I was unable to get up from the bed to go to toilet. Not to mention going to doctor. We called in the ambulance because either way I had to see a doctor. Why? Well, it stops being a secret and makes a very important input into the story, I am pregnant with my second child (18 weeks tomorrow).
Clearly, the pain medication for the back pain was restricted by the drugs allowed for pregnant women - which for most of the time is Paracetamol.They have found one more, but even if it helped me to get my back about 10 cm of the bed, it didn't really help with sitting.
(When I mean pain... let me tell you that I gave birth to my daughter on just laughing gas. I would compare that pain to the contractions just before giving birth - the ones that make you vomit and see everything white and scratch people and throwing things at them as if making other hurt would make you not hurt.
Brr... I think this time I go with epidural much earlier :D)
Since I couldn't actually make it home, I stayed in the hospital for 3 days. It's a small hospital about 30 minutes drive from my home with only one or two wards. They put me together with grannies recovering from hip surgeries and life went on. The drug made me sleep all right (I literally fell asleep in the middle of my dinner), but pain didn't go away and still before Easter holidays I was unable to sit, even if I was able to stand up with the use of my hands on the crouches (or the more advanced Segwey type thing that looked like baby walker XXXXL size :) ). They were amazed by my recovery, since grannies apparently don't recover so well, but that didn't change the fact that the doctor was taking Easter holidays and there would be only nurses on the ward and I should either go home or change hospital. At that point I chose other hospital, as I was unable to sit in the car yet.
I have spent there about a whole day with no food on the emergency, and about midnight, before they were closing, the doctor finally came to tell me that basically it is a back pain but:
- we cannot make X-Ray pictures
- we cannot make MRI
- even if we did, we cannot make operation, so there is no point there
- they cannot give me any drugs, as those were the only two allowed for pregnant woman
- this is a result of some old injury (I had a knee operation last year) and that the baby growing inside presses on the injury and this means it can continue like that until the delivery
- if I can sit I should go home.
I said I can not sit.
There came a nurse and gave me the most painful of all injections that hurt for 3 days afterwards. Apparently he consulted with gynaecologist and they figured out some other drug that works differently, is weaker but could help.
Strangely, one hour afterwards I was able to sit up for a minute.
He ordered me a taxi, said to use the drug only when needed (not daily) and discharged me. The most painful drive of my life.
Everybody asks me how is the baby.
In those 4 days, no one checked the heartbeat on that poor baby of mine. I cannot feel it move, I have lost two kilograms so ... who the heck knows? I hope for the best.
I have went through a very depressed stage over Friday and Saturday, but I think I am over with it... at least partially. Shit keeps raining on me all my life, so frankly, it seems like two days of crying is enough to shake bad news off and move on.
Ok, back on track with my culinary journey.
On Monday, before it all happened I was called for a visit to a food specialist because the midwife was concerned about the fact that I am vegan and weather or not I am eating enough nutrients for the baby. Granted that I never have been to such person, and I love learning new things so I agreed. I knew my grounds, I wrote a huge letter to that person. Basically they believed that it is because of my religious upbringing that I am vegan. When they heard that I do it for health, the specialist started her crusade of "how milk is great and healthy" and how I should reconsider my veganism. Needless to say I created a huge letter with all the research literature (including presentations and movies - for if she did not want to read books), but of course she didn't read any of it in the end. However, she was positively surprised by my food dairies and the nutrients I consume. In the end she said it would be and I quote "a great diet to loose weight after pregnancy". And again I had to explain how this is not for weight loss but for health... and she still did not get it.
She had no idea about the nutrient contents in products. She did not know about many of the things I ate what they are, such as chia for example or asparagus (that one I found funny). The thing about pregnancy is apparently that one is forbidden to eat flax seeds, which is a staple omega-3 source. They contain cyanides and thus are harmful for the foetus. So I explained her that I eat walnuts and I eat a spoonful of chia every day, which is an even better source of omega-3 (but of course chia is more expensive than flax seeds) and I eat blueberries everyday.
LADY (and I will imitate the ... how the old chinease medicine practitioners sounded to me when I was little, of course this is comically enhanced for the purpose of the explaining how I felt at that moment): NO COMPUTES. Drink flax seed oil. Bad taste, good for you.
Then we had the calcium discussion. OMG. When people (doctors, nurses, midwives and apparently food specialists) get to their head that calcium comes from milk........ there is no way you can convince them that calcium is anywhere else.
I had sent her an exempt from my daily routine where it showed that from my food I am getting above 700 mg of Calcium.
LADY: No computes. Impossible. Vegetables and fruits haz no calcium.
So I educated her, that a kg of oranges, which is what I would have for lunch, has 430 mg, for starters. I also told her that she must understand that when it writes there "oranges" and 1200 g... I seriously freaking mean it. This is what I ate that day. And I started joking, that I already know when I need calcium or have eaten less than I should on that day, because I crave orange juice like crazy then.
LADY: Do you know that (brand name of main food/milk producer in Finland) is supplementing their orange juice with calcium? You should drink that.
ME: I meant like the squeezed orange juice. I make it myself from fruits or then I buy the (brand of the widely popular, yet helluva expensive juice), because it is the only product on the cold shelf, that actually is needed to be stored in cold - because it is not from the juice concentrate. Besides it has proteins and pulp as well, other juices don't [before she was on my case of where do you get your protein from and how I should maybe consider protein supplementation].
LADY: WHAT PROTEIN? HOW MUCH DO YOU DRINK IT? Drink milk for protein!
ME: I am not entirely sure why I need to defend drinking the actual juice from the actual fruits. I drink juice when I feel like juice. I don't drink it for protein. It's a side effect.
The protein thing of course spiked from how do I feel now. And I said normal, just like not pregnant, but in the last two weeks I actually started feeling more hungry and have to eat a bit more. It's normal. You are pregnant - you consume more kcal, you need more macronutrients, you get hungry. Also as the alien inside grows, you cannot fit as much food at a time, so there naturally come snacks in between the meals.
LADY: Eat less fruits, eat more protein. You will not be hungry.
Me in my head... did I say that being hungry in pregnancy is a problem? It's a natural freaking thing.
I went prepared, read my literature, remember?
"Recommendations for protein intake during pregnancy
The additional protein intake needed during pregnancy was derived from the
newly deposited protein and the maintenance costs associated with increased
body weight (Table 14). Mean protein deposition has been estimated from
total body potassium (TBK) accretion in normal healthy pregnant women,
gaining 13.8 kg. The efficiency of protein utilization was taken to be 42%.
The maintenance costs were based upon the mid-trimester increase in ma-
ternal body weight and the adult maintenance value of 0.66 g/kg per day. The
safe level was derived from the average requirement, assuming a coefficient
of variation of 12%.
• Based on an efficiency of protein utilization of 42%, an additional 1, 9 and
31 g/day protein in the first, second and third trimesters, respectively, are
required to support 13.8 kg gestational weight gain.
• In view of the literature indicating a controversial increase in neonatal
death with supplements that are very high in protein (34% protein:energy;
see below), it is recommended that the higher intake during pregnancy
should consist of normal food, rather than commercially prepared high-
protein supplements"
(...)
These benefits of supplementation are consistent with dietary assessments in unsupplemented mothers, showing that those who had the highest protein intakes (around 100 g protein/day) had the
best pregnancy outcome (96). However, as reviewed recently, untoward
effects on pregnancy outcome were reported with high-protein supplements
(providing >34% of energy) in studies conducted in New York and India. The high-protein supplement (470 kcal and 40 g protein/day) in the New
York trial was associated with a small, non-significantly higher weight gain,
and a higher, non-significant increase in neonatal death, and no difference in
fetal growth.
"Protein and amino acid requirements in human nutrition", WHO technical report series, Report of a joint WHO/FAO/UNU EXpert Consultation
Do you read what it says? 1 GRAM! 1 FREAKING GRAM MORE PROTEIN in the first trimester.
And don't eat those protein supplemented products that say they have 30 g of proteins in a small jar of milk product! That can actually be lethal for your baby!
I am soooooo against all the new wave of those milk products that are protein enriched ... especially after I read that.
According to my calculations in the beginning I should eat about 59 g of proteins per day and move onto 90 g in the third trimester.
The diet I was prescribed now as a potential diabetic (previous pregnancy problem which puts you automatically on the list) assumes that at best I consume minimum 118 g of proteins during the day. It actually suggested chicken breast twice a day as an option, so this would be higher. I think this is a slight overkill.
Needless to say, there is no sign of diabetes, even if I eat 3-4 times more carbohydrates than is allowed in such situation.
Her final words were more in the range of, if I feel hungry I should reduce the fruits and eat more fats.
This one I totally did not get. If I feel hungry, that means my body needs something. If I eat anything I will provide proteins, carbs and fats. I am not going to go into the whole thermogenesis thing (check wikipedia) - but that is the answer how my body gets rid of the excess of anything if I eat a whole food not an extract of that food. When we eat oils and refined sugars and protein supplements - this is not happening and we gain weight. They should teach about it at school.
Bottom line - it is always better to eat a whole food than to drink oil. Oil taste bad = BAD FOR YOU.
I already pointed out to her that in pregnancy I feel optimal at level of maybe 17%energy by fat in my diet, while 20%E is suggested. I achieve that by seeds, nuts, avokado, which contain incidentally all the other things plus minerals. Not by means of adding "a knuckle of butter" as Mr. J. Oliver would say. Worse of all, she told me to eat this fat in form of margarine, which for me is the most unnatural way a fat can exist.
I think I left that place sad. I was hoping that finally there will be an open mind on the other side of the conversational table, and it wasn't.
Her final words were "The low fat milk, is a very healthy product. Drink it."
I didn't have more energy to explain to her how unhealthy a milk is. But it just depressed me.
And then I have found myself on the next day in the hospital in the same building where her office was.
Their version of a breakfast for a vegan was an oatmeal with a knuckle of butter in it, a toast bread with more butter and cucumber (already special request from me), juice from concentrate and a tea:
For dinner I have received this:
For lunch came the same sandwich, glass of rice milk and a soup from cauliflower and potatoes. For snacks I was offered 1) cofee, 2) tea with sugar and cake.
This incidentally fitted very well with that diet I said is somewhat suggested for me now.
When I said I normally eat fruits in the morning, they found one pear for breakfast and one banana for lunch. They said I don't need to eat it if I feel overwhelmed.
Laugh. Out. Loud.
I ask: where is the calcium, where is the protein, (I can clearly see where the fat is...) where are the nutrients? Vitamins? What with the five a day veggie portions?
If your mouth watered at that above that would just mean we are meant to eat this way... did it?
I didn't think so.
When my man arrived finally with my beloved oranges I attacked them like a crazy orangutan. The lunch lady came into the room to take my dishes, first so down by her life... and then she started smelling the room "Wow, it smells so good in here, so fresh, so ... orangy! " And she was smiling.
Fruits do that to you.
Oatmeal doesn't.
To be continued....
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