In Which I Receive a Much-Needed Reminder!

This past I received an email from a friend and fellow HG-mama, in which she told me about all of the things that she is doing to prepare her body for pregnancy, giving her the best shot at avoiding hyperemesis.

And that reminded me... Oh, yeah! There's a whole bunch of stuff I'm supposed to be doing right now, and am not! Talk about procrastination!

Thus, I am here to tell you that I have reformed and repented! I am back on the bandwagon! I immediately dove back into my research and started going over my various pre-conception protocols and supplement plans to start working on weak areas.

There's only one small problem with all of this... and that would be the issue of no money - or rather, no money to spend on extras! With our income still being a great big zero, our expenditures have been reduced to gas-grocery-bills and nothing else until our financial/job situation resolves.

However, this may be one of those non-essentials that is not non-essential. In other words, as I was telling DH the other day, "saving money" by not preparing for (hopeful) HG prevention is like "saving time" by not studying for a test. Yes, there may be some slight and temporal benefits, but the payback will be dire when it comes to the test.

With that in mind, we're trying to determine where to spend and where to save on supplements and diet. I am still in the research stage, and we're trying to make decisions.

Before we go any further, I'd like to discuss magnesium. Have you all done your research on magnesium in pregnancy? Take a look at this article, which I already linked a few months ago, and then go over to this awesome article that my friend sent me this past week. I spent quite a bit of time going through those articles and making notes.

Most of us are magnesium-deficient (due to depleted soil and insufficient dietary sources), and there are many ways to up our magnesium levels in the effort to battle the HG-monster - diet, herbs, Epsom salts, supplements, magnesium oil, etc. I have written most of these into my protocol, so check that out.

Another important point that the author of the latter-mentioned article mentions is prenatal consumption of protein and fat - the more the better, and the better quality the better. I have copied her pre-conception protocol into my own, and that is something that I am actively working on in my own diet. The only issue is that optimal consumption would involve all organic, grass-fed, and pastured products, while my diet right now is strictly conventional. However, I have to work with what I can do.

Anyhow, I have updated my current protocol with all of the supplement, dietary, and magnesium information that I found in those two articles, so check it out here and let me know what you think!

I should note that this plan is my ideal - not currently my actual. I am working on getting to this point, but I am not doing everything listed in this plan, much as I wish that I was. Hopefully I can make some snappy changes and get up to snuff quickly.

Please leave me your input, friends!