Colds and Bradley Classes

I came down with a terrible cold at the beginning of this week. I've spent three days laying bed eating toast, yogurt and chicken soup. My lovely boyfriend is taking me Balthazar tonight to celebrate our time together so I'm refusing to budge from this bed until I have to get ready for the reservation. Since there is no way I'm cooking anything this week (unless if involves defrosting my previously made chicken and rice soup) I thought I would share some of the dietary information I learned about pregnancy in my Bradley Class.

The first thing I learned was that you are NOT eating for two, you only need an additional 150-300 calories. The important thing is what those calories are made up of: fruits, veggies and protein. Protein is extremely important, when you are pregnant you should be consuming at least 80 grams of protein a day. 80 GRAMS!  That's double what you would normally eat. Typically, I don't eat a lot of meat and I definitely don't eat it twice a day, so trying to double my protein intake was little worrisome.

In class we did an exercise where we wrote down what we were eating every day for a week. As it turns out, listening to my cravings for meat and dairy upped my protein intake enough that I was getting over 80 grams. The biggest change I made was eating greek yogurt for breakfast. Greek yogurt has around 20 grams of protein per cup of yogurt, that's a fourth of what you need right there. Greek yogurt is by far my favorite food right now, well other than toast. You can eat it so many different ways: with granola, fruit, honey or add spices and herbs to make a dipping sauce for Sweet Potato Cakes. Yum. I've also been craving meat: chicken, steak, burgers and pulled pork. You name it, I want it, for lunch and dinner. So I guess my theory is, unless you have complications listen to your baby. If the baby wants steak, potatoes and salad for dinner with a milk shake for dessert, go for it. Just try not to eat fries and ice cream everyday, I know you want too but in a few months you will be wishing you hadn't. Personally, I limit my burger and fry eating to once a week.

Overall, I have learned a lot in the Bradley class about nutrition, pregnancy and birth. Being educated about the process is going to help us make better decisions when things start to get a little crazy and I do imagine it will get crazy. Thankfully I have a while until that happens, for now I'm going back to bed. Balthazar here I come!