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Pregnancy fact or fiction: Eating for two (or three)

Just how much are you supposed to eat when you're pregnant? According to MayoClinic.com, the average (not overweight, not underweight) woman should gain between 25-35 pounds during pregnancy. But, does it matter what your doctor says, what your friends and family say, or what the little one inside you dictates?

With my first pregnancy, I was advised to consume between 300 and 500 calories extra per day. Not a drop more. Gone were the days when I thought I would be able to eat anything I wanted, the way things used to be

Back when my mother-in-law was pregnant with my husband her doctor prescribed her diet pills to take during her pregnancy so she wouldn't gain too much weight. Scary thought, eh, but it's the truth. How she managed it I'll neverk know. Now that I'm in the second trimester of my second pregnancy, I am starting to remember what it was like the first time around.

You're hungry. Sometimes, you're hungry all the time. Sometimes it is as though you have no control over your body whatsoever and you have to eat right then, right there, that instant, or you feel as though you will perish. I wake up in the middle of the night and simply must eat something. Yet, if I do, then I feel GROSS.

Current wisdom holds that a pregnant woman should be healthier than thou, eating perfect-sized, well-rounded servings of only the most nutritious of foods--vegetables, some fruit, good proteins. She should avoid anything high-fat or full of empty calories. She should consumes essentially no liquids other than water.

Yeah? Well, what about when the mystery baby on the inside makes pregnant woman crave things like crazy? Bad things--fried things! Sugary, salty things! Things she simply must have or she can't go on? Those things must be given in to, and they can't count for th extra daily calories allotted to nourish a growing fetus.

Frankly, doesn't 300 calories seem a bit...paltry considering it's a human life we're growing in there? While 25-35 pounds sounds pretty reasonable, 300 calories somehow doesn't. So, is it pregnancy fact or fiction???

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