Heartburn Solutions

So since I last updated, I went through probably about a week where I seemed to have heartburn constantly, and I was pretty miserable. Along the same lines, I had one of those "MY BELLY IS STRETCHED BEYOND BELIEF, I AM HORRIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE, HOW CAN THIS BABY GET ANY BIGGER?" few days right at the same time. As usual, I thought that I would feel this way for the rest of the pregnancy and I started to get pretty down about it.

However, in the last few days or so, I've discovered that it really is true that what you eat matters in the heartburn department. The main thing I realized is that I can't drink any tea any more--at least not green, white, or black tea (maybe purely fruit or herbal tea might be okay, I'm not sure). I had gotten back into the habit of drinking green/white tea throughout most of the day, and I think, in retrospect, that this was the main cause of my constant heartburn.

Other bad foods: grapefruit, oranges, orange juice, lemonade (any citrus I guess) . . . I was on a real grapefruit kick for awhile there and they were so delicious and amazing that I think I was in denial that they might be contributing to my heartburn issues.

But low and behold, simply giving up tea and citrus seem to single-handedly have cured my heartburn, and I'm incredibly grateful. And, as it tends to do, my belly and body seem to have made it through another adjustment and I once again feel comfortable and happy with being pregnant.

The only thing about cutting out these foods is that my list of foods I CAN eat is once again shrinking. I have been more and more flexible about eating gluten occasionally because bread is the thing that really sounds good in the midst of this heartburn control diet. I have minimal side effects from eating bread--the times I really notice the effect of the gluten is when I eat something made with a higher processed form of gluten (like fake meat/veggie burgers, etc).

Anyway, it's now been probably 5 days since I needed to have a Tums, so I'm pretty relieved to have managed this issue--at least for now.

Tonight is our first childbirth class (Bradley Method). I will try to remember to update about it tomorrow. I'm very excited!