I've been feeling the baby move for what seems like such a long time so I'm so glad Dave can now feel it too! I can't wait until India can feel it too.
Lately I've been bothered by the fact that I've been craving chips. Food cravings can be a hard one to tackle because it doesn't always mean you should be eating loads of what you crave. My training as a prenatal yoga teacher taught me that we should look at the quality of the food we are craving in order to see if we could satisfy the craving by means other than eating. Sweet cravings are an easy one to figure out, think about the ways you can get more sweetness into your life. Snuggles and hugs are a far better way to satisfy sweet cravings than eating an entire bag of lollies. For me chips are a harder one to figure out, hot chips are warm, salty, oily and make me feel like I've eaten a meal. Considering I only crave them when I'm out of the house (or don't want to spend half an hour cooking) it probably means I'm looking for something that will make me feel like I've just eaten dinner rather than feeling like grabbing a piece of fruit or some crackers. I also crave the crunchiness and oiliness of packet potato chips as well. I've always been big on the crunch factor and being pregnant has probably exacerbated it. Part of me also feels that because of my food problems I haven't been able to eat anything processed as well as a number of different oils for a long time until I started taking milk thistle supplements. This sudden ability to indulge in awful processed food has probably got me a little excited and on a bit of a bender. Although oily processed food doesn't give me severe abdominal cramps and bloating these days I know that overall it doesn't make me feel good and it's not good for me so I'm keen to get these cravings under control.
Another school of thought on cravings links the craving to a lack of a particular nutrient. I found a pretty cool website on this topic http://odyb.net/nutrients/8-most-common-food-cravings-which-one-is-yours/. It says that craving oily food probably means I need to have more (good) fat in my diet and eat more regularly. It also suggests that oily cravings can be a sign of a need for more calcium. Considering now that I'm in my second trimester and the baby is busy building bones I'm sure more calcium wouldn't go astray. I have been taking a plant calcium supplement but not everyday because it's in powdered form and needs to be mixed with water so I don't always feel like taking it. I'm sure adding more good fats to my diet and eating more regular meals (which can be difficult when I'm out) would help too.
I craved doughnuts when I was pregnant with India and having since been diagnosed with Coeliacs disease I know that I was obviously not craving something that my body needed. Overall I like to use both my yogic perspective and the nutrient deficiency perspective to look more closely at why we crave different foods.
I feel really good these days, no back pain or any other niggling problems.
I've noticed that our little baby is most active during the evenings. He/She has been busy getting chubbier and practicing sucking and swallowing. The little one is about 13cm long now, no wonder those kicks are starting to feel so big!
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