to be pregnant

Essay and Artwork by Elisa Freeman Smith
Photograph by Brett Smith

As I sit here with my laptop, feeling my unborn child shifting and kicking about in my belly to the point where this action jars my arm and affects my typing (well, almost!); I realize that I have indeed come into a new awareness. Thoughts on nourishment are central to this new consciousness, ranging from digesting the endless media regarding pregnancy do’s and don’ts, to the daydreams about how my child is growing inside of my own body and how nourishing myself will in turn nourish her.

Feeling my baby tap-dance on the flip-side of my popping belly-button evokes such a feeling of awe—I tell my husband, Brett, that I can’t help but feel so special. I am just so lucky to be the one who gets to carry this tiny, magical life form (cue holy music and spotlight shining down on me)—I must be the only person on earth who has ever experienced such a sacred event… REALITY CHECK—Cut Spotlight. As soon as I come back down to earth I see moms and kids everywhere. Yes, this is happening every day. More than once. More than twice. In fact, every glowing, smiling basketball-bellied lady in my whole pre-natal yoga class is sitting next to me every Wednesday with their hands on their stomachs feeling the EXACT SAME THING!! (Not to mention a thousand or so other prenatal yoga classes around the continent every day…) Well, not exactly the same thing, but you get were I’m going. I feel like I go through this little roller coaster of emotions almost daily—they say it’s hormones. Luckily, I’ve settled somewhere in between feeling very happy to have this experience, but at the same time, glad to have others that share it with me. Nourishment, especially during pregnancy, definitely feels like a community experience.

As many others who have participated in this blog have declared, nourishment means far more to them than the food that they eat, and my feelings about nourishment during pregnancy are not much different in that I feel an increased desire for overall nourishment – body, mind, spirit. However, the direct connection between the food that nourishes me and in turn nourishes my baby cannot be denied. It’s the topic of many a panic-stricken Q & A session in the online pregnancy forums. ‘I ate goat cheese last night, is my baby going to miscarry due to Listeriosis?’ ‘I had 2 glasses of wine last week before I knew I was pregnant—is my baby going to have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?’ ‘I didn’t know I couldn’t eat more that 12 oz of fish per week—is my baby going to have mercury poisoning??’ That last one is a good example of why all of this media hype must be taken with a grain of salt. The official “rule” according to all of the pregnancy-related books, websites, etc. when I became pregnant last May was that you should not eat more than 12 oz of seafood, and that was from a limited list of seafood based on each species’ mercury content. Flash forward to October 4th, just a month ago, and the headlines read: “Pregnant and breast-feeding women should eat at least 12 ounces (340 grams) of fish and other seafood a week because the benefits for infant brain development outweigh any worries about mercury contamination, a group of U.S. experts said on Thursday.” Oh yes, this did totally contradict my carefully regulated weekly seafood regimen of the previous 5 months of my pregnancy. After a moment of panic related to my feeling that there was no doctor, no website, no book that could tell me exactly what to do to take care of my baby; I realized that I am the mother and that I need to have faith and trust in myself and my own motherly instincts, as mothers have been doing since the very first child was conceived.

My instincts have basically led me to enjoy everything I’ve always enjoyed, in moderation. Although this may mean only an occasional sip of my favorite wine, it means way more chocolate milk, which is almost as good to me. It may also mean a slightly larger portion of dinner- particularly vitamin-rich leafy greens, which I can never seem to get enough of. Getting enough iron and folic acid is one of those tried and true pregnancy “musts,” that drives this urge. Not only do I eat spinach, kale and brussels sprouts whenever possible, but I also diligently add a couple of tablespoons of wheat germ to my yogurt and hot cereal every day. Oh, and, the girl definitely gets her fair share of ice cream! For me, there isn’t an exact science to it, but all of this in addition to a daily pre-natal vitamin give me piece of mind that I am doing the best job I can of physically nourishing myself and the baby. Every time I feel a healthy kick, I think about how I am helping my baby develop and grow strong.

So, as Brett and I sit here eating seafood to our hearts’ contents, I’m confident that I’ve come to a sort of pregnancy-food-nourishment-self-actualization. Now I’m free to focus on other forms of nourishment that will promote our daughter-to be’s development. Brett and I have talked a lot about the nourishment of our own characters, with a belief that leading by example is one of the best forms of parenting. We are sure that in this new phase of life the need and opportunity for all types of nourishment will be abundant, but that may be another blog entry…



—Elisa Freeman Smith, Artist & Mother-to-Be