19 December 2012

Whoops, soup, and other news

So I've been kind of busy since my last post. To be fair, it's not so much that I'm busy, but that I somehow have come up pregnant.

Don't look at me that way. I'm a nurse, I know how babies are made. It's just that pretty much every doctor I've interacted with since my daughter was born has told me that it would be nearly impossible for me to get pregnant again. My weight is the first obstacle, and then my polycystic ovaries, and then and then and then. There was a laundry list. Still, Manthing and I were diligent, about 90% of the time. One of the 10% times that were weren't diligent just happened to come on the most fertile day of my cycle last month.

I'm going to be honest and say I assumed I was pregnant as soon as I saw where in my cycle I was (I track like a woman obsessed. See: PCOS). I even went for bloodwork. And the bloodwork said I wasn't pregnant, but apparently that's because it was too early. Because I am definitely pregnant.

Anyhow, 2 babies was in our original plan, but after how sick I was with my first pregnancy, and how horrible the disappointment was when we tried for close to a year for a second when she was 2, we assumed one was all we were getting. And she is a lovely, charming, intelligent and amazing child, so she was definitely enough.

That said? Other than the sheer terror than only a pregnant 37 year old woman would understand, I am happy. I am having another baby!

The nausea has been overwhelming. So far, that is exactly like it was with Girlchild. I am cautiously optimistic that it will not be similar the rest of the pregnancy. I did have gestational diabetes, and I am assuming I will have it again, and to that end have already started tracking my blood sugar. Let me tell you something. iPhones have every app under the sun. I have a glucose tracker app! It can keep up with my ridiculously obsessive tracking, and other than one quirky rude part where it asks my weight every single time I input my sugar, it's lovely (does it really think my weight will change in a 6 hour period?)

So that's the big news.


Onto something else.



I am allergic to onions. When they are raw, they are like stinky balls of instantaneous death. I discovered this allergy when I had an anaphylactic reaction to onions in my early 20s. In my car. While I was driving back from lunch at Subway where my sandwich had a sneaky onion in it. I didn't like onions to begin with, the allergy is probably why, and I don't know that prior to that I'd ever had a raw onion. So there you go. Allergic.

Since then I've discovered that the more onions are cooked, the milder the reaction. So I don't make an enormous fuss if there is onion in something that has been cooked (spaghetti sauce, pot pie etc). Because it's usually cooked to death, and most of whatever I am allergic to has converted into something that is mostly inert. I say mostly because onions, in that wiggly super cooked state still make me nauseated, and cause the WORST gas ever.

The onion allergy means we don't keep them in the house. So when I have 3/4 of a rotisserie chicken from Save-On left over, and want to make soup out of it, I need to improvise.

All the recipes you find on pinterest will tell you to toss 1 rotisserie chicken, 1 onion, celery, etc, blah blah blah into a pot. Well, when you don't keep onions in the house, and you've wakened one morning to discover you are pregnant and don't want to tempt the gods, what's a girl to do? Garlic. And lots of it.

Quite frankly, I think garlic lends a better taste to meats anyhow, so I don't ever feel thwarted by the lack of onion in our diet. We go through a ton of garlic.


So in case you are interested, this is how I make rotisserie chicken soup: chicken, garlic, more garlic, just a touch more garlic, carrots, and water to cover it all. Then simmer overnight, pull the bones and dessicated carrots and nasty blanched out skin the next day, add new carrots, add some peppers, add some of whatever other veg is in your fridge. Toss in some barley or some noodles and cook until ready. Delicious? Hells yes.


You will, of course, (you being the random stranger who makes their way here from Berlin every so often), excuse me for talking more about my pregnancy for the next few months. Because it's hard to be crunchy in the middle of winter, when you need to plan the fastest cheapest renos ever so you can sell your suddenly too small house that doesn't have enough bedrooms before the baby arrives, and you are freezing cold because a) hormones and b) dead of winter in Canada.

Also, I'm taking a course and considering quitting my job to go back to nursing fulltime. That's my other news.

2 comments:

  1. So, so happy for you guys. I remember when you decided number two was a no-go and I really wanted to send a hug your way. And now I do too, but for the opposite reason!!!

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    1. Thanks! Did you know blogger did not send me this comment, which is why, almost 2 months later, I am finally responding? Yeah. Good times.

      Anyhow, thanks!

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