Pregnant Lady Trail Mix

Pregnancy is a weird and awesome thing. It's weird to willingly allow a parasite to suck all the nutrients out of your body, but awesome because this parasite is actually a baby and babies rock. I've been blessed awesomely normal pregnancy, so far (*knock on wood*).

I've also learned more about my body these past 6 months than I had in the whole 27 years prior. I even know my blood type now- what up?! Chalk that up to the bajillion of doctors appointments pregnant ladies get to go to- I'm almost to my twice a month appointment phase! I've also given a few gallons of blood (or roughly 15 vials, but jeez, that is a lot of blood) and peed in more cups than I care to count.

At my last appointment, I got to give more blood and then I got a follow-up phone call from the NP. Diagnosis= low iron. This is hardly a strange or unusual thing for women in general and it's especially common in pregnant women. Even though I take my daily prenatal vitamin, I wanted to boost my intake of iron through food, too. Couldn't hurt, right?

My daily food intake usually has some kind of spinach or leafy green in it, so I was reluctant to go that route. A girl can only eat so many salads. A quick search on Babycenter.com gave me quite the list of other iron-rich foods: lean beef, dark meat chicken or turkey, instant oatmeal, edamame, lentils, blackstrap molasses, apricots, nuts, seeds, raisins.

Armed with this knowledge, I went to my local Trader Joe's and started scanning labels. To get the most bang for my iron buck, I picked out a few things for a trail mix:

• Dried apricots
• Seedless raisins
• Honey-sesame almonds (double whammy- nuts & seeds!)
  

Here are the stats:

A 1/4 cup serving of seedless raisins has:
6% daily value of iron
2% daily value of calcium
13o calories
2 grams fiber
1 gram protein
Fat-free!

1/4 cup serving of dried apricots has:
8% daily value of iron
2% daily value of calcium
10% daily value of Vitamin C
20% daily value of Vitamin A
110 calories
2 grams fiber
1 gram protein
Fat-free!

1/4 cup serving of honey-sesame almonds has:
10% daily value of iron
10% daily value of calcium
170 calories
1 gram fiber
4 grams protein
12 grams fat

I threw equal quantities of each in a Ziploc, shook it up, and took it to work where I munched on it all week. I serve this up in roughly 1/2 cup portions, so I estimate it's around 300-350 calories a serving with a nice helping of iron in each bite. Which is handy since you're supposed to eat roughly 300 extra calories a day during the second trimester and 450 extra calories a day during the third trimester. (source)


Now, I'm not a nutritionist but I have been trying to watch what I eat and not use pregnancy as an all-access pass to the buffet of life. I'm not too worked up about trying to stay within a certain weight range- I figure if I eat when I'm hungry and eat mostly nutrient-dense food everything will work the way it's supposed to.

I'm guess I'm doing something right because this kid is definitely growing.

Exhibit A: 5 weeks (Hi Gilligan!)

Exhibit B: Almost 25 weeks!