Call it a trick, call it a hack, call it intuitive eating, call it blood sugar management, call it “eating for two”—the strategy I’ve developed for maintaining sanity and vitality in the first trimester boils down to: eating frequently.
Protein might be a key factor. During preconception, I habituated to eating protein every time I ate. This started as a way to eat enough protein overall, but it also worked handily as a blood sugar regulating tool and a preventative measure against junk food and sugar.
The other key factor is listening to cravings.
I’ve become so discerning with my cravings—which are just thoughts—that I can easily feel if an impulse would be truly satisfying or actually emptying.
Oreos, for example: a comfort food from my youth, but totally pointless right now (at least on their own). Note: I had a piece of Oreo cheesecake on our honeymoon on the beach at sunset, and it was divine. No regrets. I would also definitely eat Oreos if they appeared in the same room as some nice milk, and ideally some other food.
There’s a fear about gestational diabetes (a diagnosis that is based on a terrible test and ever-changing parameters), with one of the threats being stillbirth (if not managed at all) and the other being a big baby (not a problem).
The funny thing about gestational diabetes is that it is most often “managed” through diet and lifestyle—that is, regulating blood sugar—in exactly the ways that you would conduct your diet and lifestyle for optimal health anyway.
Just as there is a disconnect between food and fertility for, apparently, most people—there is a disconnect in pregnancy, too. The tv narrative is all about ice cream and pickle cravings. The medical narrative is about policing weight gain and excessive testing.
All of this goes out the window when the body is allowed to lead. It might take some unlearning and relearning to be able to communicate with the body, if it’s been shut off for a long time—but it’s ready to communicate what it needs, just as a newborn is ready to communicate what it needs… if you’re willing to listen.
As with everything in the perinatal continuum, each stage brings lessons for the next. As I learn to slow down (because fatigue) and listen to my hunger cues (before I’m so hungry that I’m upset), I’m preparing to listen to a new one learning its body for the first time.
Although I’ve studied pregnancy, most of the clients I’ve worked with don’t meet with me until the 30th+ week. It has been crucial for me to interact with people who have been pregnant before, to tell them what I’m experiencing and to hear their echoes.
At the same time, I’m amid a cultural norm of keeping pregnancy private until week 12—another month from now, nearing the end of the first trimester, and often the beginning of the renowned Golden Age that is the second trimester. Already past the hardest part.
I can’t imagine keeping quiet during this time. I mean, I can—but it would involve so many white lies, I think I would actually be sick.
Maybe people are superstitious. Maybe they don’t want the feeling of disappointment to resound everywhere they go if they lose the embryo. But this time of story-sharing with sisters has expedited my learning pricelessly.
When I share with friends, family, and acquaintances, I learn about my own needs. After the initial “feeling good!” responses, my complaints start to creep in: tired, unmotivated, constipated, weird food feelings.
And by processing those needs aloud, the answers bubble up, too. “I only feel nauseous if I get hungry.” “I have to have only what I’m excited about eating.”
Within just a few days of figuring out the Food Trick (eating before I get hungry, or about every two hours)—and maybe it’s coincidence—my breasts got less sore, I stopped experiencing nausea altogether, I got less sleepy, and the constipation ended!
Sometimes the food was chips and salsa, to be honest. Sometimes it was yogurt and granola followed by milk and granola followed by more milk and granola. Yesterday it was half a chicken. Protein bars have become my favorite guilty (overprocessed) pleasure.
Maybe it’s because pregnancy is the most obviously important thing in the world to me, but it is very effectively helping me continue to unlearn the practices of ignoring my body that kept me such a good worker bee for so long.
This has been the theme of preconception, and it will continue to be the theme through birth and into motherhood.
A subtheme, which is starting to be more relevant as my body changes, is the acceptance and appreciation of the wisdom of my body’s shape.
Since I’ve been very hungry and very tired, my shape has quickly changed. I might have twin embryos, enlarging my uterus even more than a single would; or I might just be gaining a lot of weight quickly.
As soon as I started noticing this, my reaction was of gratitude: thank you, body, for allowing me to prepare for postpartum!
As a postpartum doula, I see the newborn period as a marathon of snacking and feeding. The thought of the work involved in eating while breastfeeding is enough to make me tired. Pregnancy and birth are already taxing—but calorically speaking, breastfeeding is the actual marathon.
But when I think of the body’s shape in the first trimester, my programming is to think of a shape completely unchanged: you aren’t supposed to “show” until 20 weeks, maybe 16.
I am, of course, already furious. My uterus has more than doubled in size! My milk ducts have already completed a whole stage of construction! How am I supposed to “not be showing”?!
The association of pregnancy with the “bump” is reductive and annoying. It ignores the pretty extreme changes that already take place just between ovulation and menstruation in a regular cycle. The uterus is always moving and changing.
So, once again, I am grateful to be on the path of bodily wisdom rather than outsourced monitoring and control. I won’t be weighed at the doctor’s office. There is no test I need to pass. I already know what I need to do.
My body has been very into hiking. The weather is a little too gray to be inviting, but I’ve been up the hill anyway.
I don’t know if I’ll run again or not. I will force myself to weight train if I don’t start by impulse in the next few weeks. I do know that I want to be in great shape for birth and recovery.
I have a very specific craving for Taco John’s, and although it is mostly poison, I believe that the emotional benefits of a Potato Olé pilgrimage will be worth it. I feel like a rebel in my own castle of health, and the joy that brings me is a supplement worth taking.
Birth.DIY 