Chapter 3: A Mothering Revolution
Life changed dramatically when we decided to have a baby. We sort-of rushed into it (not even married). It sort of went like this. We broke up. Cried a lot. Decided to get back together. Decided we were soulmates committed for life.
Conversation:
"Let's have a baby."
"Now?"
"Not now, necessarily."
"Oh, darling.....Oh, oh, OHHH!"
One month later....
"Well, honey, the test is positive. Ready or not..."
Yeah, not the most coherent planning ever undertaken.
Influenced by my parents and my own belief that Nature knows best, I was really interested in having a natural childbirth. This led me to take a Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth class.
The Bradley Method is wonderful in many ways and I learned so many invaluable lessons in the class, but their dietary recommendations are less than healthful. The BradleyMethod promotes the Brewer Diet for preventing toxemia and preeclampsia and for growing a "blue ribbon baby" i.e. a mammoth whale of a newborn. The Brewer diet appealed to me because it was just like my mother recommended when I was young, lots of fruit and vegetables, whole grains, eggs, and milk. The cornerstone? 100 grams of protein! We were given sheets to count up our protein grams. I was proud that as a vegetarian, I could pack in that protein. However, I also discovered I had pica. When I began dreaming of hamburgers and my midwife warned me that my iron was low, I added some meat back into my diet, mainly poultry and fish. I also took Floradix, a natural iron tonic, but couldn't get myself to take it very often.
I dutifully packed all of the healthful foods in, along with that protein and a couple of pints of Ben and Jerry's a week. I gained a whopping 45 pounds on my already overweight body.
I failed my first glucose tolerance test. But I passed the fasting one, so no gestational diabetes for me, right? And I felt and looked fantastic. I was a fantastic whale of a pregnant woman and I loved every minute of it. Everyone praises and encourages a pregnant woman to eat more. I was having fun!
As I considered my impending role as a mother, I began thinking of how important my mother's role as cook for our family was. I wanted to instill healthy eating habits in my child. I, of course, planned to breastfeed. I had read that a breastfeeding mother's diet could impact the nutrition of her milk and could influence her children to like healthy foods. I began buying magazines like Vegetarian Times and Cooking Light and trying out recipes. My husband was encouraging and we sometimes entertained friends, who were complimentary.
Our money concerns led us to try to eat out less, and of course, drinking was out while I was pregnant.
Finally, our son arrived. Our birth was not what we wanted and a small part of this was due to his very large size, 9 pounds 6.5 ounces, a blue ribbon baby all right! Being a new parent, and then a pumping full-time working mom in a big city with traffic and a stressful job took a heavy toll on my emotional health. Not to mention our debt and the wedding which we planned and paid for and held in a distant place close to our parents. We also moved 3 times within 2 years. We were constantly stressed out. Yet our eating habits had improved quite a bit.
I now regularly cooked healthy meals. We ate out 2-3 times a week instead of 5-6. I gradually phased the meat out of our diets after about 6 months. Between the small improvements in our diet and breastfeeding, I managed to get my weight down to about 155 at 18 months postpartum. I also had 1 full year of respite from my period because of the breastfeeding, which resolved my iron deficiency and pica, and gave my body a much-needed break.
Showing posts with label anemia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anemia. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2007
How the Adventure Began
My journey here has been a long and convoluted one. I could write pages and pages of why I have suddenly decided once and for all to embrace a raw vegan diet, but you, my lovely readers, would not find my life as fascinating as I do. So, I'll attempt to condense my story at least a bit...but it'll still be darn long (30 years takes a bit of explaining). So, I'll tell this story in several chapters and promise not to be quite so wordy in the future!
Chapter One: The Kernel of a Health Nut
The seeds were planted by my mother (and her mother, though we lived far away and I didn't get to know her much). They were apart of a small minority that believed a healthy diet was the most important medicine. My mother breastfed when almost nobody was doing it and believed in fruits and vegetables and whole grains and beans and meat and raw dairy.
When I was young, she tried very hard to protect me from the evils of sugar. In fact I remember being traumatized in kindergarten when she sent me with a bag of celery and carrot sticks and a note that I wasn't to partake of the party goodies.
My father believed in steak and ice cream. But he also ate a salad every night and certainly more fruit than most men his age. I remember being fascinated that he said "AHrange" rather than "Orange" (he was originally from the East Coast). He also worked up a sizeable portion of our backyard so that he and my mother could grow a large vegetable garden.
Fast forward into my early adolescence. My parents' healthy ideals were sliding away as the number of children in the family multiplied (at this point we were six and eventually grew to number eleven). My mother no longer gardened, baked bread from scratch, or tried to resist the overwhelming culture of junk food in the classroom. We ate school lunch, but still had a fairly healthy breakfast and homemade dinner. I had developed a significant sugar addiction and couldn't get enough. I snuck to the candy store with what tiny money I had to gorge myself.
A cross-country move, my father's subsequent unemployment, and a failed attempt at a home business left us all reeling. We started watching hours of television and eating processed garbage handed out at the food pantry. I ate pints of ice cream when I could get my hands on them.
I had a mild weight problem--probably about 20 pounds overweight--throughout junior high and high school. I was certainly worried about it, but not obsessed like many girls I knew.
During my freshman year of college, I continued my schizophrenic eating patterns. I ate tons of salad and fresh fruit, supplemented with high fat cafeteria fare, french fries, ice cream and other sugary treats.
I developed severe problems with my periods. They were 4-6 weeks long, heavy bleeding. The campus health clinic offered me birth control pills, which I turned down, and no explanation or alternative. I had no money or health insurance, so I suffered. I gained a few pounds that year, but not enough to notice much. I didn't have a scale anyway.
The next year, I discovered credit cards. Credit cards allowed me to eat out. I was in Chicago, surrounded by yummy ethnic foods (mostly high fat). There was also a fantastic place nearby to get a huge omelet. I went there often with friends. And of course, I discovered the joys of drinking. I wasn't a big drinker but every other week or so, enjoyed a pitcher or two of margaritas with my friends.
Food was a source of comfort for me and a wonderful entertainment. I was not much for partying, never could dance, and wasn't into any activities where socializing was about something besides food. Food was an adventure. Food was the centerpiece where my friends gathered to talk politics, literature, and discuss our personal lives. And food soothed the stresses of college life, my rocky family life, and my minor heartbreaks in the world of romance.
The summer after my sophomore year, I was a camp counselor at an overnight camp. For some reason, on a whim (I guess I was disgusted by the kitchen's main dish offerings), I told everyone there I was a vegetarian. I think I had started limiting meat before that, but I honestly can't remember why. I remember worrying about the hormones in meat--perhaps something to do with my period problems? Anyway, I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly and salad that summer, along with lots of junky side dishes and sugary desserts. The vegetarianism stuck the next year for whatever reason. I was going through a bit of a personal transformation, asserting my independence and so on. I think it was a subconscious break from my father, who always insisted that my mother cook him a separate steak with carmelized onions, regardless of what the rest of us were eating.
Anyway, my consciousness was radicalizing in college. I was interested in environmentalism, socialism, feminism, etc. I became aware of how eating meat was harmful to the planet and very cruel to animals. This strengthened my resolve.
It did nothing for my waistline or my food issues. I still ate lots of eggs, cheese, icecream, and sugary foods.
I had also, unbeknownst to me, developed anemia. The combination of my poor diet and years of heavy bleeding left me unable to get through the day without 10 or more hours of sleep. I had trouble getting to early classes and had to take a nap midafternoon. I began chewing tray upon tray of ice. I looked forward to chewing the different shapes of ice at different restaurants. It was only several years later in my childbirth class, that I discovered that this was PICA, a classic sign of iron deficiency.
Chapter One: The Kernel of a Health Nut
The seeds were planted by my mother (and her mother, though we lived far away and I didn't get to know her much). They were apart of a small minority that believed a healthy diet was the most important medicine. My mother breastfed when almost nobody was doing it and believed in fruits and vegetables and whole grains and beans and meat and raw dairy.
When I was young, she tried very hard to protect me from the evils of sugar. In fact I remember being traumatized in kindergarten when she sent me with a bag of celery and carrot sticks and a note that I wasn't to partake of the party goodies.
My father believed in steak and ice cream. But he also ate a salad every night and certainly more fruit than most men his age. I remember being fascinated that he said "AHrange" rather than "Orange" (he was originally from the East Coast). He also worked up a sizeable portion of our backyard so that he and my mother could grow a large vegetable garden.
Fast forward into my early adolescence. My parents' healthy ideals were sliding away as the number of children in the family multiplied (at this point we were six and eventually grew to number eleven). My mother no longer gardened, baked bread from scratch, or tried to resist the overwhelming culture of junk food in the classroom. We ate school lunch, but still had a fairly healthy breakfast and homemade dinner. I had developed a significant sugar addiction and couldn't get enough. I snuck to the candy store with what tiny money I had to gorge myself.
A cross-country move, my father's subsequent unemployment, and a failed attempt at a home business left us all reeling. We started watching hours of television and eating processed garbage handed out at the food pantry. I ate pints of ice cream when I could get my hands on them.
I had a mild weight problem--probably about 20 pounds overweight--throughout junior high and high school. I was certainly worried about it, but not obsessed like many girls I knew.
During my freshman year of college, I continued my schizophrenic eating patterns. I ate tons of salad and fresh fruit, supplemented with high fat cafeteria fare, french fries, ice cream and other sugary treats.
I developed severe problems with my periods. They were 4-6 weeks long, heavy bleeding. The campus health clinic offered me birth control pills, which I turned down, and no explanation or alternative. I had no money or health insurance, so I suffered. I gained a few pounds that year, but not enough to notice much. I didn't have a scale anyway.
The next year, I discovered credit cards. Credit cards allowed me to eat out. I was in Chicago, surrounded by yummy ethnic foods (mostly high fat). There was also a fantastic place nearby to get a huge omelet. I went there often with friends. And of course, I discovered the joys of drinking. I wasn't a big drinker but every other week or so, enjoyed a pitcher or two of margaritas with my friends.
Food was a source of comfort for me and a wonderful entertainment. I was not much for partying, never could dance, and wasn't into any activities where socializing was about something besides food. Food was an adventure. Food was the centerpiece where my friends gathered to talk politics, literature, and discuss our personal lives. And food soothed the stresses of college life, my rocky family life, and my minor heartbreaks in the world of romance.
The summer after my sophomore year, I was a camp counselor at an overnight camp. For some reason, on a whim (I guess I was disgusted by the kitchen's main dish offerings), I told everyone there I was a vegetarian. I think I had started limiting meat before that, but I honestly can't remember why. I remember worrying about the hormones in meat--perhaps something to do with my period problems? Anyway, I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly and salad that summer, along with lots of junky side dishes and sugary desserts. The vegetarianism stuck the next year for whatever reason. I was going through a bit of a personal transformation, asserting my independence and so on. I think it was a subconscious break from my father, who always insisted that my mother cook him a separate steak with carmelized onions, regardless of what the rest of us were eating.
Anyway, my consciousness was radicalizing in college. I was interested in environmentalism, socialism, feminism, etc. I became aware of how eating meat was harmful to the planet and very cruel to animals. This strengthened my resolve.
It did nothing for my waistline or my food issues. I still ate lots of eggs, cheese, icecream, and sugary foods.
I had also, unbeknownst to me, developed anemia. The combination of my poor diet and years of heavy bleeding left me unable to get through the day without 10 or more hours of sleep. I had trouble getting to early classes and had to take a nap midafternoon. I began chewing tray upon tray of ice. I looked forward to chewing the different shapes of ice at different restaurants. It was only several years later in my childbirth class, that I discovered that this was PICA, a classic sign of iron deficiency.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
