For the last few months a storm has been brewing, and now I can finally share! I am expecting baby number three right now, and my whole little [and extended] family are thrilled! The past few months have brought on a different side of me though, something unexpected - not bad per se - very unexpected.
I have been enjoying plant based nutrition plan for over a year, feel happy, vibrant, and healthy, and wouldn't dream of eating meat and other animal byproducts again...except this baby has a whole other agenda. You see, eating my normal leafy green diet rich with beans, lentils, and legumes has brought on terrible stomach aches and layed me up in bed recovering from a meal for hours. Then, on my wonderful husband's suggestion, I ate some meat. Oh.My.Word. This baby LOVES meat! Like seriously! I am left feeling bad about my food choices, but moaning over how good it feels going down - and its ability to stay down - and how happy this baby is to boot. Everytime it happens I get a flash of that scene in Twilight Eclipse where Bella drinks blood and both her and the baby have a very [ahem] positive response. And so I sit at the dinner table with my family eating meat, happy as a clam, and the sweet baby doing flips of excitement. Not only is it fun to feel baby's happy dance, but feeling well after a meal is a real treat for this lady!
At my last midwife appointment I asked Savanna [my midwife] about my new cravings and she said it is very common for vegetarians and vegans to eat meat and/or dairy products while pregnant. The need for iron increases, and our body will naturally tell us what is needs. After recieving my blood test results [my blood was drawn before my meat cravings had set in] Savanna agreeed with baby that I need to be incorporating meat into my diet as my hemoglobin counts were low normal [normal range is 120 to 140 and my count was 125] and the fastest way to improve it was to chow down on meat. Having Savanna advise me - being a long time vegetarian herself - to continue on the meaty path made me feel better about these strange cravings. But I realy wanted to see for myself what the stats were on vegans/vegetarians eating meat while pregnant. A quick google search returns several hits of Mamas in a similar situation: pregnant vegans/vegestarians who are eating meat and feeling better for it.
So in the end, while I feel much like Bella looked as blood stained her lips and coated her teeth, eating meat is sitting well with me - right now. I don't do it every meal, or even every day for that matter, but man does it feel good!
