wholesome

I try to live a wholesome life.  We strive to eat a healthy, balanced diet, to feed our daughter real foods.  We bake our own bread, make our own pasta sauce, mix our own hummus. We cloth diaper.  I've stopped using commercial products in my hair and now wash my hair (now dreaded!) with baking soda and apple cider vinegar.  Our daughter has only ever been washed in natural, organic soaps: we are big, big fans of Dr. Bronner's.  We avoid unnecessary medication and try to use herbal remedies when we can.  At nearly two-and-a-half years old, Glynis is still nursing.  We live downtown and avoid using a car or motorized transportation the vast majority of the time.

Before we conceived Glynis, I was a devoted pescatarian.  I ate a primarily lacto-ovo vegetarian diet, but with occasional fish, mostly sushi.  In the last few weeks before we conceived, I took a week-long trip to Russia in which I knew I would have very few food options.  I opted to eat chicken while there, when it was offered (usually the protein available was very grey-looking pork: ick!) knowing that otherwise I would likely be underfed the whole time I was there.  But I had every intention of returning to my veg/pescatarian diet upon my return.  I planned for a vegetarian pregnancy, researching it before conception, even buying a book dedicated to the benefits of a vegetarian diet during gestation, Your Vegetarian Pregnancy.  I found it to be a helpful book - though with its flaws, certainly - and felt very confident that our baby and I could be perfectly healthy despite abstaining from meat for the duration of the pregnancy.

Then we conceived.  And the cravings and food aversions started.

I wish I could tell you that I'm one of those crunchy moms who eats nothing but whole, healthy, organic foods while pregnant.  I wish - truly, I do! - that I could honestly say that I eat no fried or sugary or processed foods while pregnant.  I wish that I could honestly tell you that I didn't crave McChicken sandwiches nearly constantly while expecting Glynis, and that I didn't daydream about pork breakfast sausages from time to time during that pregnancy as well.  I wish that I could regale you with tales of cravings for salad and unprocessed yogurt and raw vegetables.  But I can't.

Because I'm sitting here, in front of my computer, with a small glass of Coke on my left, and a styrofoam container of chip wagon poutine on my right.  Yep.  Coke and poutine.  The Coke settles my constantly-nauseated stomach - it's one of the only things that does - and the poutine is one of the few foods I could think of today that didn't make me feel sick to my stomach at merely thinking of eating it.

I'm not happy with my diet.  It is deeply, deeply flawed.  But I'm pregnant, I'm still nursing a toddler and I'm losing weight.  And I didn't exactly have a lot of extra to begin with.  So I'm eating what I can.  I'm trying to avoid dropping any further below 120lb.  And I'm hopeful that when nearly all foods no longer make me feel violently ill, I'll be able to start eating better.

It's not a perfect solution, definitely, and I am by no means bragging or revelling in the flaws of my diet.  But I felt the need to be honest that, try as I might, this is the best I can do right now.  I know better, but sadly, I cannot, at this moment, do better.  Maybe next week.  Maybe next month.  But for right now, this poutine is making my day.