Have a great birth!

Just a quick note to let you know that Baby Optimus arrived last week, and is doing fine.

He was over 8.5 pounds at birth, but he's exceptionally long, so he was only around the 10% for "weight for height." I'm told that his placenta was also remarkably big and healthy-looking. That would have started forming in the first trimester, when I was eating very nutritious foods, but with quite a lot of protein and carbs. So it's possible that he was programmed to be a whopper, but ended up gaining less weight than expected once I started on Dr. K. Not that I really wanted him to be any bigger!

Anyway, he's been eating enough to make up for it. I'd really like to sleep for more than 2 hours at a stretch, but he has other ideas. My biggest problem right now is that he's a very enthusiastic eater who tends to chomp during feedings (ouch!). I think once the milk came in, he was like, "woo-hoo, carbs!"

Congratulations!

Optimus isn't really his name, is it?

Thank you.

No, he's not really called Optimus. We give our children very ordinary and respectable sorts of names. I figure, what with the homeschooling and the organ meats, they have enough social challenges already.

congrats!!

Hello all! I found my way over here after reading through 50 pgs of the other Dr. K thread, and hopefully there are still others around able to help me with pregnancy specific Optimal diet questions.

I have been lowcarbing since 2004, but with several very off the wagon time periods. Got down to my lowest weight in perhaps a decade last year after the birth of my second child (first truly lc pregnancy) at around 185, and then lost my mind and went completely nuts with bread, etc... back up to 220's. I don't even know how it happened, I just could NOT get my act back together and things kept creeping up, you get the idea. So, anyway, I am pregnant again, and this time have not been eating well AT all. I feel lousy, and am 10-15 pounds heavier than at the beginning of my last pregnancy, and I am having worse morning sickness, etc. I am also very low energy at this point, and I KNOW I need to get back to eating nutrient dense foods and much lower carb levels, but am not finding my regular lc lifestyle very easy to manage in my current nauseaus state. Everything I have ready so far about Dr. K's theories on pregnancy and children's nutrition sound very much in line with my own, (still nursing my 3.5 yr old and 1.5 yr old, giving them lots of very high fat natural foods, though probably more fruits and veggies than he would suggest) so I am hoping that using his ratios (though probably on the lower end of the rations b/c I do have sometimes have blood sugar problems, but that is my question I guess, how low for pregnancy? 100 g? 125? That is a fair bit higher than I generally ate with my last one, and my baby was 8 pounds, I don't want much larger than that quite frankly and I live in constant fear that I will grow another big baby, probably blood sugar related, that I can't birth normally.) I have a feeling lowering protein a bit and raising carbs slightly will not have a negative effect, but the actual numbers seem hard to put a finger on. I have a meter that I used last pregnancy to periodically check up on myself with, so I could just go with a certain ration to start and see how I feel and if it is negatively affecting my blood sugar. I don't relish the thought of testing myself all the time though, it adds a lot of stress and unpleasantness. Oh well, maybe for a couple of weeks until I get settled in and feel better at any rate.

Also, what is an adequate protein level? I have always used protein as the "safe" food, I mean, if I am hungry I eat an egg or a piece of meat generally, and specifically while growing a baby the concept of protein being essential is quite strong. I aimed for 100 g/day with my last pregnancy, and often went very much over that as it was a minimum in my mind. Should I shoot for 100 g of protein (125 if I find out it is twins) and 80-100 or carbs from sweet potatoes, etc, as well as much fat as I need to not feel hungry? I am not worried about losing a little weight during early pregnancy (10-15 pounds are not going to be a dangerous level for me compared to a smaller woman, my only concern would be the toxic crap in the fat cells getting to the baby) I am not sure what ratios to use from the very long and complicated Optimal Diet threads for obese or ideal weight, or what have you. I am 100 killos and 167 cm, and truly large frame, so my ideal weight on the calculator program I downloaded is 68 kilo (sounds high to me, but I could be confused) and I got my numbers written down, but of course I need to alter for the pregnancy somewhat. So anyway, what a long ramble! What are other pregnant mom's out there doing? Any advice or words of experience? How about some quick and easy recipes/meals in appropriate ratios? If we still lived near a trader joes I know exactly what I'd fill my cart with... drool, but since we don't maybe I can make my own pate, etc. ;-)

Hi bekkers; hope you and baby are doing well.

FWIW, I didn't follow the ratios too strictly when I was pregnant, just tried to keep both protein and carbohydrates above 75 g per day, and filled up on fat. As it turned out, I ended up closer to 100 g of protein most days, but that's not supposed to be necessary. Dr. K suggests that the pregnant woman should stay on the usual diet, at most adding a little extra butter and cream, and 1 or 2 more egg yolks. He also recommends the frequent consumption of foods that are made from gelatin, pork rind, and cartilage. He doesn't suggest adding more carbohydrates until 37 weeks. At that point, you're supposed to increase the carbs to 100-150 g in the form of potatoes and bread, so that the baby can build glycogen stores to protect against hypoxia during the delivery. That's pretty much it for the "pregnancy diet."

Something to keep in mind is that Dr. Brewer's "100 g of protein" plan was originally designed for low-income women eating a rather impoverished version of the standard American diet. He assumes that you're getting some of the protein from vegetable sources (grains, beans, peanut butter), and he even mentions somewhere that Snickers and Taco Bell are relatively good options. (I took him up on the Snickers part in my first pregnancy. ) In that case, it might be prudent to aim for the larger amount of protein, since part of it is going to be wasted due to its poor amino acid balance.


Just as an update on my own situation: I never really got back to following the diet strictly after the baby was born, as I had people helping out around here, and I didn't want to totally confuse them and drive them screaming from the house. As a result, I've been eating more protein, less fat, and about 150 g carbs, which doesn't seem to agree with me. Now that I'm back to cooking regular meals, I've tried a few times to drop the carbs, and though I felt great, it seemed to affect my milk and make the baby unhappy. I decided it wasn't worth it to risk my little one's food supply.
But now there's a new twist; in the last couple of weeks, I've unexpectedly been diagnosed with a potentially serious health problem. Depending on the results of further tests, there's a strong chance I'll be advised to go on meds that are iffy for nursing babies. Since Dr. K promises that his diet will cure this condition (big surprise there ), the obvious next step would be for me to go back on the OD, "whole hog" this time, if you'll pardon the expression.

I'm also planning to wean my little guy onto Optimal foods (using Dr. K's recipes for feeding babies), and get my toddler back onto them as well. The older kids are going to be more of a challenge; I'm going to have to get creative. I guess I'll start another thread on feeding children this way.

I am interested in the OD for children. I have been interested in it and dabbled in it in the past, and just now am reading his book. I hope your health problem is starting to improve.