ElementalMom

By way of Geoff Arnold, this old gem. Makes me teary-eyed every single time I hear it. I cannot believe the BBC is bleeping it, but hey… at least it gets noticed.

http://geoffarnold.com/?p=1843

This is the best bowl of mashed potatoes I’ve ever had in my life. Smashed with a fork because I don’t own a masher any more, with coconut oil because I try hard not to do dairy any more, it’s nonetheless a bowl of steamy starchy ambrosia goodness. You’d think a raw food advocate would cringe to sing the praises of the lowly boiled and smashed potato, but speaking as someone who, in matters of comfort food, is wholly controlled by her Irish ancestry (I know 101 ways to make a potato sing… no, not like that… sigh…), I can definitively say, this is a damn good bowl of potatoes.

“Why are you getting all emotional and ethnic about a bowlful of starch?” you ask… I’ll tell you. Turns out that NVP, or “morning sickness”, is far more complex than I thought. Check these out:

• http://tinyurl.com/2fj4ohMorning sickness: a mechanism for protecting mother and embryo.
• http://tinyurl.com/yqjb3lReproductive immunosupression and diet. An evolutionary perspective on pregnancy sickness and meat consumption.
• http://tinyurl.com/2adku6Vomiting and nausea in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. (This one’s a hoot; says it’s basically a result of your environment, if you’re getting along with your husband, or if you’re stressed with your children.)
• http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant570/Papers/Edwards.htmAn Adaptationist Approach to Pregnancy Sickness

  Pretty much more than you ever wanted to know about cross cultural and adaptational root causes for pregnancy sickness.

• http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA/journal/issues/v44n5/035602/035602.htmlOn Morning Sickness and the Neolithic Revolution

  Why NVP is at least as much cultural as it is physiological. I’d never thought of it like this.

One article states,

There is a great deal of variation among women with respect to the severity and duration of NVP symptoms. For the majority of pregnant women, nausea is transient in nature and has few long-term consequences for their pregnancy or their life, although it is undoubtedly unpleasant in the short term. For as many as 35% of pregnant women, the NVP symptoms are severe enough to seriously disrupt their lives, causing them to change their usual activities. An average of 2.5% of pregnant women require hospitalization because of hyperemesis gravidarum. Predicting which patients are likely to suffer from NVP is difficult. There are no reliable indicators. Fatigue appears to be associated with nausea during pregnancy. Women who have a history of severe nausea during pregnancy or whose mothers suffered from severe nausea during pregnancy are at greater risk. Multiple gestation and molar pregnancies are also associated with increased nausea. Despite the unpleasant and disruptive nature of NVP symptoms, nausea during pregnancy is considered a normal part of pregnancy. Nausea and vomiting in the first trimester of pregnancy are associated with a decreased risk of miscarriage, preterm delivery, low birth weight, stillbirth, and fetal and perinatal mortality. Women suffering from severe NVP do not appear to have different birth outcomes from those of women who experience mild nausea.

So speaking as a girl who had a pretty devastating miscarriage not that long ago, the fact that I’m sitting here, queasy as all hell, nibbling on this bowl of mashed potatoes and utterly unable to drink my customary morning tea, is A Good Thing.

And yes. I’ll keep y’all posted. In the meantime, send potatoes…