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In my last story, I mentioned Brenda, who believes that sugar is the best for growing babies. Unfortunately, she's not the only one who shares this belief, and I've encountered a LOT. I think it could be a cultural belief in the country I was in (just moved for my husband's job & to be closer to my doctors!). Here's one of the other times I encountered the same weird belief...One of my friends happen to be pregnant at the same time as me, so we’ve been talking a lot, especially since it’s her 2nd pregnancy so she could answer a lot of my questions.So a bit of a background about this friend. Ever since I knew her, she has always been fat. The only time she wasn't was at the first trimester of her first pregnancy, where she lost a lot of weight thanks to constant vomiting (serious enough for her to be medicated, apparently). She's not morbidly obese level, but definitely fat and her husband is definitely obese. It’s definitely diet related, because they eat crap all the time. A typical meal would be just mac & cheese/KFC/pizza/ramen noodles/rice with furikake/buns/pastries....basically, carbs & sugar heavy and generally nutrient poor.There was a time when she was having a hard time, so I would help babysit her baby and eat dinners, and some lunches, with her almost daily for about a month. During that time, I actually started losing hair and breaking out big time. It freaked me out so much, that I started bringing my own meals. I did bring an extra large portion so I could share with her and her baby, but she would always decline and the baby was entering a phase where she rather eat baby biscuits than proper meals.What confuses me is that they used to cook healthy meals for their baby, but as the baby grew older, her meals started to morph into her parents’ meals. It’s like they believe growing up means you can eat whatever crap you want.Anyway, a few days ago, she messaged me to invite me for ice cream while I was in town for the weekend, and I had to tell her that I can’t really eat ice cream at the moment since everything started tasting wayyy sweeter ever since I got pregnant.That’s when she revealed something that definitely freaked me the fuck out.Apparently, her doctor keeps "scolding" her because her baby keeps growing bigger than it should. She suspects it’s all the “frappes and ice cream” she’s eating. But she “has to” eat them because she’s losing weight thanks to nausea and pregnant women "aren’t supposed to lose weight", and her husband would get upset with her if he found out she lost weight. She can’t eat much so this is how she could get “enough food” for the baby. She doesn’t even want to eat ice cream or drink frappes, but for the sake of her baby, she’s “forcing herself”.Basically, she’s currently pregnant and forcing herself to eat almost exclusively only ice cream and frappes.Yeah.I did meet her briefly and it doesn't look like she lost any weight. She's still very chubby.Her first child was also really large, and I always thought it was genetic, but she was now proudly telling me she made sure the baby was “big enough” by "chugging frappes nonstop". She lost ~9-12lbs in the first trimester (it brought her into the normal weight range for the first time ever) so she had to “counter the damage” and spend her 2nd & 3rd trimesters consuming as much sugar as possible.I hung out with her during her first pregnancy and I did notice she ate an ungodly amount of desserts and sweet drinks, but I thought they were treats for the rare moments she went out with friends. I didn't realize that was all she ate.She did look extremely sick and unhealthy (sallow, papery looking skin, bad hollows under her eyes even after she became chubby again, looks tired all the time) throughout her first pregnancy, but I had chalked it up to having a rough pregnancy.Ok. I'm all for judgement free pregnancies. You want coffee, go for it! Sashimi? Eat away! Marshmallows ease your nausea? Let’s make s’mores! I think pregnant women should be left alone to eat whatever they want and however much they want, BUT as long as a valid doctor has confirmed that everything's ok.I told her that if her doctor thinks the baby is far too large, maybe it’s something to worry about. And if her doctor isn't worried about her weight loss, it's probably nothing to worry about. She doesn't sound convinced though.I did ask her if she tried the nausea buster smoothie popsicle recipe (I'll post the recipe in the comments + a bonus gross story) I shared with her early during my pregnancy since that worked well for me and it's close-ish to ice cream, but she told me she "just can't eat". What.Her first baby seems ok health wise. I'm only saying ok, because she does fall sick pretty often, to the point where I've suggested checking her up for an autoimmune. Then again, I'm not a doctor, I don't know how frequently kids get sick in this country, and I could just be paranoid because having an autoimmune myself means I have medical bad luck, so I'm always aware of when people are sick since every cold I catch becomes a big deal and can escalate into the medical worst case scenario –like a full blown lung infection (actually happened once). I've always assumed that kid may have a weaker immune system than usual because my friend had a really rough pregnancy; she nearly miscarried and was placed on a 6 months bedrest. Now I can't stop wondering if it's her mom's frappe diet.I'm really, really hoping the 2nd baby one will be ok too.
