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Amazingly enough, even without folate pills, the vast majority of kids all over the world and throughout history come out fine. I'm sure it pisses off the pill companies, but that's the facts.
Pregnancy is so exhausting, I couldn't believe how tired I was, especially during that first trimester.
I chose to take prenatals because my diet was absurdly lacking in nutrients much of the time, and I just ate whatever didn't make me want to puke, which was usually just crackers and cupcakes up until I was around 4 or 5 months pregnant.
And, it barely lessened in my second and third trimester.
Another suggestion for the nausea is rice toast/crackers and ginger. Those really helped with my more nauseous moments and helped prevent me from barfing. I also second not going long without food. Keep snacking, on whatever is healthy that you can keep down. It really helps a lot!
never did eat the placenta, though (maybe it would have helped!).
A month or more before you give birth, start making and freezing dinners and get as many easy, healthy meals as you can ready. Get people to help you, even if you have to beg (I would have had to beg, because every time I called my parents about what was going on, they just said my Mom did it by herself, and therefore so could I). Get your husband to take time off if he can, and don't let him work overtime unless it's absolutely necessary!
Just a little nutrition note. When we lived in Alaska a friend of ours was pregnant and severely anemic. Her doctor told her she was going to need iron shots, which I hear are really painful. She asked if there was anything she could do to avoid it and he said, "Yes, if you eat moose a couple of times a week you'll be fine". I mention this because all meat isn't the same (Capt. Obvious strikes again). Moose are browsers and really like willows, which are incredibly mineral rich (They grow a huge rack of mostly calcium in a few months). Since deer are also browsers I would guess their meat would be similar (except here in Indiana with our corn fed deer population. We aren't what we eat, we are what we eat eats. Better soil = better vegies, better graze or browse = better meat.
Mick Fisch wrote:Stephanie,
Each person is different, so what I suggest may not work for you. My wife dealt with this through 9 pregnancies. What we found worked for her was that she had to nibble on a little bit of cheese before she raised her head off the pillow in the morning headed it off. If she raised her head up first, it was too late and she was making offerings to the porcelain god. If cheese doesn't work for you, then try something else. You need something on your stomach before you get up.
My wife would kick me out of bed to get her whatever she felt like she needed to eat an hour or so before she had to get up. I found with practice I could hold onto the sleep mode enough to get her what she needed and drop right back to sleep. This served me well when I was the baby burper in the middle of the night later on.
We did both standard hospital deliveries and midwife. My wife quickly decided that midwife was the only way to go and after that we only used midwives. We opted for a midwife in the hospital.
Don't beat yourself up about your activity level, etc. Your body is busy just growing a baby.
Steven Kovacs wrote:Stephanie,
Congratulations on your pregnancy! "Morning" (ha ha) sickness can be terrible, though there is apparently some evidence that it is one indicator of a healthy pregnancy. Don't beat yourself up for your diet - the hit to your energy, plus the weird effects you may be seeing in terms of what food you crave or are repulsed from, will screw up even the best intentions for a diet plan. My wife found that keeping bland starches (saltines, etc.) by the bedside table helped a lot with the nausea.
Congratulations too on finding a midwife and managing to reduce your hours at work. Don't expect to get much done in the first 3 months after the baby is born, though. Some people do, and certainly the baby in the "fourth trimester" is very portable and sleeps a lot, but it can be a particularly exhausting period for everyone in the family.
Peter Ellis wrote:Stephanie, on the burlap bags, my first question is whether the bags you have are natural fiber burlap or some synthetic. One quick and easy way to check is a burn test. Snip a little piece and light it on fire. If it leaves a blob, not powdery ash, it is definitely synthetic and likely will not decompose. I ask because a natural burlap in contact with soil for a year should definitely be breaking down.
If you plant through natural burlap, I would leave it year after year, trusting that tells soil organisms will eat it like all the other organic matter. I also would not worry about roots getting through.
Casie Becker wrote:Actually, I do most of my mulching with a combination of cardboard (for starting most new beds) and ramial wood chips. I was actually wondering if there was something that I was misunderstanding.
I was curious what made burlap such a different experience than chipped mulch. Particularly since you say they didn't do well in your community garden. I find I learn as much about how to care for my garden by what goes wrong as I do by getting it right the first time.
To be honest, everything you say you did this fall sounds exactly like how I (and my mother for 30+ years) garden. We just keep piling different layers of organic material on the soil. Worms and other soil creatures pull it down to the plants. We only dig enough to fit seeds or seedlings into the ground.
After the initial mulch buries the seed bank it is just a matter of keeping ahead of new seeds blowing in. Weeds are very easy to pull from out of organic mulches.
Casie Becker wrote:
Stephanie Ladd wrote:Thanks! I began setting up the burlap mulching yesterday and as I thought about it, I don't think it's going to work. It's not going to break down in one year and I don't want to have to pull it up at the end of the season/early next season and disturb all the buggies.
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I'm a little confused about why you would need pull up the burlap at all. My wood chips mulches don't completely degrade in the course of one year, but I just push it aside as needed to plant and add more mulch on top. Is there a reason why you wouldn't just cut new holes for planting through the old burlap next year? That's assuming that it won't biodegrade in a year. I think people who are used to chemical agriculture tend to underestimate how much a healthy soil can digest in a year. My wood mulches are applied up to six inches thick and yet, if I don't refresh it, they will be down to and inch or less by the end of the year. If I'm trying to kill grass I might go as high as twelve inches, and even that is down to four inches or less after a year. It's only that very top layer that is exposed to sun, wind and weather extremes that will be slow to break down.
