The Musings of an Educated Housewife: Candida on Hold, Baby on Board

Well, about six months ago I was fighting my battle with Candida with everything I had. Our budget was suffering because I was buying so many fresh vegetables and organic meats. (No one tells you that eating completely clean and healthy will make your budget weep.) We were DOUBLING our food budget for several months when we realized we just couldn’t dump that much money into one category anymore when things were already so tight.

So we reassessed how to still battle Candida AND not push ourselves into debt…and then I found out we would be expecting baby #3 sometime mid-November of this year.

I was training for my first, official (paid for it, got my bib-number and everything) 5K and ran the whole d@*mn race with sore boobs and a body that wanted to quit because I felt so nauseous, but I made it!

I also tried my best to stick to my Candida diet but I ended up losing another five pounds, not because I was vomiting, but because I didn’t want to eat ANYTHING I’d been eating with vigor for the last four months.

I envy the women who can eat all the veggies they want during pregnancy but I’ve never been one of those women. I thought maybe because I was eating so clean that the hormonal part of pregnancy wouldn’t hit me as hard-wrong.

So wrong.

I incorporated carbs (saltine crackers mostly) and other foods I hadn’t consumed in months back into my eating habits. My body went through a rough transition as I rediscovered carbs and sugars.

So far I’m doing well overall. I’m gaining weight at a VERY healthy rate right now (the first time I haven’t gained seven pounds in a week with any of my pregnancies). I’m enjoying fruit this summer, which I have always loved and missed more than most foods when I was on my strict diet.

The down side is, I still will occasionally have a Candida-attack where I wake up in the middle of the night with raging gas pains, sweat-beads on my forehead and my bum glued to the toilet for two-plus hours or so. The next day involves extreme fatigue and “bowel-rest” (a term I learned from my husband who works as an RN) where I don’t/can’t eat much of anything.

My naturopath doctor told me I could not be on any Fluconozole (sp?) while I’m pregnant OR breast-feeding so I will have to slowly get a hold of my eating habits post-pregnancy and then go back into fighting Candida after I’m done breast feeding #3.

We’re so excited about the baby. We recently found out we will be having another girl. Our other two children were ecstatic when we told them they would have a sibling and have maintained their enthusiasm.

A lot of life right now is less structured and we are taking a “wait and see attitude” about the incoming of a new, little, human, and what our physical health looks like in the future.