Pregnancy

First Trimester Pregnancy

Posted on Feb 15, 2013 in Pregnancy | 0 comments

From my memos of my morning sickness:

 

Nov 22

Am I pregnant?
Saw a general doctor at a clinic. Started feeling some change in taste.

Nov 23
Getting morning sickness (all day sickness).

Nov 24
My breath started getting rough at night. Need naps in the afternoons.
Checking and studying about morning sickness on line.

Nov 27
Not feeling well and don’t want to go out.
So when I have to, do everything at one time… Yoga and the gym on the same day. My spirit and power feel like 50% down. Not energetic.

Nov 28
First examination of my urine/blood

Even though I had 10 hour sleep at night, one more nap in the afternoon was needed.
When I sleep, I can escape from feeling sick.

My morning sickness is troublesome. When I’m eating, I’m fine. But once stop eating, I start feeling sick. So I have to keep eating!
And I can not drink water anymore. Water is the worst drink for me. It make me vomit.
I started eating congee almost everyday. So delicious!

Paul Mccartney’s concert was  so nice that I forgot about my sickness!

Nov 29
My breath has been rough. Where does all the oxygen I’m taking go!?
I can forget my sickness when I’m eating, so I keep eating until I get really too full and sick. I think I’m eating too much obviously, but I don’t feel too fat somehow. The energy has been consumed somehow, I’m imagining…

I used to sweat a lot and can see the sweat on my T-shirt, but now I can not do that anymore. I used to burn 450 cal but now it’s 350. Outside is so cold.

Dec 4
Strawberries are so refreshing and delicious.
Prince Catherine is also pregnant and hospitalized for the morning sickness.

Dec 5
I want to take pickled plums, black olives, potato chips and sour candies with me for a trip to Jamaica.

Dec 11
Just like my last pregnancy last year, my lips got really rough. Is it because of the season or because I’m pregnant? I’m using chap stick so often though.
I read somewhere that a pregnant woman should drink 8 cups of water a day. It’s so impossible for me. I would vomit if I drink water. So I would lose water from my body! So I drink tea (I was drinking regular tea. So it’s not good as it contains caffeine). But I could drink only 2 – 3 cups of tea. So I’m dehydrated. I tried to have congee, fruits and veggies to compensate it. These days, I prefer salty food too. That’s also bad. But this time, I found that I could drink water when a lot of ice is in it.

Dec 12
The last general doctor I saw wasn’t there, so I met another doctor. She saw my result of my examination (urine/blood) but couldn’t find the data of my hormones. She guessed that the last doctor was checking only the least data from my urine for my pregnancy, and didn’t get hormone data. but we need it as a record, so I was told to go again to get blood checked…..

Dec 15
Leaving for Jamaica.
Last time I vomited on the plain. So I got worried about the flight. I took 4 pills and got a side effect which is a terrible headache. Transferring in NY should have been fun, but it was a very hard day.

Dec 16
Maybe it’s because Jamaica was very warm, I didn’t get sick at night on the day we arrived! My rough lips also got healed.
But still, for the rest of the stay, I usually got sick at night.  I took the pills in the afternoon for the night. It seems it worked and sometimes it didn’t… still I don’t know if it’s really effective or not.

Jan 7
The first ultra sound test at the bigger hospital. I was wondering when we have an examination to check the possibility of down syndrome, and it was on this day. It was done at the same time. It sounds like the possibility is low as 15%.
It’s so nice to see the baby. We were pushing the baby around to take good pictures for the examination. maybe she/he didn’t like it? The hands were on its head and she/he looked like screaming “Stop!”. Gestures were cute!

 

The book we are reading:

This is a book my hubby bought it for me when I got pregnant last time. Later my doctor was also recommending this book, so it’s a good book. A lot of info.

I also go on line and search for everything in Japanese also. Recently my parents and sister-in-law sent me an informative booklet. It was nice.

My Food Tendency These Days…

Posted on Feb 11, 2013 in Home Meals, Pregnancy | 0 comments

I’m eating crackers and fruits frequently everyday because of my morning sickness which I get the worst at night.
(*”Morning sickness” is totally mis-named. I normally get most sick at night.)

When I go out, I always take crackers in a zip-lock bag. Probably too much carbo (carbohydrates). So I thought of cutting carbo on meals, but I love rice and noodles so much and I realized I couldn’t do that for breakfast and dinner. So I decided to try that at lunch!

As a result, my recent lunch is like this:

Fish and a big bowl of veggies!

This fish tin is sardines (with chile jalapeño). Yum yum. It’s like my hubby’s dad’s snack for beer. I should take them out of the tin and put them on a plate, but it’s OK. It’s all for myself.

And some left-over from the dinner I made the day before. It’s a fried chile vermichelli with lotus root, carrots, celery and bamboo shoot in chille oil. Root veggies make your body warm from the inside, I heard. So I want to eat a lot in winter in Canada.

Salad would be a mountain in a ramen bowl.

It’s a super easy meal, but it still contains 12 kinds of food (sardines, jalapeño, lettuce, tomatos, wakame seaweed, artichoke hearts, cucumber, vermichelli, carrots, lotus root, celery and bamboo shoot). Plus, I had some Greek salad as well, so goat cheese and olives would be added into it. And it’s 14 kinds. 14 kinds just in one meal is pretty good!

By the way, my hubby’s lunch is this:

Smoked salmon on a bagel. We often put avocado as well, but this day it wasn’t ripe yet.

 

From at least one month before pregnancy until three months of pregnancy, the intake of folic acid is recommended to prevent the onset of neural tube closure failure. That’s what I was told 1 year ago. So I’ve been taking this recommended Materna since. This contains not only folic acid but also a balanced variety of stuff.

For someone who are planning to get pregnant or pregnant ladies, it’s recommended to take 0.4mg of folic acid per day. But 2 heads of spinach (60g) contains only 0.25mg. If you cook them, 50% of folid acid reduced and you get only 0.125mg. So it’s pretty difficult to intake enough every day.

Doctors would say that if you are too sick, just eat whatever you can or you like, and when I search on the net, I often see the same advices. I think you can eat whatever you like only if you are too sick, but I think doctors can say that only when the patients are taking some supplement like this regularly. Otherwise, you need to have balanced food.

There is nothing I can not eat really. Maybe coffee at the first stage of pregnancy. Caffeine should be anyway avoided, so it was OK. And I started hating Kimuchi (a traditional fermented Korean dish) somehow.

And the liquid that I’ve been hating since I got pregnant was water. Yes, our essential thing: water. This troubled me a lot. I’ll write about it later.

Basically I can eat anything. But I start getting sick when I stop eating… this kind of symptom or feeling hungry all the time is called “Tabe-tsuwari” in Japanese. I don’t know if you have a name for it in English. What troubles me is that even though I’m feeling full but also feeling sick, I have to keep eating. And I get fat in result of suffering… What’s the point!?

I just can’t wait when it finishes…

A year ago, I was only recommended to take Materna, but this time Vitamin D as well. And my hubby also started taking some. It’s important for men too.

Originally I’m not so leaning towards taking supplement. They are not really food in my opinion. So taking more supplement doesn’t make me feel good. But it’s true 90% of pregnant women in Japan is lacking Vitamin D. And actually it’s easy to get Vitamin D from the Sun, but if you live on the area where winters are long, or the Sun time is too short, or rainy or cloudy all the time, you can’t help. You don’t get enough Sun. So we started taking it. Especially us! When we go out, our bodies are all and covered tight for the cold and only a part of face exposed to the Sun even when it’s out there. And we live in the basement. And I don’t commute. I’m not getting any Sun. It’s kind of scary when I think of that.
Having said that, when we travel, we would be exposed to the Sun the whole time with only once-a-day Sun screen put on the skin. So I have a lot of freckles and mottles.

 

Today I made sweet and sour seafood with veggies for the first time! I’ve never made dish with some starchy sauce, so I was worried about how the corn-starch can get starchy well. But I didn’t need to worry too much. It was a success and my hubby loved it. So I was happy. It was a good dish. I’m glad I tried a new dish!

So for dinner, we had 18 kinds of food! Garlic, shrimp, squid, cod fish, green pepper, (carrots,) onions, green onions, ginger, vinegar, soy sauce, white rice + grain, miso, (wakame seaweed,) tofu and mushrooms. For snack, I had oranges, strawberries and crackers. And I had a decaf cafe latte after dinner.
33 kinds just for lunch and dinner! Good for me!

For breakfast, I had a natto with rice.
(* Natto is a Japanese traditional food – fermented beans.)
Natto is so great. It has a good amount of folic acid, and calcium, iron, fiber, a few kinds of vitamins and more. And it’s so delicious! When I’m eating it, I always ask my hubby “it’s delicious. And it’s good for you. Do you wanna some?”. But he never ate it in the morning. He must not like it so much…

Anyway, I had 34 kinds of food today!

It reached 50 once before. But it’s not an easy job.

By the way, sardines come with a variety of flavors. So nice!

The ones I often buy are the one with chile jalapeño and in tomato sauce. They are good!
By the way, my hubby wants nothing to do with these also! Too bad.