Paleo and Pregnancy

Let me tell you about the first three days of paleo. You feel like a superhero! You are making good food choices, you are getting so healthy and you are just so motivated. You’re tired, so you take a nap because, hey, this is a big lifestyle change so of course you’re gonna be a little bit tired.

This is the fifth week of pregnancy. You are pregnant! You are growing a person! You go to the grocery store and stock up on fruits, veggies, quinoa and decaf coffee because you are going to start this thing off right! You take a nap because growing that sweetpea sized embryo is exhausting and hey, you need it, right? Otherwise your energy level is pretty great, maybe this whole fatigue/nausea thing isn’t going to be you.

So, day 4 of paleo isn’t so glamorous. You want a donut. You want to sleep all day. You have a headache. You feel nauseous because you are depriving yourself of all things yummy and delicious.

This is the 7th week of pregnancy. You’re starving, or is that nauseous? You try to keep your stomach full of well, anything. Rice chex, gluten free Mac & cheese, Gatorade, water, chocolate milk. You don’t actually like food anymore, so you google what other women have craved and try those things. And promptly throw them up. You then realize that if you are asleep, you don’t really feel the nausea that has overtaken your poor, exhausted body so you sleep pretty much all day, waking only to pee and sip Gatorade. You then, get some anti-nausea Meds from your other pregnant friend (you have a lot of these, and secretly blame their pregnant pheromones for getting you into this situation in the first place) which has taken away the constant, “am I about to throw up?” feeling, although your desire for food has not returned. Until, you are at the Cracker Barrel and you realize that chicken and dumplings and Mac and cheese are delicious. And then later that day while you are complaining about how nothing sounds good and you wonder if you will ever like food again and your husband says the magical word, “Smithfield’s” and you return 12 minutes later with a plate of BBQ, Brunswick stew and French fries. And you eat it up.

At this point, I’m not really sure what paleo and pregnancy have in common except they both start with P and take some getting used to. And that at the beginning you think it is going to be easy and then suddenly you’re throwing up an apple wondering where you went wrong. And if your baby is going to come out with diabetes and a southern drawl because all you want to eat is barbecue and gluten-full Mac and cheese.