Pregnancy: The best diet

I remember early on in my pregnancy feeling a great sense of duty in nutritional intake. Normally I was a burgers n fries gal, but I was determined to become the kind of purist you only read about in snotty parenting magazines. My boyfriend and I went grocery shopping and I had a strict list of what I needed to have to ensure a healthy, wonderful gestation. I bought every green vegetable I saw, some of which I couldn't even pronounce. I went the grainy seedy bread route. White meat. Dairy, lots of it. Yoghurt and I were going to have to learn to like one another.

$200 later, we put the food away and I felt quite accomplished...until I was hungry. I tried. I really did. I tried veggies and they just tasted bland. I tried cooking but our apartment was not only cramped, but extremely messy. The kitchen was practically a hallway. We hated the layout and at some point had given up on it. Dishes were done once a week if that, laundry was a disaster...one did not feel inspired to cook or get comfortable in that crap hole. I packed a lunch, including the yoghurt and ended up going to Wendy's. (To my credit, I got the baked potato instead of fries).

Then the inevitable..."morning" sickness hit. As many of you know, it doesn't happen only in the morning. I threw up morning, noon and night. I was lucky to never have been physically ill while at work, but before and after were pretty gross. The stupidest things would set me off. Bread was a big no-no. I hated the smell of bread in the bag. It just made me gag. I had to ask my boyfriend to take bread out of the bag for me if I wanted to have a sandwich. It got to the point where if I even looked at the bag of bread I'd go running to the bathroom. I threw up so many times that I really didn't gain much weight. I was sick for five and half months.

When the sickness was finally finished, I was ready to eat. But I didn't want any of the stuff all the books told me I should have. I wanted poutine. BAD. I wanted McDonalds. BAD. After a while, I just gave up and ate whatever I felt like. I could have done well to have eaten more fruit, but I more than made up for it in dairy. I drank carton upon carton of milk. This is quite something, as I was lactose intolerant before getting prego. I can definitely say that pregnancy solved that issue (thank goodness!!)

Today, if I have a stomach bug or if I eat something that doesn't agree with me, and I think that throwing up will help, I don't have to do the finger down the throat trick....all I have to do is think about yoghurt, bread in a bag smell and it's all downhill from there.

Bon appetit!

The beginning...

The day I found out I was pregnant with twins is a day I will not soon forget. It was the beginning of the Fall, 2008. My boyfriend, Wayne and I were excited to get that little picture that all our parent friends had of their own little ones in their first ultrasound picture. The first memory is of not being allowed to pee that morning and having to have a full bladder while they probed and put pressure right on my bladder. By the time I lay down on the pseudo bed, I could already feel my teeth floating. The ultrasound tech was a nice young woman who already had the look of someone who's seen everything. She coasted the hand held ultrasound instrument over my belly and I immediately saw our 12 week baby lying vertically, keeping quite still. I could see its tiny heart beating and my own started to melt a little. I saw visions of playing Barbies, having tea parties, getting a little shih-tzu puppy and living happily ever after. The technician moved the instrument further across my belly and I noticed the baby was all of a sudden dancing a jig and was lying horizontally. "Hmm, that's weird," I thought. I shrugged it off figuring that the tech had changed the view on the screen. That's when she changed my life forever.

"Do you have a history of twins in your family?" she asked with mild trepidation.

I closed my eyes. I had to be dreaming. I was JUST joking around the day before that if I was having twins I'd be giving one away.

Recovering from my split second departure from reality, I said "Ummm...yeah. We're having twins?" I looked at Wayne and I saw the look of a crazed lunatic. He had the most desperate look about him, though he was grinning from ear to ear. I wasn't sure if he was happy or if he was going to grab the computer screen and discus-throw it across the room. He grabbed my hand and started to laugh. I felt tears start to form in my eyes and I saw a life of never sleeping again, Barbie was waving goodbye while the tea party became covered in poopy diapers and misshapen play-doh. The shih-tzu was running for his life.

We got a few good pictures and I started thinking of funny ways to tell my parents the news. I ran to the bathroom, peed for like an hour and went downstairs to get some toast from the little café in the building. I called my dad and said "Are you sitting down?" and I broke the news. He laughed so hard, I thought he was going to lose it. Thanks...I guess I was a wonderful child to get such a reaction! My mom was a little more worried but she soon got into it and started talking about shopping for a nice double stroller.

As we drove away after our breakfast, staring at the road ahead of us, we began to understand just what we were headed for but nothing could have ever made it feel real enough.