the mango trimester
My belly is growing at alarming leaps and bounds, so I took advicefrom a friend who had just delivered a baby boy: cut down on refined carbs, they make big babies, and you'll be thankful for every little thing that you do now. So I cut out the chocolate milk, ice cream and white bread, and made my sugar treat fruit; usually an after-breakfast mango, an after-lunch mango, and an after-dinner mango. I have six more weeks of carrying this belly around, and then, somehow, the baby will come out.
John has never been enthralled with mangos, at least not since the "mango worm episode" when my cousin Sunita, after diligently sucking up the pulp from an over-ripe alphonso, discovered in the bright orange sticky juice writhing tiny white worms. John says the over-sweetness of mangos reminds him of the fecundity, death and decay of a too tropical jungle.
But it's mango season in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa; and Abu Dhabi is geographically positioned in the middle of robust international mango trade routes. So when it's the only option for desert, and the mangos aren't over-ripe, he is won over. We have the Sindooram Mango, Alphonso Mango, Mango Neelan, Kenya Round Mango, Rajapuri Mango, Rumali Mango, and two Pakistani mangos all sitting in our fruit basket, in varying states of ripeness. I save the riper ones for myself while he is at work, and for smoothies. Last week he made a pre-dinner mango smoothie with laban (yogurt) and pomegranite molasses; it was lovely. Still, if it were John that did the shopping, and not me, we'd have more pears in our fruit basket, and probably some fancy French cheeses in the fridge to go with them.
Babies develop a sense of smell, which is also our sense of taste, at around three months after conception. My second trimester was the moving trimester, when we packed up the house, shipped our worldly goods to the Middle East, and went to stay with family in Florida and California for a month. We ate mostly at other people's tables, but two tastes stand out: a bitter-orange sparkling drink, of which I made and drank gallons from the trees in John's parents yard, and called Florida aranciata, and carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, which I made in over-abundance for my sister Julia's wedding to Jonathan and then felt compelled (it would havebeen so irresponsible otherwise) to heroically eat for the next week. For days, I'm sure, the amniotic fluids tasted fragrantly of bitter orange, and, weeks later, of carrot cake. And now the slightly turpentine-edged flavor of mango.
Anyway, I think the strategy is paying off. At my last meeting at Corniche hospital the midwife said the baby is no longer bigger than normal. I gained 1.4 kilograms since the last visit, which was also normal, apparently, though I've forgotten what a kilo is in pounds. I guess it's about 3 pounds, and anything to do with weight is better stated in vague language anyway. That's about exactly what I needed to gain, apparently.
I also heard (from a neurologist-writer friend) that it's fine to drink alcohol in the last trimester, so I am introducing the baby to beer. Beer and coffee are important bitter flavors, otherwise lacking in my diet, as you can probably tell. The problem with beer is that we haven't figured out how or where to purchase it, so I can only drink it in bars, and I feel a bit self-conscious about that. Am I imagining the looks? I don't know. But it's also smoky, and that's one taste the baby could really do without. Unless, of course, it's the smokiness of pulled pork, or smoked fish.
The good side of bars is the music; until we get a stereo the baby's only music has been John on the guitar, which is good, but not enough. We need those cover band classics. Also I have a feeling that after meeting the baby in person it will be a while before I go to a bar again, so I should brave the looks. But then Iget sleepy before anyone else, barely halfway through my beer, and think wistfully about Jackson, curled up in bed, getting ahead in the sleep championships.
I might need to go get our baby a taste of Turkish coffee, now, as I'm feeling a competitive urge to fall asleep. Jackson and I are neck to neck. That's optimistic, really, he's winning by hours. But he's had years of diligent practice.
remembering eating mangoes from our tree in panama....once my dad ate 13 in one day, and really started to feel hallucinatory. ours were called "mangos de calidad" (quality mangoes). no turpentiney taste and very, very, very yummy.(by the way, mango is in the poison ivy family and my mother reacted badly to a green mango) i guess overdoing anything isn't good. i feel eating too much peanut butter at the time of my pregnancy with gabe caused him to have that allergy--and now i find out in britain pregnant women are encouraged to avoid all peanuts.
your baby sounds so very loved. you and john will be wonderful parents. how lucky the baby has you two.
gabe and i enjoyed your sleep competition with jackson. our two cats who had been on my lap just jumped up for a midmorning snack. now i can move and get to my pile of bills before heading off to pick up maria at the airport----she's returning from two weeks in hawaii at her boyfriend's home. alex loves her internship in washington dc, and loves dc. this weekend we drove her from my brother's in silver spring all the way down georgia ave to 3rd ne where she shares a teeney apartment with 2 other young ladies from dartmouth. so we must have gone by your home on the way. olivia is in turkey for three weeks and is already thinking about going back next summer.
there's a local new haven artist at this website:http://www.whitespacegallery.com/living-artists/photography-ct/john-arabolos/john-arabolos-artwork.htm all his work is digitally worked from photos in nature. one photograph per work. his series 7 number 4 will be on the cover of the magazine: natural genetics. he's never worked with photographs other than from new england. series 7 number 4 for instance is a photo of a tree with snow covered branches in winter sky. would there be any chance he could work and photograph for a week at leonard lake through oldgrowtharts? can i tell him anything?
thanks again for your wonderful blog. i think you are so brave. have many wonderful days. love eunice
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John seemed to have no problem with worm-infested food when we were eating those small-mouth bass at the lake. I associate the smell of papaya with death, and the smell of mangos with camping. Also, I associate the smell of bacon with New Orleans.
But I'm really writing in to say that I'll be a monkey's uncle if the amount of refined carbohydrates you consume has any bearing on the size of your baby. That's just more bigoted anti-carb talk from the Michael-Pollan-meets-Dr.-Atkins set. Even if it's true that refined carbs are partially responsible for people gaining weight (and I don't think it's true!), the link between mommy size and baby size is very, very subtle...
(I mean, fat mommies do have fat babies, but most of that is genetic.)
Sure, your abu baby might be monstrously large-- but there's nothing you can do about it!
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Dan--you're right about the worms, but wrong about the babies, monkey's uncle. Diabetic moms, even skinny ones, have bulkier babies due to high blood sugar. I know mangos can boost my blood sugar just as much as chocolate milk, but it takes a while to peel them, and then a bit longer for my digestive system to puzzle the fructose into glucose, so I'm sticking with it.
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But are you diabetic?
More news you can use, from an Explainer column written by an eminent expert in the field:
Lower birth weight has been associated with stroke, coronary heart disease, and other problems. And when an especially little baby grows up, the fat she does have tends to accumulate in her trunk—another risk factor for cardiovascular illness.
You can also find connections between birth weight and cognitive abilities. Larger babies tend to score higher on IQ tests when they grow up. A study from the University of Pennsylvania found that on average, each additional pound of baby fat yields four more months of schooling and a 7 percent increase in earnings.
I love mangos and I love chocolate milk. Why can't we all just get along?
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"women who gained more than 40 lbs during preg were more than twice as likely to have a heavy baby," http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031102041.htm
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Hey. 1 kg = 2.2 pounds right? I'm too lazy to even look it up through. I slept 12 hours last night ... well, I wouldn't say SLEPT the whole time because there was so much thunder, lightning and rain ... and still I'm tired. Sandy just pulled up your mango entry and now I'm less tired after having my brain enlivened by good writing. I think I'm partially tired because even though it's Saturday morning, I have to make revisions in a client's technical audit that I thought was already good enough but a colleague begged to differ on some points. I gained 7 pounds this month. Isn't that about 3 kgs?! I'm thinking it's a baby girl, just cuz I had a dream that I introduced my baby girl to my horse Psophie, who proceeded to strike us down in jealousy. I'm drinking tea at Sandy's desk. She says, "Isn't Rose's writing wonderful? ... Oh my golly!" Okay, I'm going to get my work done, then admire how my plants are coming up. Soon Sara, Michael, and her 3 boys will be back from Vichy Springs and we'll go swim in the lake. I'm really a lot less tired after writing. The reading/writing cure.
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Wow - I hope mangoes aren't making your mouth itchy! I just remember that the semester in college I spent in Nicaragua, one of the gals in my program broke out in a nice rash all around her mouth due to too many mangoes. The AbuDhabi ones must be special, then.
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