Second Trimester, 3D Ultrasound and Paleo Thanksgiving

I just wanted to give an example of how much spinach I actually eat every morning with my eggs and bacon or sausage. Never underestimate the power of greens!

Second Trimester
I can feel the romance of the 2nd trimester that has been described in my books. It has been easy and wonderful this past couple of months. I've been watching my belly grow, feeling my baby's play and admittingly visiting the gym only about once a week. I am now at 26 weeks and just passed my 100 days-til-due-date mark. I talk to the baby sometimes, sing and try to guess which end is which and what is poking out under my hands. Sometimes I get up and feel the baby in an awkward position and so I massage a little and give him/her time to re-adjust angles. I think the hard wide part of the baby is it's back as it curls up facing my spine. Both of the last ultrasounds have shown the baby facing the rear and using "our" placenta like a pillow. The movements are definitely getting stronger and seemingly more frequent. I think the baby has put on another pound in just the last two weeks. I wish I could somehow find out the weight! My parents were out for the holiday and even commented on my increase in belly size during that time.
I have gained 12 lbs. so far and am still eating the same things. I still have my smoothie every morning followed by a breakfast of egg, spinach and bacon or another breakfast meat. Over the last couple of days, the trusty poop-smoothie has not worked (smoothie does not contain actual poop, just pooping aids). I have suspicions about this problem coming from either my hectic mornings or my recent dinner containing falafel and hummus - the deliciously digestive-disturbing legume based combo. I am pretty sure it was worth the the cheat, but let's hope the problem can correct itself or the third trimester may prove to call for a stronger morning concoction. I did also start taking an extra probiotic alongside what comes in the greens in my smoothie which seems to at least provide some relief later in the day. But, I would so much rather be back to my usual rhythm.
The best part of this trimester is how I feel and how I feel I look. I finally get to be that woman with the beautiful round belly that is so much fun to accessorize. I feel beautiful and have never been more pleased with what I see in the mirror. No sign of stretch marks but I am a little bummed to no-longer have an "inny" belly-button.

3D Ultrasound
My sister told me some while ago about someone who recommended going to an elective ultrasound company to get the 3D and 4D experience. I decided that since both sets of grandparents would be in town for Thanksgiving, it would be the perfect time to reveal the baby's gender. I also was sure they had never and possibly would never get to have an experience like this in their lifetimes. How can you argue with that? Overall it was an awesome experience. I got to see the baby's little hand come up and hold onto his/her ear. I got to see yawning and eyes opening, legs crossed at the feet and soft, full little lips. My baby is so beautiful. I can't wait to have that little face inches from mine!
We had considered doing this again when the baby was a little further along, however things I have heard about the ultrasound waves possibly causing damage to those little vulnerable cells has changed our view. I can't say I would recommend this to anyone without doing the proper research beforehand, as we should have done. I know that I at least picked a place that was run by currently hospital employed technicians instead of someone who has been at a 2-day training seminar. Really look into the company you are going with if you decide to go through with it. There are companies all over that are basically a business-in-a-box and could not possibly offer services with years of training to back them up. Ask questions about training and certifications and be thorough!
This is what we got to see:

Paleo Thanksgiving
This was my first Thanksgiving hosting family in my house and cooking the entire menu for them. It turned out perfect! The menu looked like this:

Organic spinach salad with caramelized onions, toasted pecans, goat cheese and cranberry vinaigrette
Roasted pearl onions with sea salt
Organic mushroom, cherry and hot italian (pastured) sausage stuffing (complete with paleo bread crumbs)
Roasted brussel sprouts with smoky bacon ends
Mashed organic rosemary and thyme sweet potatoes and turnips
Brined roasted organic, pastured turkey with gravy
Homemade grass-fed corned beef
Homemade organic cranberry sauce

Dessert: Primal organic apple pie & Dark chocolate nut and pumpkin custard bars

I brined the turkey overnight on Wednesday and took it out in the morning on Thursday. This turkey turned out amazing. I really didn't even touch it after I put it in the oven. I didn't even have time to baste it once because I was so busy with everything else. It was perfectly cooked, moist and flavored throughout the bird. Since it was an organic, pasture raised bird and the extra parts were still with it (giblets, etc...), I took them  and put them in a sauce pan with a little white wine and let them create a stock. It's a good thing I had done this because there wasn't really any juice in the roasting pan. I took the stock and poured it in the roasting pan and it picked up all the cooked drippings (probably why the gravy was so dark- pic above). To this liquid I added a tsp or so of arrowroot and it thickened up nicely. Salted to taste and this gravy was fabulously rich!
The stuffing was also amazing. This was really an experiment that came out tremendously successful. I will be making it again for Christmas and posting the recipe on the Primal Pantry beforehand. I used cherries, mushrooms, celery, onions and hot italian sausage. I roasted them with a little white wine and seasoning then created a slab of almond-flour crust for the top. When the mixture was just about done I put the crust on top, let it bake and then cracked it open and stirred it in with the filling. The only thing that didn't make it in was toasted walnuts. I had a guest that wasn't a fan of nuts, so I intended on toasting them and putting them on the side but never got to it. I would've liked that little extra crunch but I cannot complain. This may have been my favorite dish on the table!

Working Out
My last WOD was:

3 Rounds
_________

20 - 14 lbs wall balls
20 - SDHP 16kg KB
20 - step-ups (24 inches)
20 - push press 45 lbs.
Row 500 meters

for time (I did 28:26)

Questions: "Pump and Dump"

This morning's breakfast was the same as yesterday's: 2 eggs, bacon, wilted spinach and a handful of heirloom tomatoes. These little things are amazing because each one has a distinctive flavor. I even got one that tasted like a miniature melon or berry, it was so sweet. I've been on a kick adding lemon to my water. I used to hate lemons in my water, but after the trip to Vegas I have just loved the taste. I am wondering if this is my body craving more vitamin C. After all, I don't drink orange juice. I'm definitely getting a little bored with the spinach and think maybe a squirt of lemon will liven it up for me.

I also seem to be feeling a distant nausea that is so faint I am unsure if it is only in the back of my mind or a real possible threat. I ignore it and eat and it goes away for a little while.

Questions

Q: What is it to "pump and dump"?

In my daydreams about when I can eat cheese and drink coffee or wine again, I imagine that I can just pump the breast-milk I would otherwise be giving my baby after these little indiscretions and pour it down the drain. When I bring it up to my husband he argues with me about the fact that the dairy is still in my system and really never goes away. To this I say "Well, then isn't all the dairy I've ever had still in my system? So what's the point of not eating it if it's still gonna get into my baby?" Thus the research begins. How many dumps until the baby will not actually get any dairy in the breast-milk? The same with caffeine, alcohol and grains?

A: It is exactly what it sounds like. You would pump your breast milk after consuming something you do not want to pass to your baby and then dispose of it. The easiest thing to address first is the consumption of alcohol. This site tells us that once alcohol is out of your blood, it is out of your milk as well. So, as long as you have some back up milk if you baby gets hungry, you don't have to dump the milk you produce after drinking. Obviously if you still feel intoxicated, you're not going to breast feed. It might also just be safer to wait until the next morning to pass the milk on to your baby. This is under the stipulation that only 1 or 2 drinks are being consumed (as I generally don't last past one glass of wine or one bottled cider). Likewise, remember that alcohol that comes from grains (beer, etc...) is still putting "grains" into your system also.

Now, I will address grains or mainly gluten, as that is the easiest to find information for. I found this article which makes me think that in between the 4th month and 6th month of breastfeeding it might not be such a bad idea to introduce a little gluten through the breast milk. Why? Well, I think about my husband's lactose intolerance and seeing him writhe in pain after eating one of my favorite recipes that contained heavy cream (in the tiniest amount). This was a while ago and obviously we don't eat that recipe anymore without cutting out the cream. I would hate for my child to never have any gluten introduced into his/her system and then accidentally eat something that contains it and have a dangerous reaction. Heaven forbid it happens when I or my husband are not around. Besides that, for people who have intolerances (lucky me to never have suffered so) wouldn't they rather not have to suffer from severe reactions, should they one day eat something they know they shouldn't? I'm not going to be able to control what my child eats for their entire life and I'm sure they are bound to make some unhealthy decisions at some point. I'd rather it didn't come with such a painful price. I will compare it to chicken pox: It is better to let the child get it and recover than to have the child grow up and get a case of shingles, which can be tremendously worse and possibly deadly. Right?

So the question then becomes, how long does it take to rid the gluten or gluten antibodies from your system. Well, I read one article that says the half-life is 3-4 months which would make the whole life 6-8 months. This is also dependent on how healthy the person is to begin with. This article also suggests that it will take around 6 months to get gluten out of your system. So the "pump and dump" method is clearly not an option for at least 1 grain. If I can discuss this with my husband and get his okay, it looks like I may only be able to have 1 meal that includes grains and that being for the purpose I stated earlier.

I also looked into rice, but couldn't even find what it introduces to your system to cause an allergy and therefore could not find how long it would take to get it to leave. My guess is that it just passes through like food, but that's just a guess.

Dairy is the current argument point, so I will explore that one next. Here's a quote from this article:

"Milk protein can be eliminated completely from a person’s system anywhere from 4 hours to 4 days, depending on her metabolism and the amount of dairy products she has consumed." 

Let's consider this person (me) has no dairy in the system to begin with, is as healthy as one can be, and has a high metabolism from continuous exercise. It is probably safe to assume that if I do not go on a crazy cheese binge or try to do the milk challenge, I can safely "pump and dump" for 24 hours and not have to worry about passing dairy proteins on through my breast milk. This is probably not enough research for my husband and I will probably need to do a follow-up. I'd really like some more specific answers that involve the differences between raw milk/cheese and pasteurized and how those get processed through the body.

Caffeine is hopefully more along the lines of alcohol. One person suggested that you'd have to urinate to get the toxins out of your body, but that doesn't really have and back-up info or make enough sense to me. This site suggests that after 12-15 hours there is no caffeine still in the system while this article says that it can be 3-12 hours for a half dose of caffeine (1/2 cup?). If I do end up drinking coffee, it will most likely be decaffeinated and will contain certainly no more than 20 mg of caffeine. As long as I "dump" one load of breast milk, I can assume that my intake is otherwise completely harmless to the baby.

 

For lunch I had leftover chili, a small salad and some squash bread that I baked today. It was a little too sweet, so I lowered the amount of xylitol before posting the recipe. This has two yellow squashes and two zucchinis and no sugar or grains! It's really really good. I just worried a little about the amount of xylitol because it has been known to cause "digestive discomfort" or diarrhea when consumed in large amounts. No reactions to it yet!

 

Last night for dinner we had blackened fish (half a piece of cod and mahi mahi each) and roasted carrots with dill. This is such an awesome recipe because it is super simple and tastes better than you could ever imagine carrots to taste. All it takes is some sliced carrots (it's easier just to use organic baby carrots out of the package), some fresh dill, sea salt and a fat to cook in. I used a combo of lard and bacon grease. You just roast all of this together until the carrots are forkable. It probably takes about 30 to 45 minutes. The blackening seasoning used on the fish is found here. I put the fish on some arugula to get some greens in the meal. 

Tonight we are having slow-cooked country pork ribs and collard greens with homemade bar-b-que sauce.

Working Out and Shirataki Noodles

Breakfast was better than yesterday. We finally ran out of our breakfast sausage stash and grabbed some bacon from Trader Joe's. It was a nice change with my 2 eggs and spinach.

Working Out
Today's WOD:

Back Squat

5-5-5  (I did 10 of 85 lbs. - 5 of 135 - 5 of 145)
__________

5 – Overhead Squat  (I did 45 lbs.)

10 – Toes to Bar

***12 min AMRAP***

RX 65

My total reps: 4 rounds + 8 toes to bar

I felt really good going into the workout today. I felt great in my gym clothes and the weather was much cooler than it has been. We did a 400 meter run in the warm-up and I actually had an easy time running. I hate running. This wasn't so bad (but maybe that's because I did 2- 200 meter runs to avoid the hill). That's okay. It's a form of scaling it down I guess. 

I will say that this is the first time I really felt pain in my breasts while running. They honestly felt like bowling balls in my skin - very painful. It normally isn't like this. My coach (and husband) said I probably shouldn't run anymore and that I should substitute with rowing. I also could have gone a little heavier on the overhead squats. It was light enough to that I was a little wobbly.

Other than that, I felt great and came back feeling well exercised.

I came home and had an organic arugula salad with tomato slices and avocado. I also had a nice big glass of lemonade with ginger tea and 2 Applegate Farms hotdogs.

Shirataki Noodles
For dinner we had scallops and kale salad with carrot-sesame dressing. I didn't take a picture of that, but here's one of last nights dinner. We had mahi-mahi and roasted veggies on top of shirataki noodles. These things are amazing! They are exactly like regular noodles only made with yam starch? There are different kinds of shirataki noodles, some of which are tofu. Please don't pick those up by mistake. If you ever do see this package, buy every single package they have because you are going to want them.

Oh the Heat, Working out and Iced Tea

Today I am foregoing the smoothie. It has fruit in it, which I don't want to have too much of because of the natural sugars. I may save that for my post-workout snack. This breakfast includes 2 eggs, breakfast sausage, wilted kale with red onion, avocado and tomato. I found a peach rooibos herbal tea to satisfy my need for a different flavored water.

The Heat
These temperatures have been keeping me indoors within air-shot of our wonderful air-conditioner. Today it's not so bad, but yesterday we topped out at around 100 degrees. One of the things I remember from science class, whether it was in college or high-school, was that when your body starts reaching temperatures like 104 or higher your DNA starts to unravel. I always picture the double helix starting to break apart at the middle of each ladder rung and the whole thing unzipping. This is really what happens and it causes problems that are as serious as it sounds. This is not only why it is dangerous for anyone to ever have a fever that high, but why you have to pay attention to your body temperature in extreme heat. Can you imagine what could happen to your tiny fetus? No thanks.
Obviously you need to make sure you are not overheating during exercise by drinking plenty of water and being willing to stop if you get too hot.
With thoughts of next summer's heat, I wanted to remember this great post on how to keep your newborn cool.

Working Out
Today's WOD:

1 rep max thruster (I did 125 lbs)

Death by Thrusters

1 Thruster the first minute, 2 the 2nd minute, 3 the third minute etc… Continue until you are unable to complete the set number of thrusters within the minute.

Rx: 135/95

I did 8 rounds + 8 in round 9 (with 65 lbs)

Iced Tea
Since I have to give up all coffee whatsoever, this is a beverage I will be expecting to drink a ton of, in various combinations with ACV or fruit juice or both. The most important thing about the types of teas you select is that they say "herbal" on the box. This means they contain no caffeine. If a box doesn't say anything to indicate the caffeine level, forget it. Ginger tea is always recommended mainly for easing the stomach. I use it to make my ACV zinger drinks. The other one I have now is the peach rooibos, which is a red herbal tea. It also has a little cinnamon, cardamom, clove, ginger and stevia mixed in. As a hot tea, it would be good to make a tea-latte with coconut milk instead of dairy. I've been drinking it iced and it has a mild earthy flavor to it.
Another tea I happen to have in my cupboard is Organic Raspberry Leaf. I bought this months ago to help naturally ease menstrual cramps. Lo and behold, it actually worked! It turns out that it recommended *during pregnancy. It is caffeine free and supposedly helps with irregular menstruation, cramps and pregnancy as well as toning the uterus. That's awesome! I haven't had a cup just yet since I've learned I am expecting. I am still glad to feel the cramps just to know that everything is working properly. I may find out that it helps with the stretching of the uterus and give it a shot one day.
Another thing I would like to try is lavender tea mixed with a little lemonade. Yum.

Lunch was leftover grass-fed roast from some nights back, followed a couple hours later by an organic salad.
Dinner was my new favorite item, which we had only a week ago because it is my new favorite, tacos.
Grass-fed beef tacos with tomato, avocado, red onion in a cabbage shell. You can't see all the toppings because it's easier to put them under the meat. A side salad with homemade caesar dressing and some more peach tea wrapped it all up for this complete dinner. We have plenty of leftovers for the week too.

Working Out (in general)

For breakfast I had an organic smoothie with greens, 2 organic eggs, breakfast sausage, and wilted kale.
It's not a smaller meal, just a bigger plate.

Working Out
Yesterday's workout was tough. It was about 95 degrees out and I was sweating before I even started.
I think most pregnant women are afraid to push themselves to exercise during their pregnancy. You always picture a room full of pregnant women doing yoga or something where they are sitting on the ground. I have nothing against yoga, but if you are sitting, you are probably not really "working out."
The good thing about CrossFit is that you are always glad you did it, even when you are sore the next day or two. For me, I want to be in the best shape possible when I am pregnant. I want excellent core strength so that when it comes to pushing out a baby, it only takes a couple of good pushes. I have also been reading that women who are already in great physical fitness tend to carry their babies high and tight, like a basketball. These are the type of women that don't look pregnant until they turn to the side. Yes please!
There can be risks to doing too much. Obviously you don't want to push yourself until hyperventilation or hypoxia. Your baby needs the oxygen as much as you do. A common rule is that your heart rate shouldn't be above a 140 if you are exercising. There are specific movements you shouldn't do, and the list goes on....
I think the best way to work out is with common sense. This list has a couple things to consider that pretty much fall under common sense.

For myself, I am just going to listen to my body. If there is a specific movement I don't feel comfortable doing because I am worried about it being harmful even during this first trimester (or just because I hate doing it - like kettle-bell swings), I am just not going to do it. I may try to substitute something similar in movement. If I am doing a met-con and I want to stop for a rest, I will. I will not even pay attention to the clock for my wods. I'm not competing. I am just trying to get a good workout. I am not going to let myself breathe too hard or get anywhere near dizzy. I will drink nearly all of my 32 oz bottle of water to keep myself cool and hydrated. I will also take a mid-wod pee-break if I damn well feel like it. That's it. That is all I need to do.

I feel good about exercising and I am already feeling that it is making a difference. If it were that easy to lose a baby from doing exercise - American teens would be in way better shape and the abortion clinics would go out of business.

Lunch today was 2 Applegate Farms hot dogs, some homemade sauerkraut and red onion. I was a little too lazy to make a salad. For dinner we had pastured chicken legs (from our CSA) with sauteed organic leeks, collard greens, spinach and chard with a little salad on the side. For dessert I had a piece of a chocolate bar that is sweetened with stevia. I am cherishing it because my husband says I need to stop eating chocolate. I made him do some research on decaf coffee and he found out how much caffeine is in chocolate. I knew it would come to that. Wah wahhhhh......

Greens, Working out Breaking the News

Today instead of having greens on my plate, I had them in my drink. Two eggs, bacon, breakfast sausage and a smoothie made for the perfect sized meal. The (organic) smoothie had half of a banana, a small handful of blueberries, a splash of orange juice, half of a cup of coconut milk, water and a scoop of greens. 

Greens

This stuff truly is Amazing Grass (the name of the company). I would highly recommend it to anyone who does not like to eat greens, but you gotta put it in a smoothie or you will not like it. If you drink it just stirred into a liquid, it may seem a little gritty. It is sweetened with stevia at least. Just take a look at the nutritional content:

Working Out
Today's CrossFit WOD:

Back Squats
5 - 5 - 5  (I did 115 - 145 - 155 lbs.)
__________

30 meters broad jump
30 meters crab crawl
30 meters overhead (25 lb) plate lunges

*3 rounds
followed by 100 abmat situps

my time: 14+ minutes


Afer the gym we came home and had some leftover roast from the other night and an organic salad with homemade ranch dressing. Okay, I might have overdone it on the amount of salad....

Breaking the News
I was having a little extra faith in the mail system today in hopes that we would get calls from one or both sets of parents about the arrival of their "pee-packages." Well, it happened late in the afternoon and everyone was ecstatic, of course. I also called my grandmother and told her that she would be a GREAT-grandmother. She let out quite a scream out of her own excitement. I'm glad.

For dinner we had grass-fed london broil (from our CSA) and roasted organic veggies. Very good!

Doing the math and Getting crazy

Breakfast is not getting any more exciting, with the exception of adding fruit. Two organic eggs, primal breakfast sausage, organic greens and veggies, an organic banana, vitamins and water. The amount of food might be getting a little bigger than necessary. Although I woke up pretty hungry.

Doing the math
Last night we discovered that I am 5 weeks along. I wasn't happy with just guessing that I was 4 weeks because that was the last time I had a period. So, I decided to look it up online. Turns out that all medical professionals count from the first day of the last period and conception is about two weeks into the "pregnancy." According to the Pregnancy Association, it is counted this way because that is when the body begins to prepare for pregnancy.
I also downloaded the app Sprout to follow along with the process. It's a cool app that shows you where you are weekly and what parts of the fetus are forming as well as allowing you to log doctor's appointments, your weight and other things.

For lunch we (not the fetus and I - my husband and I) had a salad, some leftover roast from the other night (grass-fed with organic greens) and split an organic peach and nectarine. I am so excited to be eating fruit! Stone fruits have always been my favorite and I can't wait for organic apricots!

Getting crazy
Today we drove out of the city to some state parks to take the doggies on a hike and have a beautiful day outdoors. While we were driving, I was talking with my husband and trying to get him to understand something from my perspective. The fact that he was not understanding me properly got me so worked up. In a matter of seconds I was feeling like I had been so betrayed and I could feel my heart starting to beat faster. I was one thread of sanity away from going into a bawling fit. Luckily, I was so surprised by my own reaction that I saw I was having a hormonal freak-out. I quietly talked myself down inside my head. Is this really what I have to look forward to? I feel sorry for my husband.
Thinking back, it makes me laugh when I compare it to a scene in 30rock. Hilarious!

For dinner, my husband and I had wild mahi-mahi and roasted organic veggies with a tahini based asian-type sauce all over it. We had left-over hot and sour soup broth and for dessert, dark chocolate coconut ice-cream with fresh sliced organic strawberries. Heavenly!

Sweets and Snacks

This morning I had breakfast sausage, 2 eggs and a warm kale salad: some sauteed red onions, kale and tomato slices cooked in the grease from the sausage. I thought the kale was going to be bitter, but it actually turned out a little sweet. I'm not sure if it's because the red onions are sweet or if it gets that way when cooked a little longer. It actually tasted good. The vitamins I have there are the same ones I have every morning: 3 fish oil, 1 vitamin D, 1 big prenatal and a little multivitamin. 

Ah yes, and a banana. This is the first banana I've had in possibly over a year. It was good, but not mind-blowing and thankfully I didn't have a sugar crash afterward.

Sweets
We've been making coconut milk ice-cream and ices. They don't last long because my husband likes to plow through the whole container in one sitting. The last batch we made was chocolate cherry. We use coconut milk from the can for ice-cream and coconut milk from the carton for ices. This is all done with the Cuisinart ice-cream maker we paid $30 for at Costco. Great deal and endless hours of fun! Actually it only takes minutes to whip up a batch.

Snacks
I just need crunchy things. It has always been this way since chips fell off the primal food list... not that I ate that many chips to begin with. You do always miss the things you never cared about before, just because you can't have them. So, I eat nuts. We've tried to cut down on the nut intake because it can be overdone. It's a tough one. I was very pleased to see that almonds are on the 100's list for the first trimester and Trader Joe's has organic dry-roasted ones. It's the pistachios that are hard to get away from. TJ's also has a bag of shelled lightly salted pistachios and we never fail to go through the bag in a couple days.
I've bought two huge organic yams so I can make this chip recipe. I do not have a dehydrator, so I will be doing it in the oven. It seems like a bunch of work for something I may devour in 20 minutes... but we shall see.
Still searching for good snacks...

For lunch today I had a frankfurter from our meat CSA with a little organic ketchup, organic mustard and homemade sauerkraut. I wasn't that hungry and ate late in the day. Probably because of the banana I added to breakfast and the tons of ginger/lemon water I was drinking.
For dinner we ate wild salmon with organic baby broccoli and caesar salad with organic kale added in.
I also had a mug of homemade pork broth from pork bones we got from our meat guy. Bone broth is extremely good for you. It is full of amazing nutrients and helps with the immune system. More on this later.

Losing weight and Telling our Parents (Almost)

Today's breakfast was 2 organic eggs, 2 slices of Trader Joe's bacon (anti-biotic/hormone free), and some wilted organic kale and spinach greens. The bitterness of the kale was masked by the bacon grease I cooked it in. I drank ginger and orange-juice infused water and took the usual vitamins.

Losing weight
After the "last supper" of sushi for lunch on Thursday, I became 100% primal to the best of my ability.
For the next 8 or so months of pregnancy and 2 or less years of breast-feeding, I will be eating no dairy, drinking no coffee, or alcohol, and eating only natural sugars from fruits. There will be only organic, grass-fed, pastured, anti-biotic/hormone free and sweetened with stevia or xylitol. It has been 4 days and I am optimistic about getting through it all without a hitch. We shall see what happens when the hormones really take over.
The last time I ate this way was when we first started trying and I thought that if there could be something inside me, I should not take any chances. Flash forward a couple months to me vowing to love cheese and coffee until the pee-stick told me my time had come. During that time, I did see a significant change in my body. The crossfit workouts were twice as effective because I was eating the perfect diet. Every single day I did a workout, the next morning would be like Christmas morning with me running to the bathroom mirror to see what new smaller body I was in. It was glorious!
This was the time that I knew, if I truly wanted to get the body I wished for, I had already found the combination. Primal diet and crossfit.... where were you when I was in high-school?
SO..... I am working the combination. Not to lose weight but to be as close to 100% perfect health for my little zygote. The side-effect seems to be a better body (in both ways).
Now, people may think... this is unhealthy behavior, talking about losing weight when you are trying to grow a life. Well, the fact is, women only gain about 3-5 pounds in the first trimester and if I only lose 5 or 10 pounds of fat I will have enough left to do the job.

Telling our parents
I'd been trying to come up with creative ways to break the news to my parents for a while now (before there was any news). We ended up buying two boxes that looked like books and I made new covers for them. We then included a pee-stick in each box. Yes, it may be a little weird... but trust me I can think of weirder. I was going to make my dad a paperweight pee-stick cast in resin. It was just a little too much work since I'm dying to tell them.
My in-laws already have 2 grandchildren, but for my parents this is a first. I know it's gonna be emotional even though they know we've been trying. I still get elated when I really think about a little life growing inside me. It seems a little unreal. My father-in-laws birthday is on Saturday and he is getting a pee-stick as his present. My dad's birthday was in the beginning of June, so his is a "belated birthday gift." I told my mom to call me when they get the package... hoping to get them on video chat opening the box. We shall see......

Lunch today was leftover hot and sour seafood soup and dinner was grass-fed top-round beef roast (from our CSA) with organic collard greens and chard. We also had sweet potato fries I made from organic sweet potatoes. I ate too much.... but it was so tasty.

*I also take a probiotic with my dinner every night.

Symptoms, Waiting Room and Working out

For breakfast I had more organic spinach, 2 eggs scrambled with various organic veggies and a breakfast sausage patty. The new prenatal vitamin, a multi, vitamin D and fish oil were washed down with ginger infused water.

Symptoms
I'm really trying to make a point of listening to my body. Given that I am pretty much a housewife, I have the luxury of doing whatever my body needs me to do.
    Cramping- This started the day before I found out I was pregnant and has continued ever since. Unable to get into a doctor (because I don't have one here yet) to find out why this was happening, I decided to look online. I found a forum conversation of women who were just finding out about their own pregnancies and experiencing the same thing. It's not a consistent pain. It comes and goes, and if I stand up maybe it will come again or rolling over might set it off. The pain is also not extreme. For the most part, it is a dull feeling like muscle-soreness. Every once in a while it gets strong enough to make me stop moving altogether until it subsides. This, as I found from reading the exchanges in the forum, is completely normal and is explained by the stretching of the uterus.
    Headaches- I have only had a couple of very mild headaches starting in the morning and tapering off throughout the day.
    Fatigue- I find myself having moments where I feel like I need to just lay down and take a nap. It usually happens a couple hours after I have been up and doing things. I don't really take a full-on nap most of the time. It does feel nice just to lay down for a bit and close my eyes. I also find myself pretty wiped out by the end of the day.
    Sleep- There have been changes in my sleep for sure. A couple of weeks ago I decided that I was going to start waking up at 8:30 am every day, just to get more use of my time. I also felt a little guilty about sleeping-in seeing as my husband was waking up to go to work at either 5 am or 7 am. It was pretty hard the first couple days, but then I found myself waking up 30 - 45 minutes before my alarm was to go off. These times I woke up naturally and didn't feel groggy or like I missed out on that extra time. It seems to be getting earlier and earlier that I am waking up without an alarm and feeling ready to start my day. I usually complain about sleep because my husband and I need different things to be super comfortable and I rarely say "I had a really good night of sleep." I tend to get colder and don't like when my side of the bed starts to get too soft. If only I could afford a sleep-number! But now, my sleep feels so much more restful. I am dreaming vividly enough to remember the dreams when I wake up.
I don't know if it's because the author of this book said vivid dreams are common with pregnancy, and I am paying more attention to them, or if she's just right.
    Breasts- Getting larger and annoyingly sore.... need I say more. For women who didn't have much to begin with, this may be a blessing... but for the previously "blessed" this is a curse. As if it wasn't hard enough to find a comfortable bra, now I have to find something to jam these balloons into that will not add to their increasing size. They don't really seem to make bras without padding somewhere in it. Yeah, like it's really possible to "push-up" double D's.
    Urination- This is way more than I expected for a first trimester thing. I totally expected that it was gonna happen when the baby got big and started lounging on my bladder. I really don't pee this often... but maybe I'm just hyper-aware of it? Could be my imagination, but it seems much more frequent.

Waiting Room
So we, my husband and I, sat in a walk-in medical center waiting room for 2 and a half hours this morning. I don't know if he was just protecting his zygote, but my husband just about lost it with the number of morons hacking and coughing all over themselves. One lady came in that most certainly had tuberculosis. I'm pretty sure even the physician's assistants (I'm really being generous with the credentials of the girls in the back) sent her away. Later he kept referring to one guy who was clearly overweight and saying to his likewise overweight daughter that they could go eat at Wendy's. The guy literally sounded like he had so much fat that it was in his throat while he was talking. If that doesn't deter people from fast-food.... I don't know what will.
All in all, we waited and eventually I peed in a cup for someone with some sort of medical degree to tell me I am indeed pregnant. The whole lovely process cost us $95. I had been hoping to get a blood-test to find out how far along I am, but the doc said I could just do it when I see an obstetrician and save myself the money. He said to assume I am 4 weeks along because it was 4 weeks since my last period. I don't know about you... but that math seems weird, especially since ovulation is somewhere in the middle. But hey, I'm a pregnant lady, not a doctor.
The most helpful part of the visit was that we found out how to remedy the whole "no insurance" thing. I have an appointment with an OB at 2:15 pm on July 30th. They make the appointment for after a woman is 8 weeks along (or as I'd like to say - 2 months). Turns out, they will take care of all the insurance paperwork at the time of the appointment and it is done and in full effect. Woohoo! This is how it works in this state- get pregnant = get insured.
I am grateful.

Working Out
Today's CrossFit WOD:

1 K row for time (4 minutes 8 seconds... NICE!)

Bench Press

5 - 5 - 5 (I did 75 - 85 - 95)
__________

5 Muscle-Up (I did 15 pull-ups and 15 ring-dips)

10 Front Squat (I used 85, the Rx was 95)

30 Double-Under (got my personal record of 12 unbroken)

4 rounds for time (I did 3 because I thought it was 3.... oops!)

This felt good and I just wanted to get through it. I didn't really hustle that much and made sure my breath never really got away from me.

Prenatal Vitamins

Today's breakfast: 2 eggs from a friend's hens, homemade pork breakfast sausage, wilted organic spinach and some organic avocado slices.... washed down with a little apple cider vinegar and orange juice zinger (this is my own name for this drink).

The thing about eating greens to get more iron, is that you have to eat it with vitamin C for maximum absorption. Obviously with this meal there is no problem there. The spinach itself has a good amount of vitamin C along with the splash of orange juice in this drink.

Vitamins (and Minerals)
One of the helpful things in my 100's book is the list of vitamins he has included for the first trimester.
We took this information to the store for prenatal vitamins. Knowing that iron was a key vitamin, we looked for that amount first. The one we liked the most had no weird and unnecessary ingredients like excess soy, wheat, sugar.... etc. except for a tiny bit of soy lecithin probably used to keep it all together in pill form. This was Prenatal One Multivitamin, which came with 150 servings and was pretty fairly priced (no more than $35).
When compared to the list in the book, most of the vitamins and minerals were included in the perfect amount or well over the daily value. There were a couple differences that will need to be supplemented in other ways.
Choline in the pill was 10mg and the recommended daily value is 450mg. That's a huge difference for such an important vitamin. Choline is a huge contributor to helping the brain develop and luckily 2 eggs fullfil about half the daily requirement.
Potassium was lacking by about 2,290 mg and the calcium level was under by about 800 mg as well as slight deficiencies in Vitamin K, chloride, phosphorus, magnesium, iodine and fluoride.
Again, these are things we can supplement in other ways and this prenatal vitamin still seemed like a great choice.

For lunch I had leftover cabbage shell tacos from last night. So good!

No workout today.

For dinner we had an organic salad and I re-created hot and sour seafood soup from our sushi lunch the other day. I used zucchini as noodles, shrimp, cod, mushrooms and onions. This was a recipe that I will definitely have to record one of these days. It is also an excellent meal for a person who is sick.

Here we go....

Okay. So I was expecting a period and just had some cramping instead, all day Thursday. I even said to one of the girls at the crossfit gym that if I did the day's workout, it would probably make me start my period. Nothing happened all day and I was continuously checking every time I wiped when I peed. I completely was unaware of the fact that I had peed way more times that day than normal. So when my husband got home at around 11pm, we ate dinner... watched some tv shows and then started to clean up for bedtime. I had to pee again, so I went upstairs thinking "Maybe I'll just pee on a stick." I truly did not expect any difference from the other 20 or so I'd wasted money on.
I decided to turn it over so I couldn't see and set it down while I went into the bedroom for a few minutes. When I came back and looked, I was disappointed because I just saw two lines and no plus sign. Then I glanced over to the key and saw that two lines meant "pregnant." Instead of skipping a heartbeat, I had a really big one that sent extra blood flowing into my head and I'm pretty sure my eyes bugged out for a second. I don't know what I said afterward, but I came running down the stairs to my husband (who was zombie-like tired at this point) and he thought something was really wrong. I showed him the stick and he seemed to think I had doctored the stick somehow or that it was broken. In all fairness, it was past midnight at this point.
It was very exciting and I wasn't able to go to sleep for some time that night. I was thinking and planning and fantasizing.

So, yesterday became day one of diet strictness. I will have to relinquish that block of raw gruyere in the fridge that I was almost done with. Gonna have to dump the half-n-half and say goodbye to coffee, which I did about a week ago when I ran out of my favorite espresso beans. Sadly, I will also not be enjoying the pork potstickers I have been gazing at and saving for a designated "cheat" moment. "Wah Wahhhhhhhh....."

For breakfast I had 2 eggs and 2 pieces of bacon as usual (always organic eggs and anti-biotic/hormone free bacon- at the very least). My husband cooked my eggs with a bunch of veggies thrown in as a scramble, which I don't really like but of course I ate it. He says "you're gonna have to have greens every day with your breakfast" and I said, "I will find a better way." I took my standard vitamins which have included folic acid since we started trying in November, fish oil, a multi and vitamin D. For the most part there have been a couple others in there and I think we must be low on some.
Obviously the number of vitamins will be beefed up soon.

We went and had sushi for lunch. We enjoyed some hot and sour soup, seaweed salad, a sashimi sampler and a roll (which had very little rice) with what seemed like 7 different types of fish on it. It was a little bit of a celebratory meal. Afterward we went to Barnes and Nobles and picked up two books which I am already a huge fan of:

Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?: The Surprising Science of Pregnancy by Jena Pincott

and

The 100 Healthiest Foods to Eat During Pregnancy by Jonny Bowden Ph.D. C.N.S. and Allison Tannis MS

I've already started both of them and am very excited.

For dinner we ate pastured pork spareribs that came in our meat CSA and caesar salad with the husband's homemade dressing. Homemade sugar and dairy-free vanilla-chip cream ices (it's a new york thing) for dessert and then we called it a night.

I was still a little crampy all day. It was mainly a tightening feeling inside. I also had some seriously lethal gas and was peeing all day. I also peed on another stick and the second line was a little more faint than the last one, but I'm not worried. Going to sign up for insurance on Monday morning and try to get into a doctor's office if only to confirm that I am indeed pregnant and hopefully find out how on earth this could have happened? (just kidding)