Healthy, budget-friendly pregnancy recipes

Image credit: lifesambrosia.com

Today I had a visit with my midwife, and as expected, my food log didn't quite pass muster. At my last visit, she asked me to write down everything that I ate, and I knew it wasn't going to be that great. With my first birth, the midwives were more concerned about my weight gain and gave me a simple rule to follow: Try to keep everything as close to its original form as possible. With that rule, my husband and I made a major overhaul to our diet. I decided to take it slow and think of it as a lifestyle change rather than a diet.

Fast forward several years and this Louisiana girl is pretty much on the same diet as when pregnant before, but allowing a few more treats every now and then. Still, I am mostly cooking our dinners every night. It's very difficult for me to wrap my mind around healthier foods because when I look up recipes they tend to have all these tiny little ingredients that would add up a grocery bill rather quickly, and they also have these tiny little ingredients that I have no clue what they are. And even if they say "budget-friendly" they are really not very budget-friendly at all. I mean, I need to be able to spend $5 or less per meal here.

Basically my new assignment is to eat more leafy greens and protein and less starch. (There's lots of rice in my recipes. I love love love rice! I could live off of rice and gravy.)

I have decided to share some of my recipes that I come up with as I go along this pregnancy food- overhauling journey of mine, and I welcome suggestions on how to make my already-decent-but-not-quite-there-yet recipes a little more healthy for pregnancy. Not only do I welcome suggestions, I am pretty much saying, "Help me please!"

A few ideas I gathered today:

• Substitute brown rice for white rice
• Put parsley in everything
• Hide some spinach in everything (including spaghetti)
• Whole grain bread instead of wheat bread (including tortillas)
• More nuts
• Snack on celery
• Use lettuce and make wraps rather than sandwiches

Tonight I plan to keep with the meatballs and rice and gravy I was planning, only I will try to hide some spinach in the meatballs and use brown rice. Wish me luck!

Image credit: blog.fatfreevegan.com

Have a favorite budget-friendly recipe you would look to share? Please leave a link to it in the comments! 

Welcome to Birth Boot Camp! I am your Recruiter!

This is not the first time I have mentioned Birth Boot Camp, and it definitely won't be the last! I keep going back and forth between the various childbirth education programs, I keep stalking various websites, but I keep coming back to Birth Boot Camp. Not sure what it is about this program that attracts me so much, but I really like the way this program is set up and am excited and eager to be a part of it one day.

I was hoping to be able to attend a Birth Boot Camp Educator training this November while the course is pretty discounted, but as it goes, life happens. I am pregnant! I am very happy to be expecting my second baby in January, and I am looking forward to meeting our wee one and experiencing the miracle of pregnancy and birth again. But this means that some things just have to wait. Like, Birth Boot Camp.

But that doesn't mean I can't be involved! I have signed up to be a Birth Boot Camp Recruiter. I have signed up to help me earn money to pay my way to Dallas, hopefully sometime in 2013, to attend an educator training session. They way it works is like this: You click on the Birth Boot Camp banner on my sidebar. Purchase an online Birth Boot Camp course. I get a cut of the payment to help pay for the educator training. I can use all the help I can get. And if you are looking to take a Childbirth Education course that prepares couples for natural childbirth but just can't get your schedules together to attend a classroom course, the online Birth Boot Camp course, created by a former Bradley instructor, is a perfect option. Because this is still relatively new, there are not yet any live Birth Boot Camp classes in the Houston area. I am hoping to be one of the first! Until then, I am begging asking for help getting me to one of the training sessions by being a recruiter for the online courses.

I am very excited about this opportunity! And I am not very worried about online options taking away business because there are people who appreciate the discipline that comes with attending an in-person course. It keeps you accountable. It helps you meet other expecting parents. It gives you a teacher whose brain you can pick about the local birthing climate. In the meantime, I can encourage those couples that prefer the flexibility, yet thoroughness, of an online self-study course to check out Birth Boot Camp.... if you feel this course calling to you and intend to purchase it, please do so through my Recruiter button on my blog!