Eating

Lacking sufficient breast milk, Tiny Squee is forced to seek other food sources.

All up in my stomach

This tiny squee has decided that the place to be is all up in my stomach. I didn't actually realize that my uterus extended quite so high into my abdominal cavity, but it must since the alternative is that the tiny squee is actually roaming free through my internal organs.

It's making dinner a challenging meal to eat. Typically, I can eat breakfast and lunch more or less normally. Then, while I'm digesting lunch for 8-10 hours, the tiny squee moves north and camps out in my stomach. Sometimes, it pokes its butt up and out, which gets to be quite uncomfortable. I poke at it until it moves back down.

As an interesting aside, I finally made it to a PMQG meeting. I don't think I've been there for at least 6 months. I definitely haven't been since I've looked pregnant. There were three other pregnant quilters at the meeting as well. One is due in May and two are due in July. I'm the least pregnant-looking. Of course, all the other ladies are having their second babies. It made me feel like I should sew something, so I headed to the fabric store this evening. Unfortunately, by the time I got there I was exhausted and there was a tiny squee all up in my stomach, so the motivation left me. Perhaps I'll sew something tomorrow.

Eating challenges

Eating has become more difficult. It depends where exactly the Tiny Squee is located at any given moment. It's large enough now that it takes up most of the available space. When it's down low, it's hard to walk and I have to pee every 15 minutes. When it's high, there's no room for my stomach. It likes to shift position just to make my life more challenging.

Here's how today's eating went:
Breakfast (7:30am) - bowl of cereal and a mocha.
Overfull until about 11:45, when suddenly I was starving. I ate an entire plate of Thai noodles.
Comfortable for about an hour, then went to extremely overfull and started to burp up Thai noodles.
Remained overfull until 6:30, when I was suddenly starving. I ate 2 pieces of bacon, 4 eggs and an english muffin.
Now, I desperately want cake.

Starrrrrving.

This tiny squee refuses to be satisfied by apple slices, a string cheese, and tea this morning. And this after I already gave it oatmeal with raisins, canned plums, and banana for breakfast!

Eating

This seems to be my major pass-time these days. I get hungry about every 1.5-2 hours and need to eat some sort of meal. Sometimes, eating a container of yogurt or a few crackers will do the trick, but other times I need to actually eat a full-blown meal.

I'm discovering that meals which contain protein are better (more filling, last longer) than meals which don't contain protein. I made lentil soup and that works really well, but (TMI) it gives me gas. Of course, just about everything seems to.

I've started carrying snacks with me everywhere I go. I figure it's practice for when I actually have the baby and I need to carry crackers or whatever for emergency baby nibbles. My pregnant lady friend (who's not American) didn't agree with me. She thinks that people here snack too much and that we should eat designated meals at designated dinner tables. Mike would be pleased with that assessment, but I'm still not sure it applies to babies.

My common snacks these days are: apples or pears (easy to carry and eat while driving home from work), various types of granola / protein / fruit bars (also easy to carry and store in the car), peanuts and tasty seed mix (containing sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, soynuts, and whatever else I find in the bulk bins), and crackers. I was thinking last night that I needed to get some baby carrots, which would also be convenient.

I've been way too busy with work to do much baby-related planning or stuff... I figure that'll be what I do during the third trimester after this term from hell is over.

Cooking frenzy

Today, I went through a cooking frenzy.

My work schedule is very busy this term. Monday and Wednesday, I teach an 8:30-10am class, then a 6 or 7-10pm class. For most of the term, I've come home between classes and taken an nap in the afternoon. It gives me the energy to make it through the night class, but it takes up a good portion of my day. Today, I decided I would stay awake the whole day.

My first project was swiss chard pancakes. We've had the chard for probably 2 weeks now. It was well past its prime, but I figured that it gets blended into batter so it probably didn't matter too much. They were bright green and fairly tasty. We had them with a little butter and salt, but decided that they would have been better with melted cheese on top. This was my second breakfast, the first having been oatmeal that I ate before I went to class.

Next, I took the chicken carcasses that had been partially made into stock and sitting in the large pot in fridge for several days and finished boiling them. I strained out the liquid and picked the rest of the meat off the bones. I froze some of the stock and used the rest as the liquid in my next project:

Lentil and spinach soup. The recipe called for water, but since I had the chicken stock I thought I'd use it instead. I also cut up the rest of the chicken meat and added that as well. It turned out extremely tasty. I'd forgotten how much I like lentils; they're just so easy. I had a small bowl of soup around noon for lunch.

The actual cooking plan for today was sausage and cabbage pitas. We got a cabbage from the CSA and Mike had picked up italian sausage and not-meat sausage to use in it. I used half the not-meat sausage and all the meat kind as well as the entire cabbage. There was a slight issue with the pitas, as they turned out to be flatbreads and refused to open up to hold sausage-cabbage. It was tasty, though. We always enjoy this meal. I ate a pita and some sausage-cabbage around 5, before I headed to my second class.

I had thought that would hold me until I got home, but it didn't. I ended up eating two single-serve halloween candy bars that I had in my jacket pocket, then had another small bowl of lentil soup when I got home from class (just now).

I guess I should also add in the banana I ate during the first class and the apple I had in the car driving home from it. This tiny squee does like to eat.

Omega 3's

Today, the baby and I shared a can of sardines. The normal reactions I get from people when I tell them I've eaten sardines are either "Ew!" or "Huh".

My dad, my brother and I used to go camping fairly frequently when I was a kid. One of the things that we always brought along to eat was a can of sardines and saltine crackers. I have excellent memories associated with eating sardines and I enjoy their fishy flavor. They're also chock full o' good stuff: calcium (if you get the bone-in kind), omega-3's, and probably other things that I've forgotten.

Earlier on in my pregnancy, I was totally avoiding fish. While we were on our honeymoon cruise, I couldn't eat fish (with one exception) and didn't even want Mike to sit too close when he was eating fish. Anticipating that this would change as morning sickness abated, I bought three cans of sardines.

I opened one up and enjoyed it this afternoon. It was fabulous. I'm supposed to be eating about 1 fishy meal a week. We had salmon a while back, but I think it's been more than a week since I ate any fish, so it was about time.

Speaking of eating, today has been full of it. I had my usual breakfast this morning (oatmeal with raisins, frozen blueberries, ground flax, and plain yogurt). By the time I finished teaching 2 hours later, I was starving. Luckily, I had brought an apple for the drive home. Upon arrival home, I fixed myself a small grilled cheese sandwich with the last of the loaf of Costco bread. It's small-sized bread, so it was probably about half the size of a regular grilled cheese. I also ate the very end of the loaf with butter. Then, I had a plum. A half hour later, I was hungry again. That's what inspired the eating of the can of sardines, as well as half a sleeve of Club crackers, which we got instead of saltines because they're better with cheese. I topped it off with a small handful of peanut M&M's.

I believe I'm sated for at least the next hour or so.