Written by Christopher Kelly
Jan. 27, 2015
[0:00:00]
Julie: Hello and welcome to the Paleo Baby podcast. I'm Julie Kelly and today I am joined by Tarah Chieffi who is an author, freelance writer, blogger, and holistic nutrition educator in Indiana. She's also working towards her Masters of Science in Health and Nutrition Education from Hawthorn University.
Tarah's passion, similar to me, is working with pregnant women, new moms, and families to really achieve health and happiness through physical fitness and real food lifestyle. Tarah is also the new author of a great new book called The Everything Paleo Pregnancy Book which I'm sure we'll talk about in great detail today.
Welcome, Tarah. I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Tarah: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to talk with you finally.
Julie: Yeah, I know. It's a long time coming. I feel like us moms in the Paleo community are kind of starting to piece this thing together, right? I feel like we're like, hey, there's not that much information out there about this whole Paleo parenting thing so –
Tarah: I know.
Julie: How did you come to this community? Where did it all begin for you? I feel like that some of the most inspirational thing that I get out of this podcast in talking to people is hearing how you discovered it. I mean, because I have never met anyone that's always been Paleo so how did you come to it and then how did it take on this kind of family and pregnancy shape for you?
Tarah: Yeah. Well, I would say definitely growing up I was the opposite of Paleo if I even had any idea what that would mean at the time. But I was extremely picky. My parents still joke with me about it. I really ate no vegetables, no fruits. Hardly at all. I liked raw carrots, corn, potatoes, apples, and bananas and that was literally the extent of my fruit and vegetable consumption.
So really picky growing up and then in my 20s reading a lot of the popular magazines and kind of really bought into the whole low fat, sugar-free everything and, because I was so picky, it didn't really leave a lot of room for real food. I was eating a lot of processed foods, a lot of packaged foods. I thought I was being health conscious but I didn't really understand what that meant.
It wasn't really that it started to turn around until I signed up for 150 mile overnight charity bike ride which is actually where I met my husband when we were training for this bike ride. I really got into cycling, got into running, and I actually started to just crave healthier foods which was really odd for me. We actually have pictures. My friend took pictures the first time I ate a salad because it was really such a big deal that nobody could believe that I was eating a salad and so we took pictures.
Julie: Oh, boy.
Tarah: It kind of just kept going from there but it wasn't really until my husband came home from work one day and there was a co-worker of his that was following a Paleo diet. I still hadn't even heard of it at that point. But he brought it up a few times and I finally started checking into it a little bit. I kind of blew him off the first few times like when thinking about not eating cereal for breakfast or not having a sandwich for lunch. I just didn't really pay much attention.
When I finally looked it up online, I was really looking a lot at Robb Wolf's site and Sarah Fragoso's site at Everyday Paleo, and it just really clicked when I started reading about it. I mean, this was all within the course of an afternoon and I just kind of kept going deeper and deeper and deeper into the black hole I guess and reading more and more. It kind of clicked in my head that what I was eating wasn't even food and that fruits and vegetables and meat, that is real food and that's what we are made to eat.
So it wasn't really quick transition for us. I mean, I kind of made a little grocery list and made a meal plan and we threw a bunch of stuff out, donated a bunch of stuff and just kind of overhauled the kitchen and just kind of dove right into this new way of eating. That's been almost four years ago and we're still going strong.
We were definitely super strict at first and have kind of started to experiment with some things more now. It's what inspired me to go back to school and just start the blog, learning a lot more about adding in nutrient-dense foods and not just focusing on eating a Paleo diet but what's actually going to make us the most healthy.
[0:05:01]
So I kind of liked it. It's always been growing and changing along the way for us. But then in September of 2012, I found out I was pregnant. I found out on the morning that I was running a 5K and I had another one scheduled for the very next weekend. Before Avery was even the size of a little grain of rice, he had his first two 5K's under his belt.
Julie: That's awesome.
Tarah: But I was able to stay pretty strict on my Paleo diet while I was pregnant. It was really important to me just from everything that I had learned and what I had been learning in school. It was kind of I felt a responsibility almost that I had this opportunity to give him a healthier start in life and give him this opportunity that not a lot of people in today's world have had so far just because it goes so much against the norm of what we're told to do especially during pregnancy.
He was born in June of 2013 so he's a little over a year and a half now. He is our little Paleo baby. Some of his favorite foods are avocado and bananas and sweet potatoes. He loves meat. He likes to say "meat" a lot and he loves bacon.
Julie: That's good.
Tarah: And eggs.
Julie: I kind of had a similar experience with the whole pregnancy thing. I transitioned to Paleo probably about six months – almost a year or like six month, eight months before I got pregnant and, yeah, so I just kind of happened to be Paleo while pregnant and kind of continued through with it. But did you feel like it really kind of buoyed you through your pregnancy? It's hard to say because you don't have anything to compare it to but –
Tarah: Right.
Julie: I just really felt lucky when I got pregnant because I felt like, wow, I had this whole time period before where I was just amassing all these really great nutrients in my body to kind of carry me through the pregnancy. I just wonder, especially in the post partum days, what do you think gave you, what were some of the benefits that you think you saw during pregnancy and after, being Paleo and following that kind of a diet?
Tarah: Yeah. I agree for sure about the nutrients, just to be eating such a nutrient-dense diet leading up to being pregnant and having those stores built up already because I was not able to escape a lot of the symptoms that you deal with especially early in pregnancy. I definitely had morning sickness and a lot of food aversions so there were times where I was eating the same thing for lunch for weeks on end because there was hardly anything that I could eat.
Julie: Yes.
Tarah: And there were times where I wasn't eating that much in a day and then there are other days where I was eating plenty.
Julie: Uh-hmm.
Tarah: But just having that good base built up already and just being comfortable with eating this way before getting pregnant I think was helpful instead of having all these feelings that I was having and then having the crazy emotions and being tired and trying to also figure out this diet. I think it was helpful that I was comfortable with it already and kind of had some ideas or things that I could easily come up with to kind of manage some of the symptoms that I was dealing with.
Definitely, post partum, I mean I felt like it was a pretty smooth, easy recovery for me. From just swapping stories with other people and reading other people's birth stories, which mine is on my blog, I think I had a pretty easy labor and delivery which might probably have helped with having an easier recovery. I talk a lot about it in the book but there are a lot of nutrients that are really important for helping your body to recover and helping with all of the exhaustion and low energy that you can feel after you give birth and just eating a higher quality diet and getting in all the protein and the fats and vitamins and minerals that you need post partum I think can really help kind of acclimate you not only get a new lifestyle but also to the major changes that your body is going through after you give birth.
[0:10:01]
Julie: Yeah. Definitely. One of my favorite topics is kind of preconception nutrition so –
Tarah: Uh-hmm.
Julie: -- we were talking about a little bit, like creating really great stores of nutrients because just like you the first three months, there wasn't a lot that was passing my lips --
Tarah: Yeah.
Julie: -- at all, let alone whether or not it was nutritious but most of it was just pretty bland. Anything cold, I couldn't eat anything cooked.
Tarah: Yes, I had a period like that too.
Julie: Yeah.
Tarah: And ice water was a big part of it too. I wanted all my food to be cold that my water had to be almost ice. It had to be just practically frozen. Oh, and I could not get enough. I just was constantly drinking ice water and I only wanted cold foods. And then I went through a little bit of time where – well, when I was talking about what I ate for lunch every day, it was the Trader Joe's slaw, the broccoli slaw with Applegate Farm hotdogs and mustard. That was all I could eat for weeks. Now I don't even think I could look at it.
Julie: Yeah. That's funny. My husband loves to say that I was a really expensive pregnant woman because I craved oysters and smoked salmon and anything really cold like chicken salad towards the end. I'd eat a lot of that. It's ridiculous but, yeah, I think I ate the most oysters I've ever eaten when I was pregnant. Well, some people would say you're not even supposed to do, but I was like, "No, I'm eating them."
Tarah: Right. Usually, you can't talk down those cravings sometimes.
Julie: No, no.
Tarah: You just got to go for it.
Julie: What kind of inspired you? I mean, when did you get to the point? Was it when you were in school where that you kind of realized you – that was the other question I wanted to ask you. You're studying nutrition in nutrition school.
Tarah: Yeah.
Julie: What is that like from the Paleo perspective? Are you biting your tongue a lot? Is it more of a progressive program? Did they take into account some of the things that we know now to be true in the Paleo community or are you kind of just biting your tongue and keeping your head down and trying to get –
Tarah: No, not at all. It's awesome actually. Where I am taking classes, Hawthorn University, I would say they're pretty well into Sally Fallon, Weston A. Price –
Julie: Okay.
Tarah: Nourishing Traditions is one of my schoolbooks so they're definitely onboard with whole foods, with proper preparation of foods that have been shown to have more anti-nutrients so soaking and sprouting grains and nuts and seeds, if you do those and raw dairy so it's not – and they know about Paleo. We talked about Paleo when we talked about many different diet plans and things like that so they are very accepting of it. Some of my assignments and things that I have done have been more Paleo-focused.
It's funny that you brought up pre-pregnancy nutrition because I'm just now in my final class. I'm working on my thesis and that's what I'm going to do my thesis on is pre-pregnancy nutrition because it's something that I do want to learn more about myself and hopefully be able to provide resources for people at the end of this. I hope to put something together whether it's a book or something else from what I do learn so I'm really excited to kind of dig into that and learn more about that too.
I think a lot of the information is similar as far as nutrients to focus on, pre-pregnancy and pregnancy but I think a lot more people are trying to plan ahead that way and focus more on that and so it's nice to have those resources out there.
Julie: Oh, definitely. I think that's huge. I mean, in our practice, we have a lot of people that come to us and then they're trying to get to the root cause of some of their health problems and things like that. Some of the women, their ultimate goal eventually is to be a mom or become pregnant eventually and so that's huge. I mean, really kind of trying to have some forethought about I may not be the healthiest I am right now and I want to kind of get that way before I even try to conceive.
I think as people, more and more women are waiting longer to have kids. I think it's going to be more common for you to be able to have a little bit of foresight. I didn't necessarily have any foresight but I just felt really lucky. I'm sure it's a mixed bag in terms --
Tarah: Right.
Julie: But even so, there're also people who want to know, hey, I just found out I'm pregnant. It was a surprise. What can I do right now to really kind of turn things around especially if they haven't had the best diet leading up to it. But I think it's also important to remember that our body is a pretty miraculous thing and it will take what it needs to feed a growing baby, that's for sure, but then the post partum nutrition becomes really important because you have to replace all the things you basically gave to your baby while you were pregnant.
[0:15:33]
Tarah: And especially if you're breastfeeding, your body is going to continue to give nutrients to your baby over you so, yeah, it's definitely still a really important time.
Julie: Yeah. Let's talk about that a little bit because I get tons of questions. We have a lot of the people who follow this podcast on Twitter who are always asking about breastfeeding and nutritionally how to ensure a good milk supply and then also how to kind of eat to encourage a good milk supply and then to make sure that you're trying to extend the breastfeeding as long as possible. Do you have any recommendation or tips for nutrition during breastfeeding?
Tarah: Yeah. Well, again, it's similar to pre-pregnancy. I think a lot of it is similar to pregnancy recommendations. I still tell people about an extra 500 calories per day which is probably similar to what you were doing at the end of your pregnancy, but I also always, always, always tell people: do not be counting calories right now. That is not the time. If you were hungry, eat something. It's just not the time to worry about that.
If you listen to your body, I think your body does tell you what you need. Definitely getting enough water, at least 64 ounces more if you're back to working out already, and then focusing on really high quality protein. Protein needs are – actually, the recommendations are higher during breastfeeding than when you're not pregnant, not lactating. The content of your breast milk, the protein content and what gets passed to your baby goes hand in hand with the protein that you eat. I'd usually just try to tell people to get a good mix with every meal and snack at some kind of protein whether it's nuts or eggs with your breakfast or having the chicken salad for lunch, just getting some kind of protein with every meal or snack. Fats too.
I just did a nutrition class last week for new moms. We ended up talking about breastfeeding for the majority of it because there are a lot of important things. I think when you just are focusing on whole foods and focusing on variety that it's really easy to cover all of these without having to put a lot of thought into it but getting a lot of good sources of saturated and unsaturated fats so like having avocado with your meal, a coconut milk smoothie. Anything that I talk about usually too is something I have recipes for on the blog or in the book so it's really you not have to sit there and figure out, "How am I going to get all of these into my diet?"
Carbohydrates too. I know it comes up a lot in the Paleo community or people outside of the community are usually saying it's too low carb. But if anybody saw my diet they would probably not say that it is too low carbohydrate. But that is something to think about when you're breastfeeding, to make sure you are getting some of the more starchy vegetables, those sweet potatoes, potatoes, and then getting lots of good fruit in there too. Like I said, I don't think any of those are too hard to do if you're getting a good variety of fruits and vegetables and a good variety of proteins with all of your meals.
Calcium, I think that's one that – especially for pregnancy and for breastfeeding – comes up a lot that they worry that with the Paleo diet that you wouldn't be able to get enough because you're not drinking milk every day with every meal. But there're so many other good sources of calcium and –
Julie: I feel like I tackle that question almost –
[0:20:02]
Tarah: Yes. And it's something we really started to instill with Avery too because he doesn't get dairy milk that we've started doing a lot of the canned salmon with the bones and we do a lot of greens. I think that it's really easy to get that stuff in as long as you know what the good sources are. We gave him his first sardines this weekend --
Julie: Oh, cool.
Tarah: -- too.
Julie: I do a lot of them.
Tarah: And I had my first sardine.
Julie: Oh. I was going to say you've got to be doing sardines if you were –
Tarah: Oh, my gosh. I was so scared.
Julie: They're not bad, right?
Tarah: No, they're not bad at all. I enjoyed it. And I just ate it out of the can. If I'd put it on a salad or I'd put it in something, I think that I never would have thought anything.
Julie: No.
Tarah: But I just always pictured like picking up a whole fish with my fork and –
Julie: Yeah.
Tarah: -- having to take down a whole little, tiny fish but it wasn't bad at all. I have definitely come a long way.
Julie: Yeah, I know. That's awesome. I didn't love the idea at first either. But also finding the right brand is important because I think sometimes people like different ones. I love the Wild Planet ones, the ones that have bones in. They have quite a bit of bone in and Ivy just scarfs those things. They're in a drawer that she can open and so she brings me the can. She really loves them.
It's great. I think that's really an important point. I just got an email from a friend this morning actually who's getting ready to start her baby on solids and she's really worried about – she's got issues with blood sugar control and so it's really important for her to kind of start her baby early on to make sure she's got good blood sugar control.
Tarah: Uh-hmm.
Julie: And she was asking me what kind of foods and I said, "Well, if you just followed a simple Paleo template type diet, you should have no problem with blood sugar control." I loved that you covered that in a book and that's kind of what I wanted to bring up, that you talk about blood sugar control because that's one of the things that I constantly am recommending to people. That's one of the lowest hanging fruit things that you can do in terms of taking control of your diet and your health is simply monitoring your blood glucose so I think that's a really important point.
How do you think it plays out both through pregnancy and in post partum? What are some things to keep in mind with blood sugar control? Is there any specific recommendation do you think for doing that while pregnant?
Tarah: Yeah. Well, I think as far as just keeping your blood sugar balanced in the first place, during pregnancy there're so many things that it can affect that I do think it's really, really important. I mean it can decrease your risk of a lot of the pretty common complications like gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, high birth weight. I think it helps with some of the other symptoms too. Not that it necessarily causes those symptoms like morning sickness, craving, things like that but I think it can just exacerbate them when your blood sugar is way up high and then crashing down. Obviously, mood swings, things like that, I think it can make them worse.
Like you said, I mean I think it is pretty easy when you're following a Paleo template because you are just I think getting out all those refined carbohydrates and getting out like the prepackaged foods and the really processed things especially sodas and stuff like that that you're going to be on a much more even level. You're not going to have those crazy highs and lows. So I think getting lots of fiber from fruits and vegetables and then keeping yourself satiated with good protein and healthy fats is going to really help keep that a lot more balanced throughout the day.
For me, I had to eat pretty much as soon as I woke up. Now I can usually go awhile without eating -- get up and go to the gym and eat breakfast; after I get home, be up for a few hours. But I would usually eat pretty much as soon as I woke up. I would either have breakfast or have a little something while I was making breakfast just to kind of break the fast basically after being asleep all night and having not eaten. I could definitely tell a difference in how I felt if I ate pretty soon after waking up.
[0:25:01]
I always had a little something with me. I mean I had the refrigerator at work stocked with everything – guacamole and lunch meat and pepperoni and salsa and vegetables. I had another little drawer for all the stuff that didn't have to be refrigerated. So just kind of not letting yourself get to that point where it does become an issue and you're just going to reach for whatever's closest because you're starving.
Julie: Yeah. I think that's important. I think that's another reason I am constantly telling people to make sure that they are eating enough fat because typically a diet, especially when people change their diet, they tend to, "Okay, I want to reduce the refined carbohydrate" and they take a ton of stuff out of their diet but they don't replace it appropriately and so they end up with these huge gaping holes in their diet so they're not getting enough fat; they're probably not eating enough protein; they're not sure about what carbohydrates to eat so they're not eating any.
Tarah: Right.
Julie: And all of a sudden they're on a really calorie-restricted diet. I think that's really important both like having supplies and making sure that you've got things that you can eat around and then also making sure you have appropriately adjusted your macronutrients so you're getting enough fat because I think that really curbs the cravings and curbs the dips in blood sugar. So, yeah, I think that's really important.
Another big, great component of the book are all the recipes. There're tons of recipes in the back.
Tarah: Yes.
Julie: What are some of your favorites? I definitely like –
Tarah: Oh, my gosh.
Julie: That looked pretty exciting to me. What are some of your favorite go-tos?
Tarah: Well, some that were definitely go-tos when I was pregnant and it's a pretty simple recipe and I'm sure you can find it in lots of places and tons of variations on it but the banana soft serve, especially when I did go through a time when I just really wanted everything cold.
Julie: Yeah.
Tarah: I would make that at night. It helped with some of the sugar cravings that I was having but it just really satisfied whatever weird need that I had for having really cold –
Julie: My breakfast for the first month and a half were homemade popsicles, fruit popsicles.
Tarah: Yes.
Julie: Literally just blended like blueberries and blackberries and maybe some pineapple here and there but –
Tarah: Yeah, there's got to be something to that. Maybe this is a really common thing that I just don't realize.
Julie: I have no idea. I'm really curious about really more the psychology behind morning sickness than anything else.
Tarah: Right.
Julie: But it's weird. It must be some kind of ancestral instinctual thing that we have.
Tarah: It could be something going on.
Julie: I know.
Tarah: Some of the dinners I really like because most of the recipes incorporate what we were talking about: the carbs, protein and the fat. It's not like you have to make one of these recipes and then also go find the sides to make with it necessarily. Love the Persian spiced lamb with the carrot and fennel slaw. That is one of my favorite things to make. It's so good.
Julie: We're definitely trying that one because –
Tarah: Oh, I love that. And I like that too because you can make a lot of it. Most of these I made to serve four people but most of them you can double so easily which is something that we do a lot now with Avery because he eats just as much as we do.
Julie: Yeah.
Tarah: And things don't last long if we don't do that.
Julie: Yup.
Tarah: Another favorite just because it's so easy and it is one that makes a lot and super portable, the salmon muffins, which is a good way to incorporate. You can use the canned salmon with the bones so it's a really good way to incorporate some extra nutrients in there with it too. Kind of like the egg muffins which we make a lot, these salmon muffins, it's something else. It's just real easy and quick to just kind of pick up and go so you can just make it all at one time and then have them for lunch for a few days. Just to be able to have stuff like that around I think is really, really helpful.
Julie: Yeah. I love it. Those are really great ideas. It's kind of neat, like the way that the book is put together. We were talking about this a little bit before we started the recording but I wrote down that I really enjoy about it is that it's pretty comprehensive resource and I like that it's – some people are like, "Oh, Paleo. I'm not Paleo." I think even if you weren't Paleo and you picked this up, it's a really great guide just for pregnancy in general because there is so much information that applies to everyone. If you think about what Paleo is, it's whole food diet, right?
[0:30:23]
Tarah: Exactly.
Julie: I mean, you can't really go wrong here. But then also there're just tons of great references in here for recommended daily amounts of different vitamins and minerals that can sometimes be really hard to find or at least you find conflicting information about how much you need so that's a great source.
Also, I like how you go through like folate versus folic acid because that's kind of something I spend a lot of time explaining to people, the difference between those things and the importance of understanding the difference and how much you really need and iron. So I love that you go through all of that and then we already talked about the blood sugar.
How did you approach this? I mean, when you sat down to do this book, how did you – because you cover a lot of stuff but you do it in a way that it's not overwhelming. What made you want to do it and how did you approach it when you sat down to write it?
Tarah: Yeah. Well, I knew for a while that I wanted to write a Paleo pregnancy book because I don't think that there's anything quite like this out there. Not all in one place anyway. There are starting to be more resources pop up which I am so excited about. I'm glad that it is getting out there and more people are able to find out about it and have those good resources to turn to but I hadn't seen that there was a book that really covered all of the Paleo information and the pregnancy information and kind of put it all in one place as sort of an all-encompassing pregnancy guide but that would just be easily applied to a Paleo diet.
So I kind of had the idea for a while and I was so busy with school and kind of doing the new mommy thing that I kind of kept just pushing it to the back of my mind like now was not the time to do it. I was actually listening to The Paleo View Podcast and Stacy was talking about when they wrote their first book how she just started sending their idea to publishers. It just kind of spurred something for me finally. I was like: I just need to do this. I can't just keep putting it off forever, like if it's something I want to do, I just need to do it.
So I did start contacting publishers and, at the same time, a publisher from The Everything Series of books -- which they literally have an everything book for everything you can think of. They're not all diet and health-related; they're really everything – contacted me and they actually had already had pitched the idea that they wanted to do an everything Paleo pregnancy book. They have a few other Paleo books in their catalog already.
So they found me and we worked out all the details and I got onboard. I was really excited because I knew that I wanted to do this and this was a really good opportunity to be able to get it in front of a lot of people because we had talked about self-publishing and I wasn't really sure the route that I was going to go. For my first time writing a book, it was kind of helpful too because they did have some ideas already on things that they – more topics that they knew that they wanted to cover and then they kind of just gave me free reign to interpret everything as I see fit so I was able to really craft the chapters and the subjects that I wanted to cover in each chapter.
I tried to have ideas as I sat down to write each chapter, I would kind of go through and just kind of have this whole brain dump of bullet points for each chapter, things that I knew that I wanted to cover and so then I would kind of go back and refine those a little and group together things that went together and it kind of helped to build the chapter, and then I would go back and write the actual sentences and information that I wanted to include in there. So I tried to approach each one that way just because if I didn't have some organization, I probably would just ramble on and on and it would have been the longest book ever.
[0:35:14]
Julie: I like how succinct it is. I mean I really appreciate that because I feel like sometimes it's overwhelmingly too much information. It's like –
Tarah: Right.
Julie: -- give me what I really need to know and I feel like that's definitely – it's not overwhelming. There's just enough information there and it holds everything together so I appreciate that.
Tarah: Thank you. Yeah, and then there're a lot of resources in there. If there are things that you want to know more information about, I tried to list some good resources in there that you can turn to if there were things that – there're resources in there for breastfeeding support and places to look up some of the studies that I talk about and things like that. So if you do want to dig deeper into it, it's really easy to find the information.
Julie: Cool. What was your favorite – excuse me. What was the most surprising thing that you found out or discovered while you were researching for the book?
Tarah: Oh, gosh.
Julie: Was there anything that really differed from the traditional information that we've been kind of given over the years?
Tarah: Well, I'll bring this up just because it's something that is very popular. On my blog as well, I think it's probably what I get the most comments and questions about is the gestational diabetes test that most people take about midway through pregnancy. I was lucky that my practitioner, my midwife, they're pretty open to working with you and do a little more non-traditional approaches.
I was able to let people know in here that there are alternatives. If you aren't comfortable, if you don't want to drink the glucose drink or if you are concerned that if you are eating a pretty strict Paleo diet that sometimes that can be kind of a shock to your system and could possibly produce some false positive results, just being able to tell people that there are alternatives to that.
I got to learn a lot more about some of the breastfeeding alternatives that are out there. A couple of years ago all I would have known is to just accept whatever formula they gave me at the hospital if I wasn't able to breastfeed or go to the grocery store and just pick up whatever I [0:38:11] [Indiscernible] so being able to spend some time and learn some more about the alternatives that are out there, the milk banks and even the milk sharing sites or even being able to make your own formula because for whatever reason, if breastfeeding just doesn't work out for you or if you choose not to –
I mean, I had this conversation last week at my nutrition talk that I did and it was a group of pretty new moms that if it's something that's providing or causing more stress than happiness for you, then just because your body is physically able to do it, then that might not necessarily be the healthiest choice for you anyway so just knowing that there're other good options out there that you can question the norm sometimes and kind of find your own path.
Julie: Yeah. I think that's hugely important. Yeah. I mean, providing just that alternative viewpoint I think is really important. You just said that you were kind of lucky the midwife or doctors that you worked with when you were pregnant were pretty open-minded –
Tarah: Yes.
Julie: But did you come up against anything else while you were pregnant? I really struggled and hemmed and hawed with where we were going to deliver. I love my midwife because she was previously a home birth midwife for a very long time before she got hospital privileges. Ultimately, I decided to have Ivy in a hospital that was really close to our house but I thought that I would have a different experience than I ended up having because I thought my midwife would be much more of an advocate for what I really wanted and it just didn't turn out that way. I got lucky.
[0:40:00]
Tarah: Yeah.
Julie: The birth went as well as it could have gone ever. I couldn't have asked for a better situation really but I was surprised like the pushback that I got on some of these things. And even though she was open-minded, she didn't fully understand my diet and when I refused the glucose tolerance test and instead offered to continuously provide her my glucose readings by testing my own blood glucose. She was okay with it but she didn't quite understand where I was coming from with all of the stuff. Even still, the recommendations that she gave for supplementation were, in my eyes, incorrect and her requirements or recommendations for whole grain and things like that.
Tarah: Right.
Julie: Did you come up against anything like that when you were pregnant? How would you recommend that women kind of deal with that?
Tarah: I actually was very, very lucky. They were awesome. I talked to them about my diet. There were three midwives in the practice. It was a practice with midwives and doctors but unless you were high risk, you could just see the midwives the whole time. So I kind of rotated between all three of them to make sure I would have a familiar face with whoever ended up at my delivery.
Julie: Yeah.
Tarah: But they were all really great. I talked to them about the way that I eat pretty early on and they were totally onboard with it. They had no issues. It really never came up that much again. I did refuse the glucose tolerance test and they just had me do two weeks of monitoring my blood sugar and keeping a food log which I posted the whole thing on my blog and talked about that experience on there as well. She barely looked at it. I had this meticulous log and I thought they were going to be studying all my numbers. She barely looked at it and was like, "You're eating fine. These numbers look fine and you can stop doing this now."
They handed us probably about halfway through my pregnancy a birth plan worksheet. Instead of me having to go through and write my own whole birth plan, I mean, they covered pretty much everything that you could think of so any positions that you even wanted to be in during labor and did you want to labor in the tub, anything that you would get after the birth -- the vitamin K shots and the eye ointment and anything like that -- you could go ahead and mark yes or no what you wanted and make any special comments or anything really and they would have it all on hand. So since it wasn't me bringing this piece of paper the day of to these nurses so they were all very familiar with the process.
I didn't know how long I'd be in labor, how long I'd be at the hospital and so I kind of brought it up at some point. Can I eat? Can I bring snacks while I'm in labor which, it turned out, eating was the last thing that I wanted to do. They were kind of more like, "Well, you're not supposed to but if it's in your bag and nobody sees it then I guess we can't say anything." They were awesome really.
I think the only kind of little hiccup would really be after I had him. It was probably I guess nearing the end of our first full day in the hospital and he just wasn't really wanting to eat. This really wasn't even my midwives. This was more just the people that I was seeing in and out of the room in the hospital. They kind of pushed me to pump a little bit and try to get him some into a little syringe so that they could feed him and so I went through that whole process which wasn't even really a big deal. I mean, if that's my main complaint looking back then it's really a little nothing.
The next day, he decided he was hungry finally and started eating. I could've skipped that whole trouble and just kind of trusted that Avery knew what he needed and when he was hungry he would eat. I did know that but then when you're in that setting and you've got this tiny new baby and you're so worried about them and you don't want to do anything wrong…
[0:45:00]
Julie: Yeah. Exactly.
Tarah: So I kind of just put my feelings aside or what I thought that I knew to be true and just kind of went along with whatever they were recommending. Even though that's a pretty small incident and – I would say to anyone: during pregnancy, during labor and even during the rest of your time if you do give birth in a hospital or a birthing center, to just listen to that intuition that you do have and trust it and know that you know what's best for you and for your baby. You can always switch practices too.
Julie: Yeah.
Tarah: I mean, a lot of times you're seeing your OB-GYN once a year or less even but during pregnancy you're going to be seeing a lot of your midwife or doctor and you want to be compatible with that person and you want to trust them and to feel like they trust you and that they respect you and if you don't feel that then it might be time to go find somebody else. I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing. You're not stuck with who you get.
But also being able to explain to them if they're not familiar with the way that you eat or with other choices that you want to make, taking a little time and doing your due diligence and taking little time at home to maybe look up some research that you can bring to them to maybe familiarize them a little bit. I think that most people would be open to that, I hope that they would be, but just to try to get them on the same page as you. I don't think that there's anything wrong with doing that. I don't think you have to just be quiet and do everything that they tell you to do.
Julie: Exactly. Well, this has been a really great conversation. I don't want to keep you too long because I know you have a little one clamoring for your attention as well.
Tarah: Yes, I can hear him running around.
Julie: I can hear mine upstairs.
Tarah: He sounds like a herd of elephants outside.
Julie: Oh, gosh. Your blog is "What I Gather," whatigather.com. Can people find out more about you there and more about the book there as well?
Tarah: Yes. Yeah, so the website is whatigather.com then I've got of course all the social media – Instagram, which is where, like you, I share all kinds of pictures of my little Paleo baby and all his little meals. I have a lot more fun posting stuff there I think than anywhere else. I like kind of giving a little glimpse –
Julie: They're so quick and easy to do –
Tarah: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Especially when he was a brand new baby, I think that was pretty much all I did was post pictures. But Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest which they are all just "What I Gather" but they are all linked from the blog. I am trying to build up an email list. I haven't been very good about it at all but I do have a sign up on there and as I'm finishing school and hopefully offering more things by way of some nutrition counseling and things like that, I'll definitely be getting that information out through email.
There's a link for the book right there on my homepage. There's a big picture of the book cover. Also, I have a page that's got more information on the book. But you can get it online through Amazon or it's in Barnes and Noble stores nationwide and also through Barnes and Noble online. You can get it in paperback or Kindle. Amazon still is running a little bit of a good discount on it. I think the list price is $18 or $18.99 but most days I see it for closer to $14 so they usually have a nice little discount on it too.
Julie: Great. Well, I wish you all the success with that book. I think it's great and I'll definitely be recommending it as much as I possibly can because I think it's a great resource.
Tarah: Thank you.
Julie: We'll have to have you back on. I'd love to have you as a co-host sometime. We can –
Tarah: Oh, definitely.
Julie: -- some more Paleo pregnancy, Paleo baby stuff.
Tarah: Yes.
Julie: Sometime.
Tarah: I would love to.
Julie: It's good to have a buddy out there.
Tarah: Yes, I know.
Julie: From the live world of Paleo motherhood.
Tarah: Right. We'll talk about babies eating sardines.
Julie: Yeah! Exactly, exactly. Great point of reference. Oh, man. Well, it's been great talking to you. Thanks again, Tarah Chieffi, for being on the show. Everyone, make sure to go check out The Everything Paleo Pregnancy Book. Talk to you again soon, Tarah.
Tarah: All right. Thank you. Talk to you soon.
Julie: Bye.
Tarah: Bye.
[0:49:53] End of Audio
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