Wild Hope Homestead

I’m growing something different this season. I mean something even more different. Not giant pumpkins. Not giant tomatoes. Not a giant anything, although it feels like it is… I’m growing a baby!

It’s been a long road, but better late than never, right? The Little Fulla will finally get a brother or sister. And we’ll get another little person to love. Little Seedpod will be ripening in late June 2021.

Now I can tell you all why things have been a bit quiet around here. It’s been soooo hard keeping this one under wraps. Last time my pregnancy was pretty cruisy. I knew that. It left me with barely a shred of funny pregnancy stories to tell. I expected this one to be the same. But oh, no, this one is not the same. Let me entertain you with my problems.

Last time, I basically had a love affair with food. I thought about all the tasty things we could make and eat. I daydreamed about Cornish pasties, pies and other such comfort foods. I remember eating a lot and scoffing at the idea that a pregnant woman needed only the equivalent of a banana for extra food intake per day.

This time, food and I aren’t always friends. And evenings definitely haven’t been my friend. Until recently, I have spent most of the day, most days, feeling sick, tired, sore and bloated. In the evenings I often feel very hot and sick, like a whale that has eaten a giant balloon then beached itself in the hot sun. This left me pondering the question of, “How long can one go on feeling sick for without actually throwing up?” Which led to the question of, “Would it make me feel better if I did just throw up already?” I am not willing to explore the answer to that question. But I am exploring what I can eat, drink or do to help myself feel better, other than sleeping.

I made a ginger syrup, with fresh ginger, honey and water. I put some in a glass of sparkling water to make my own ginger ale, minus the processed sugar. This helps a bit, but not as much as peppermint. Peppermint tea helps somewhat, but I’m not a big fan of hot drinks at all right now. Except for my morning coffee. If I don’t get the happy coffee soon enough we don’t get the happy Twiglet. I had read that peppermint helps, with various suggestions that included sucking on peppermint lollies. I didn’t want to eat sugary peppermints. I thought that would do more harm than good. And then I went and smelt my bottle of peppermint essential oil. It smelt amazing! And it smelt like candy canes. Let’s just say there are candy canes up in the pantry now. They’re for the baby.

Then there are the problems that I have with some of the vegetables. Some of the vegetables have become downright repulsive to me. It is a shock to my system not be able to just use what we have in the garden, or what we have put up in freezer bags or on the shelves because it makes me feel sick. I have trouble at dinner times because I already feel icky and then I have to think about what vegetables I can make for my family. I’ve had to go back to thinking about what I can manage to eat and what I’m going to make during the week and what I need to buy when I go grocery shopping. That’s harder than looking at what we have and deciding what to make with it. All the raw summer vegetables are fine, thankfully. I can’t wait until our own are ready.

The worst vegetable offender is cabbage. I can hardly talk about it. It was as well The Husband and I got the big load of red cabbage sauerkraut done when we did because the very next day I could not stand the smell of it. Unfortunately, I can’t eat it right now either. In fact, anything in the brassica family is a disgust to me: broccoli, the green cabbages still in the garden, the kohlrabi and swedes that I had only just grown for the first time. Nope. Nope. Nope. I keep asking people to take them away. Poor vegetables! Let’s move on quickly. But first, here’s a picture of me.

It could be worse. I can still eat most things. But dinner times are hard. I’m usually very much a meals girl – breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper. Now I’m having to change my routines and the amounts I eat to accommodate Little Seedpod’s demands upon my body: wake-up snack, breakfast, second breakfast, morning tea, elevenses, lunch, pre-afternoon tea snack, afternoon tea, dinner (a frustratingly small amount), maybe some supper fruit or something (if I can stomach it) and middle-of-the-night snack. I can’t say I don’t enjoy the middle-of-the-night snack.

In terms of homesteading tasks, well, let’s just say the wagon’s looking a little jolty. Ok, who am I kidding? A lot of things have fallen off the wagon. Like most of the projects. And tasks. And housework. And keeping the weeds under control. Through a series of events and bad hayfever, and not being able to take antihistamines at present, I have been avoiding the weeds. I’ve actually had to avoid going outside a fair bit when my hayfever is really bad. I miss my happy place! Getting all the crops planted has been a slow and lengthy process, which still isn’t quite there. I am going to need the family’s help to maintain all the veggies. But I am glad that we’ve got so much food growing in the garden because of the planning and seed-sowing that took place before I got pregnant.

Then there’s the mass of chickens I have to look after. I didn’t know I was going to be pregnant before the mass of chickens came. Ok, for the very last batch of eggs I set I did know, but that was right before I got kinda munted. I guess the males of the household might have to help me with butchering. Funnily enough, on my good days, I can still handling butchering a couple of chickens or cleaning the chicken coop. But show me a cabbage and I’ll run for the hills. Just get those wrinkly green things off my wagon.