A Smoothie For Those Tri-ingTimes

Ahh, morning sickness...wait, that should be BLAH, morning sickness! Nothing sounds good. Nothing looks good. Let's not even talk about smells... You don't want to eat but you have to. If you feel full you feel sick. If you feel hungry you feel sick. The last thing you want to think about is food, yet all you can think about is food because if you don't eat soon you're going to get sick, so the desperate search for "what sounds even partially edible?!" begins. I can think of few tortures worse than having a constant forced loop of food options running through your head when the very thought of food, or the faintest whiff of it, lays you flat out.

There would have been a time in the very recent past where I wouldn't have been able to even type out many of these words, the subject matter of food was so precarious. Which direction would it send me running in? But praise the Lord for second trimesters! Feeling more energetic, and once again more appreciative of food, (Hello, Appetite! I thought you were gone for good.) I thought it might be nice of me to share the thing which helped me get through the earliest days (you know the ones, where you definitely feel different, but also hopeful that this might just be as bad as it gets. so naive...). It would be even nicer of me to share the thing which helped me get through the roughest patches, but there isn't anything. It just stinks. But I don't want to tell you that. I want to be nice. So I'm just going to share this:


Ingredients:
Banana
Vanilla yogurt
1 scoop Whey Protein Powder
Frozen Cherries (or whatever fruit sounds good at the moment)
Ginger- juiced (at least 1 tsp but don't go heavy until you've tried it- it's heavy stuff)
Fruit juice or milk

Toss it all in the blender and blend well.

The main thing is to get that protein in you to keep you going and baby growing. The yogurt and banana helps your stomach feel like there's actually something in it (without being too heavy) + good 'ol calcium and potassium, and the ginger should help everything settle. This is the first pregnancy that I've tried juicing ginger, and it really did help. I would put some in with my orange juice too on the days the orange juice sounded good. The trick is to prepare and juice the ginger in the earlier part of the first trimester while the thought of food prep is not revolting.

This worked wonderfully well for the first 3 weeks (perhaps for others out there it might last even longer depending on the intensity of morning sickness). I would put together whatever combination sounded good in the blender, drink it down, and be able to get through my morning actively and even hit the gym sometimes.

Maybe this recipe will come in handy for you some day. One way or the other, at least now you know where I've been and why I haven't posted anything for the past two months ; )