Whoever Started the Rumor That I Would Look and Eat like a Pig While Pregnant Was an Asshole. (I wrote this while hungry and pissed and still pregnant, so excuse any rants or discourteous statements)

   

It's not about NOT drinking soda ever, or never eating potato chips. It's about honoring that what you put inside your body on a daily IS WHO and WHAT you ARE. Soda and chips are a fake fix. There is magic energy within something that actually lives and dies, and I'm promoting more vegetable life than animal life. Our society dreams for you to continue to buy, to purchase their crap, their flavorfully processed long-ass shelf life fake food. And we know, blatantly, that they don't care about our health, they don't give a shit about the animals they slaughter or the diseased chemical shit they put in their feed. Nor do they care about their workers, typically illegal immigrants - am I wrong? They don't care about you, especially if you don't either, and we continue to fill our stomachs with their hatred . . .because we saw it on a fun commercial . . . because it's cheaper . .  because it's easier . . . because when push comes to shove we are lazy . . . we like our routine and changing one's lifestyle takes too much effort. Sometimes our complex America is as simple as this: we are who and where we put our money.

    Though I have always cared about my health, somehow I have become even more sensitive to the sad state of nutrition our America has evolved into since I've become pregnant. I have someone else to think about who is not tough or in their prime, and can't handle a night out drinking too much wine and eating decadent foods. I am nourishing a baby. Everything that I eat I see as nutrition, energy, and as the source of vitality for my future son. How can he live up to his father's dreams of him, Bruno Italo Giovannoni, becoming the next Italian dictator without having a healthy start?

    I have realized that there are many myths that come with pregnancy, and that honestly, most women don't know a shit about it. That was me, week one, thinking geez, now I'm going to start eating like a beast. Week one I started eating so much meat and heavy foods, and I thought wow now I can eat dessert everyday if I want to, because according to the myths I'm going to look like a fat pig no matter what . . . and then I started to feel sick and realized, "you know what? I'm an asshole." I'm not eating for two people. "First of all it's week one. The baby is hardly even the size of my nipple. Secondly, who started spreading the rumors that it was all of a sudden ok to start eating like a pig?" I knew it was wrong because my body was repulsed by what I had just done to myself and I wasn't even a month into pregnancy. Not to mention my relationship with the toilet all of sudden changed as well. Maybe I should be saying thank you to that experience because since then I have been scarred and find it very difficult to emotionally indulge in foods that are not healthy for me and my baby.

    I'm still just learning about this crazy pregnancy experience myself, because to be honest it wasn't always top priority after a full day of work, exhausted, hungry, hormonal, and alone (my husband works long hours). Sometimes I was just so hungry after work all I could manage to prepare myself was protein on a plate, in any form, just to get the energy to take the next step, perhaps some sautéed spinach, or a salad. It can get tough when you don't have help. But the real shit kicker is that if I didn't have the luxury of maternity leave, health insurance, and a husband who had a good job to financially take care of the family/household during this time, I wouldn't have had the time or the energy to have known a shit about shit. It's truly only in these last months that I've been able to scour the internet, or sit down to read books. How do single mothers do it on their own?

    In conclusion: we as a society need to be more educated. Research products before you buy them . . and this goes out especially to moms . . . just because something is made for your baby doesn't make it safe for your baby. I have recently realized that the 100% Urethane foam bassinet mattress that came with the bassinet I received as a gift is potentially toxic to my baby. Now I have to make the time to custom order a new organic mattress that will fit the bassinet. This has been a much more difficult task that I anticipated. It would have been nice to have assumed that the mattress that came with my baby's bassinet was safe and that I could just rely on products that are available to me and my baby to not be harmful. Sadly not true. And now I'm hungry again and pissed.
    My girlfriend asked me last night, "Have you enjoyed your pregnancy?"
    "Enjoy is not the right word," I said. "It's been a very important experience. It's been the most immense life experience, but it hasn't been easy."