digestion is not your friend...

One of the least fun aspects of pregnancy is the way your whole digestive process gets way off track. You can definitely count on fun things like constipation, heartburn, nausea, indigestion, to make an unwelcome guest appearance in your life. Compounding the difficulty of the above is the fact that I'm still in that phase where food in general is just NOT appealing...especially not the things that are supposed to be healthy and good for you. 70+ grams of protein? Dairy? *hurl* *gag*

Things that have been helpful for me:

Fresh or dried fruit (fruit still sounds appealing, and I don't mind eating it when nothing else sounds even remotely interesting. I've been eating a lot of trail mix during the day while I'm at work, and bananas and other fruits seem to help during those times when you just don't really feel to excited about eating anything else. Hooray for fruit! The other day, a kid gave me some of his blueberries, and they went down real nicely.

Beverages are tricky. I'm not craving or even really needing caffeine at all, so I rarely have any tea or coffee. Anything carbonated makes me feel bloated, so that's out. Some fruit juices are okay, others are not appealing at all. It's pretty random what sounds okay at the moment. Acidic things like orange juice generally don't make me feel too good. Asian tropical fruit drinks have been working out really well, and coconut juice is usually easy on the tummy. Most of the time, water just makes me feel overly full, so I'm not currently driving myself crazy trying to drink the recommended 8 glasses...just when I feel like it. Mint tea is soothing, and when I'm feeling queasy, ginger is even better.

Food has been the hardest part...what works tends to change from day to day, but two constants are nothing greasy/spicy/overly acidic and all eating has to be done by 6 or 7pm or I'll be up all night long with heartburn thanks to those lovely raging hormones that slow down your digestive tract. Anything I eat tends to stick around for a long long time, so generally I'm NOT ever hungry, and on a typical day, when dinner time rolls around, I'm still working over whatever I had for lunch. Uggh.

(And this is just the first trimester, I hear this sort of thing makes a comeback later, oh joy!)

Japanese food seems pretty agreeable most of the time (because it's pretty light), so I've been eating a lot of that lately, and sushi is one of the few things that consistently sounds appealing, no matter how off I'm feeling. Another thing that usually works well is Mediterranean food-not too spicy, and pretty good for you.

Like some people have discovered, all eating goes much better if you aren't the one preparing the food. This is one of those times in my life when I utterly miss my college dorm cafeteria. Although it was dorm food, my particular dorm was way better than most in this department, and having an infinite variety of choices at such a finicky time in my life would be fantastic. I'd love to be able to graze, instead of have to actually think about preparing food.