Pregnant and Vegetarian

I am 4 weeks  pregnant and a vegetarian since birth (my mom is vegetarian too). I have never tasted tasted meat of any kind including fish etc. I do eat eggs and dairy. 

 I was born in India where almost 90% of the population is vegtarian and hence there is a plethora of vegetarian dishes. Protein is part of a very balanced diet and comes from sources like , gram flour, lentils, beans, cottage cheese  and so on. An example of this veggie craziness - according to mom there are over 100 recipes that  lentils as the main ingredient. I never bothered to learn cook or learn while growing up. 

I have been in the US for many years now and  don't have a knack for cooking . My husband is a carnivore and I just grill meat for dinner with some store bought sides (I eat the sides).

Now I am really concerned about my nutrition. I am 5'6'' and about 110 lbs.....   I work fulltime and have had a small salad for lunch for 5 days a week for the last 7 years. I know I am deficient in Protein but have not paid any heed to it until now.  I am allergic (or just hate the taste, I donno) to soy-based products. 

Any web-based resource or guide to tasty/ high prtoein vegetarian cooking will be really appreciated.  Thanks.

Hello megha, congrats on your pregnancy!  I did a search and came up with the following sites.  I'm sure some of the other members are likely to pop in with more info, but this should give you a starting point.  I would also recommend you speak with your doctor and get an idea of just how many grams of protein you should be getting minimally, both while pregnant and if you intend to breast feed, so you can get an idea of how much to incorporate. 

http://www.centralcoastkids.com/health/nutrit ion/pregnancy-lactation.cfm

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0820/i s_n233/ai_18973666/pg_1

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm

http://immuneweb.org/lowcarb/recipes/

http://www.simple-vegetarian-recipes.com/inde x.html

Another congratulations on your pregnancy Megha, what a joy!

I have recently switched to a vegan diet and the power of the lentil has been brought home in a big way over the last year! There are a ton of lentil recipes on www.vegweb.com that I have used over the past year and found to be simple, easy to follow and just wonderful.

What else is wonderful is that you are committed to your vegetarianism! I have seen so many women switch to eating meat for "the health of their babies" when there are so many more options that are SO much better for your body.

Congratulations again on your pregnancy & good luck with your cooking adventures!

Look for foods with folic acid (im sure you already know about this)

i know baked beans are a good source of folic acid, and a lot of cereals are too.

I had two pregnancies, with two very different diets, with two very different outcomes. 

With DD#1,  I ate the typical crappy american diet (lots of fast food, processed food, high in fat, and tons of ice cream) and took the prescribed iron pills. I was already overweight before I got pregnant, I gained way more than was recommended, I had borderline gestational diabetes, and DD was born 6 lbs 12 oz, very difficult delivery. I forget her apgar but it wasn't great - she was born blue and in distress, and I didn't get to hold her for awhile because they were working on her. She had what the doc called an "immature nervous system" which translated into 9 months of pure hell... due to colic & waking every 2 hours. Sigh.  

After she was born, and while I was still breastfeeding her, I switched to vegetarianism (ovo-lacto, but I didn't really drink any milk). I lost all my pregnancy weight, while not starving myself. Then when she was 9 months old, I got pregnant again with DD#2. So back-to-back pregnancies.

I never took the iron pill or any multivitamins. I followed a clean, whole foods diet and got the required amount of calories and then some. I remember eating raisins, wheat germ, dark green veggies every day, along with vitamin C rich fruits, to help with iron. My doctor was freaking out on me because I refused to take the iron pill (it made me constipated and nauseous). This pregnancy went soooo  much smoother. I didn't gain as much weight. I felt better. My skin glowed, etc . I had no gestational diabetes.

DD#2 was born a full 2 lbs heavier. She had a far easier birth too. Her apgar score was perfect. The doctor checked both our iron levels upon delivery, and was amazed that it was higher than any meat-eating patient he had!!! He even asked me to write down the details of my diet so he could study it and share it with his other patients.

Also DD#2 was just a calmer, happier baby - no colic. She slept through the first night and every night after she'd sleep 12 hours straight. So the lesson here is vegetarian pregnancies can definetly work just fine!!!

DD's are now 12 and 14 years old. The irony of it all is, DD#1 is the healthiest eater you will ever see, she's nearly vegetarian except she loves meat (i.e., if she got rid of meat from her diet, she'd be eating an impeccable vegetarian diet as it is). But DD#2 - the one with the veggie pregnancy - is the pickiest eater EVER!! LOL!!

She does eat veggies though.... but she has a definite taste for sweets and a lot of refined, processed crap.... I would never let her eat vegetarian, because her list of foods is way too short... she'd never meet her nutritional needs.

My favorite cookbooks are Nikki Goldbeck's American Wholefoods Cuisine and Laurel Robertson's Laurel's Kitchen.  Lots of good, simple vegie dishes and great chapters on nutrition.

I've been vegetarian a long time, all during my pregnancy (no vitamins or supplements) and gave birth to a healthy 9 pound baby. 

You can do it too!

megha,

I enthusiastically recommend this book, especially since you're already vegetarian.  (Fuhrman recommends a vegan diet for everybody, including pregnant women.)

Also, I can't recall where I read or heard this (it may have been in this book), but there is evidently quite a bit of new medical research indicating that what the mother eats during pregnancy has a significant impact on the genetic makup of the child.

The theory is that if the mother eats a a nutrition poor diet (even if it's calorie rich) then certain genes are expressed that will help the child survive in a nutrition poor environment.  These are the sorts of genes that would lead towards a tendency to be obese, for example.

Look for cookbooks by Madhur Jaffrey.  She, like you, left home not knowing how to cook and had to teach herself.  For that reason, her recipes are always clear and easy to follow.  I own several of her books.

Books by Madhur Jaffrey

Congrats on the pregnancy!  I eat a largely vegetarian diet and did so through my pregnancy last year.  I would suggest you add lowfat cottage cheese to your diet.  It's really high in protein and will give you the added calcium you need during pregnancy.  Also, consider getting yourself tested for a soy food allergy.  If you do test positive, make sure you have NONE of it while you are pregnant or breast feeding.  If the mother has food allergies, she is likely (70%) to pass food allergy suseptability on to her child.  If you aren't truly allergic then go to a Asian food market and find soy products there.  You might try spiced tofu or tempeh.  They both taste very different from standard tofu.  They are both good sources of protein as well as calcium. Snack on Luna bars. 

Best of luck!  Motherhood is the greatest joy I have ever expericed

 

Thanks a  lot  to all of  you.  I  truly  appreciate  the responses  and  so  much useful information / resources.

bbnomo , clairelaine, kcthomas, avesha:  thanks for your recommendations. I have a growing list of books to buy this weekend including some about pregnancy and ?Idiot?s Guide to being with a pregnant woman? for my husband. 

    Last evening, I did prepare a legume-centric meal for myself.  It did turn out to be okay. I spiced  up the concotion of legumes and spinach with some (a lot, actually) Indian spices and that sorta did the trick.  I am planning chick peas for tonight .....will continue cooking and eating !!

Congrats on the pregnancy!  I'm barely pregnant as well, and having a strange time with my diet, craving meat and such.  I do know for me, however, that these things work (for me):

I don't take a prenatal vitamin.  Sue me.  The iron made me so nauseous and constipated, life was awful.  I take a chewable children's vitamin that has no iron in it, and that works we for me. 

Eat something, a carb (I have a carb with some fat), before even leaving your bed.  Here's my story on that:  I work as a nanny early in the morning, so I go over to the house and sleep on the couch for another hour or two.  I never ate anything before leaving my house, but would eat right after getting up at the other house.  I would be nauseous all day.  This morning my hubby made me muffins-in-bed for my b-day, so I ate before I left, and I've been hardly sick all day.  Seriously, the difference has been outstanding. 

If something doesn't sound good to you, don't eat it.  If you start eating something and it's not settling, don't finish it.  These are the fastest ways to throw up.

Hope this helps!

Congrats!

I made it through my pregnancy on lentils and this divine whole-wheat, raisin and walnut bread! Well, I actually ate more than that, but those were my biggest cravings.

Another cookbook I'd recommend is "The Passionate Vegetarian" by Crescent Dragonwagon. (The pen name is from when she wrote children's books.)

Another great thing to do is go to your public library and start checking out vegetarian, pregnancy and busy-people cookbooks.  You can get a lot of great ideas and narrow down the books you'll actually WANT to buy!

I strongly second bbnomo's recommendation of 'Disease Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right', by Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

The book has a lot of eye-opening information about the relationship between childhood diet and adult diseases, based on the latest medical research.

As far as the effect of the mother's diet, I thought that this comment made recently by Dr. Fuhrman was pretty fascinating. He also is trying to explain why it isn't completely predictable whether or not someone will get Cancer, i.e. some people don't take care of themselves and remain unscathed, while others don't :

"Cancer is also caused by the mothers diet, not just during pregnancy, but also for at least 2 years before conception and likely before as well. There is a certain degree of randomness involved as DNA breakage in the eggs can occur based on many predisposing factors. When you shoot a bullet into the woods, it does not always hit a tree, but the more bullets you hit, you can be sure you will hit more trees. So if you expose yourself to more toxic bullets more DNA damage will occur. Also the eggs that make us up are formed in utero when our mothers body, finger and toes are being formed so our eggs are susceptable to damaging influence for our life time plus the number of years (plus one) that our mother was alive when she gave birth to us. If our mother was younger at our birth we are actually a little younger, too. "

rice and beans....you will get all necessary amino acids with that combination.  They also make fortified yogurt smoothies that that add some vitamins/minerals that might be over looked.