I really have been exhausted the past couple of days. I was reading on my Sprout app that it is common to do something as simple as a load of laundry and feel like you've run a marathon. This ran through my head the other day when I got up in the morning to pee and had to go back to lay in bed for a few minutes before heading downstairs for breakfast. Sometimes I even come downstairs and need to sit on the couch for about 20 minutes before I can muster up the energy to make myself breakfast. This is the hardest part because I know that once I get the fuel in, everything else will be a little easier. I certainly wasn't this tired last week when I was on vacation, fortunately. Maybe it just has to do with getting closer to the second trimester or the fact that I am overdue for a workout.
This morning I am trying a different hot sauce because my beloved Cholula bottle flew out of the fridge door and shattered a couple of days ago. Wah wahhhhhh.....
This sauce is not cutting it. I will be buying a replacement bottle today! Today's breakfast is wilted spinach, 2 eggs, CSA bacon, avocado and an organic pluot from Trader Joe's (that's a plum/apricot). I am eating this fruit knowing that later today I will be getting back in the gym.
Doctor's Appointment
I finally had my first visit with an ob/gyn. This was just at a women's health center because I do not have insurance or another doctor. Despite the scary scene in the waiting room, both the doc and nurse were very nice and seemed pretty pleased to have two normal and seemingly "educated people"- to use the doctor's words- in their office. The nurse weighed me and it turns out that switching to 100% primal eating knocked off about 3lbs. from my previous 160. YAY! I can still have hopes for a Bergeron-type body! The doc then did a breast and pelvic exam and sent us into another room for a sonogram. Awesome. After he moved the scanning piece around for a few seconds to get a good angle, I could see a little smudge in a dark area he pointed out as the uterus. It looked a little like the graphic I've been staring at on my phone in the Sprout app. Then he hit a button and after some fuzz and what seemed to be my own heartbeat, in came the sound of the little smudge's own heart. Wow. There really is something in there, and its alive! I got choked up for a second and let out a little laugh, and in doing so, knocked the paddle off the perfect view and ended up with the image below. You can still see my little smudge in the dark area at the top, intersected by the vertical line.
After this exciting moment we went into the office again to speak with the nurse about what I need to do to get Medicaid coverage. Luckily for me, it is an easy process and I get coverage as soon as a doctor confirms I am pregnant. There are a couple of hoops to jump through, classes to take and financial papers to track down but it is worth it. Once we've been approved we pick a specific care provider and that's it! Today, my job is to start talking to potential midwives and finding out who takes insurance and what provider so we can make a better choice when the time comes.
I am also set up for another sonogram in a month. I am just as excited for a better look at this little smudge.
For lunch I had a hot dog from our CSA and an organic pickle. I finally found a store on Staten Island that sells ones with no sugar added in the brine. They are good and now I have to ration them because the store is on the other side of the island and the darn things were $5 for the jar. My favorite snack is pickles dipped in peanut-butter, but I've been off of peanuts for a while now. :( It's not a pregnancy craving, its a genius pairing of something slightly salty and warm and creamy with something crisp and cool and acidic. If you've never tried it, get on it (or not, because it's not primal). It's not the same with almond butter either because that stuff is way too sweet.
For my second lunch, which totally ruined my appetite for dinner, I had a primal big mac experiment. I took one of my steak-burgers I got online (grass-fed), chopped up some red onion and the crispy part of romaine and covered it with my version of the big mac sauce made in this video. It was good except the burger wasn't cooked enough and probably could have used some more salt (not to mention it's just not the same without that cold piece of american cheese). This was at 7pm which is normal dinner time for most people. However, real dinner comes at around 10pm when my husband is working. I didn't want to ruin my dinner... it's just that I made the sauce and how was I not going to try it? Needless to say, I had maybe 2 bites of steak and some broccolini with my husband and set the rest aside for another meal.
Chocolate
The battle has begun whether or not chocolate is good during pregnancy. In my opinion, it will make me very happy at times and that's a winning situation altogether. There is the fact that it supposedly has caffeine. I say "supposedly" because of an article I read (here) that another chemical in chocolate called theobromine causes a natural high feeling which is rumored to be what people are mistaking for the effects of caffeine. Some studies suggest that it is beneficial but still needs to be regulated. The recommended maximum consumption of caffeine for a pregnant woman is 200 mg. To me, that seems hugely excessive and ridiculous. I am using raw cacao powder and nibbling on pieces from chocolate bars here and there and through all the numbers I've looked at, 1 gram of dark chocolate (or cacao powder) is equal to 1 mg of caffeine. This means that 1 tsp of the stuff equaling 4 grams has only 4 mg of caffeine. So, when I make a glass of chocolate coconut milk and use 2.5 to 3 teaspoons of cacao powder, I am only consuming 10-12 mg of caffeine. I think that is pretty close to nothing of a risk when you consider all the other health (and mood) benefits of chocolate talked about here and here. I think this is still an ongoing search for me to find better answers about the stuff, but at least for now I have a decent amount of information that says a little may be better than none.
PS. I was a lazy bum and did not work out today, but I did get some other things accomplished instead.
