Oh Kittens
FlyingMolly
Posts: 490 Member
One, anyway. Maybe.
I’m pregnant.
I’m about 10 seconds pregnant and I’m 38, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself. But I thought my belly was puffy a week ago and since then I’d been getting tired a bit more easily during workouts and also been a touch hungrier. It’s subtle stuff I never would’ve noticed without being on keto, but I’ve gotten so sure of the way my body looks and functions now that the test was almost anticlimactic.
Anyway. I know I have to see a doctor ASAP. I haven’t been taking folic acid, but google tells me I’ve probably been getting a good amount through leafy greens, eggs, nuts, and cabbage-y things. I’m starting supplements tonight anyway, but in the meantime:
Has anyone here had a keto pregnancy? Any information you have about cravings, nausea, and electrolytes would be really welcome right now. All I could eat the first 16 weeks with my first was sugar, and then I got put on strict rest and couldn’t even walk for more than a few minutes. That’s when I gained the weight I finally lost six years later on keto, but it means I just have no road map for a healthy pregnancy, much less a low-carb one.
So...talk me down and tell me about yours?
I’m pregnant.
I’m about 10 seconds pregnant and I’m 38, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself. But I thought my belly was puffy a week ago and since then I’d been getting tired a bit more easily during workouts and also been a touch hungrier. It’s subtle stuff I never would’ve noticed without being on keto, but I’ve gotten so sure of the way my body looks and functions now that the test was almost anticlimactic.
Anyway. I know I have to see a doctor ASAP. I haven’t been taking folic acid, but google tells me I’ve probably been getting a good amount through leafy greens, eggs, nuts, and cabbage-y things. I’m starting supplements tonight anyway, but in the meantime:
Has anyone here had a keto pregnancy? Any information you have about cravings, nausea, and electrolytes would be really welcome right now. All I could eat the first 16 weeks with my first was sugar, and then I got put on strict rest and couldn’t even walk for more than a few minutes. That’s when I gained the weight I finally lost six years later on keto, but it means I just have no road map for a healthy pregnancy, much less a low-carb one.
So...talk me down and tell me about yours?
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Replies
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Congratulations and hugs!
I did not have a low carb or keto pregnancy - I wish I had. Like you, I lived off a lot of sugar during the first 4 months, mainly ice tea mix. I judged my food choices by what they felt like coming back up... Yuck.
I had a tough time with meat smells. Now I would have looked into more dairy options like plain 10% fat yogurt, which did not exist during my pregnancies yet.
I probably would have tried to eat more jerky, well cooked bacon, and porkrinds. I think cheese too.
Instead of ice tea mix, I would drink decaf or chai with cream and protein powder. I think some fat bombs might work too.
I think I would not have forced food (in the form of processed carbs) as much either. If I could not eat a meal, I would now skip it. I tend to lose 10-20 lbs in the first few months so I think just eating at times I know it would stay in would be best.
I would have gone with more salt to help prevent dehydration.
Diclectin is an antinausea med that I took. It is heavy in B6 and antihistamines. It took off the edge so I was was only sick a couple of times a day, although I was still nauseated most of the time.
I know Kelly Hogan had carnivore pregnancies, and I've read another family that did the same. My guess is low carb pregnancies are not uncommon. There are podcasts and videos that I have noticed but haven't watched since that topic is no longer relevant to me.
Best wishes.
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Congratulations! 1
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Congrats!
I had a part-LC pregnancy due to gestational diabetes. If I knew then what I know now, I would have done keto instead of LC. But I did breastfeed that kid keto for about 6 months (he quit nursing at 21 mo) before my doctor told me my A1c was back down and I was cured. Guess what this idiot did then? Why carb faceplant for a few YEARS and regain all the weight, of course! Brilliant one, I am...
Anyway, I didn't know I was doing something called "keto." I just went back to the LC diet I was on during my GD pregnancy but I suddenly started just dropping all the starchies since I stopped caring about them. Just ate meat, dairy, and veggies. And realized that I felt so much better without bread, noodles, and a metric kitten-ton of sweets. So, in hindsight, I can see I was doing keto. Until I had an excuse to eat myself to death with chocolate, pizza, pb&j, and french fries again. Brilliance...
r/ketobabies might be worth a pop-in if we can't get our keto-preggers members to appear.
Diet ginger ale is all I can say. I lived on leaded ginger ale and saltines the first few months of my pregnancies. It helped to not take the prenatal vites first thing in the AM. Those things were the debil.2 -
Thanks everyone! I can see I have more googling to do.
I do know my body may make its own decisions about whether I can stick to keto in the early months especially—I seriously lived on applesauce, yogurt, candy bars and pudding for 4 months last time. But what I was trying (and failing) to eat otherwise was stuff like grains and starchy vegetables that aren’t really big in my diet now, so...maybe? The first “real” food that looked good to me again was a coconut-milk-based curry and the next was fish & chips, so maybe fat will retain its appeal and I can muddle through. I make a mean peanut-butter cup fat bomb.
I just spent so long feeling so terrible about my body after the first time; I’d like to avoid that as much as possible. I KNOW if I gain 50lbs eating KitKats nonstop I can just return to keto after and I’ll feel sane again and lose the weight and it’ll be fine, but for once I’d like to be one of those people who has her act together from the start.
Thanks again! It’s starting to sink in.2 -
I can almost guarantee you ~ you will NOT want to go back to eating 50 lbs of kit kats after eating keto for awhile and feeling the difference. Your body will tell you. And you will know what it's saying.
It's all gonna be okay. I can't tell you how often I've said that lately ... and it's true. It will be. 3 -
I did LC during my pregnancies, but not deliberately, just serious carnivore cravings and I've never been much of a bread person, so my pregnancy diet was mostly meat and vegetables like salads. If it's what you are used to you will probably be fine, just listen to your body and be lenient with the carbs if you feel tired or weak.
Extra Extra salt for sure.
Celestial seasoning makes a tea called "tension tamer" that has a lot of good anti-nausea stuff in it, that was a huge help for me in that first 12 weeks.3 -
Congratulations!1
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Congratulations! You might find this Reddit useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/KetoBabies/1 -
Thanks everyone! I’m a bit past 6 weeks now and suddenly the texture of cooked meat is just the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. Success is going to hinge on my ability to consume about 2400 calories per day in jerky and fat bombs.
ON IT.1 -
FlyingMolly wrote: »One, anyway. Maybe.
I’m pregnant.
I’m about 10 seconds pregnant and I’m 38, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself. But I thought my belly was puffy a week ago and since then I’d been getting tired a bit more easily during workouts and also been a touch hungrier. It’s subtle stuff I never would’ve noticed without being on keto, but I’ve gotten so sure of the way my body looks and functions now that the test was almost anticlimactic.
Anyway. I know I have to see a doctor ASAP. I haven’t been taking folic acid, but google tells me I’ve probably been getting a good amount through leafy greens, eggs, nuts, and cabbage-y things. I’m starting supplements tonight anyway, but in the meantime:
Has anyone here had a keto pregnancy? Any information you have about cravings, nausea, and electrolytes would be really welcome right now. All I could eat the first 16 weeks with my first was sugar, and then I got put on strict rest and couldn’t even walk for more than a few minutes. That’s when I gained the weight I finally lost six years later on keto, but it means I just have no road map for a healthy pregnancy, much less a low-carb one.
So...talk me down and tell me about yours?
Congrats!!!!!🎈
I have quite a few friends doing low carb and keto pregnancies.. they did all speak to their doctors about it and got the green light. I’m not an expert there.
We are thinking of having kids soon ourselves- so the issue is timely for me. I take vitamins- but i eat so many greens and vegetables/ it’s likely a lot of nutrition can come from that as well. Sound like you have had a good diet! Let us know what the dr says about keto and pregnancy.
Good luck!1 -
Congrats and hugs! When I was pregnant with my twins 10 years ago (they turn 10 next week!!), I was following the guidelines in "When You're Expecting Twins, Triplets or More" which were high protein but definitely not low carb, so I can't speak to that. I did happen to be eating low carb (Dukan Diet at the time) when I got pregnant again in 2013 but I had a *very* early miscarriage that time (which I doubt was low carb-related; I hadn't even hit 5 weeks and I have PCOS so my m/c risk was higher than normal anyway). I am intrigued though and would be interested to see what you find out and how it goes for you. Best of luck to you!1
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Congratulations! I did not start low carb until well after my kids were born so I have no advice but wanted to wish you the best of luck!1
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I am fully invested in this @FlyingMolly (and also avoiding some post holiday spreadsheets at work). How are you and how's it going?1
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That’s so sweet, @mmultanen! So far so good. I’ve read some mixed information about ketones during pregnancy, so last week I sat myself down with some apple pie and a bag of coconut clusters right before bed and said goodbye. The next morning? Still in ketosis. I started adding bananas, clementines, and blueberries to my diet (plus some more pie) and for the life of me I CAN’T shake ketosis. Short of reintroducing grains (and dealing with the digestive disruption that comes with it), I just don’t really know what else I could do. Check out my last week’s log if you want; it’s crazy.
So I’ve decided my body likes ketosis, and I shouldn’t fight it. My husband (who works sort-of in the medical field and parses research for me all the time) says the studies against keto pregnancies are no more credible than the ones for them, and also saw some very anecdotal indications that keto might have helped me to get pregnant in the first place. I’ll ask my doctor next week, but so far I’m staying the course.
I’ve added more fruit and root vegetables to my diet because babies like them and it doesn’t seem to actually matter anymore. My nausea ramped UP a couple of days ago, and I’m really struggling with the change of mindset from “How much activity can I squeeze in to make up for the food I want?” to “How much food can I force down to sustain all this activity?” Now I have to eat whenever I can and sometimes when I don’t want to, because if I’m hungry by bedtime I’m too nauseous to sleep, and if I cram food in at the last minute before bed I’m...too nauseous to sleep.
7 weeks, 4 or so days and counting. 🙂4 -
Congrats!!1
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