherhood, I will be sharing some trials and discoveries about food and health in the context of a natural birth process where food is considered medicine, the first line of defense and prevention.

I am a student in the natural health sciences, set to graduate from an undergraduate Nutrition program at the end of spring 2009. I have lived in Washington state my whole life and love the green and blue shades of its natural environment. The move my husband and I have been anticipating – out of the city, into areas less populated – has been delayed by this pregnancy, but we are grateful to be near a naturopathic doctor and midwife who we respect for the first stages of this new chapter in our lives.

I hope you enjoy and are able to get something out of my mistakes and discoveries! This road is a new one for me, but I look forward to enjoying the process, confessing my shortcomings, and sharing my discoveries with you!