Love the Unexpected

One of the first things I noticed in the early months of my pregnancy was how hungry I was.

When I was about six weeks, I started to experience nausea and was turned off of many, many food. Most surprising was my all time favourite food, coffee. But I digress.

Ironically, though nauseous, I was simultaneously hungry. Ravenously hungry. It was a hunger I had never felt before.

I remember the first time I really noticed it was one day after work. Typically, my husband and I went straight home, where I was able to grab a snack before we made dinner. On this particular evening, we stopped in at a grocery store on the way to pick up a couple of things.

Big mistake. Not only were we not able to find the one or two items that I was craving, I thought I was going to faint if I didn’t eat something soon. As we climbed into the car to go home, I found myself near tears. My husband looked over at me.

“Are you okay?” He asked, half worried, half incredulous.

“I’m just so hungry!” I cried. I spotted a pack of crackers sticking out of his work bag and lunged for them, stuffing them in my mouth as fast as I could. My husband peeled out of the parking lot and hurried home.

This is a story we look back and laugh at frequently. It was one of our first, “yep, we’re definitely pregnant” moments.

But at this point in my pregnancy, all the information I had about prenatal nutrition was targeted toward singleton pregnancies, not realizing how many differences there are to a twin pregnancy. I’d heard a lot about not falling into the “eating for two” trap and eating excessively, especially during the first trimester. What was I to do about eating for three?

According to most recommendations for a singleton pregnancy, such as the guidelines provided by the Government of Canada, an increase in calories isn’t necessary until the second and third trimesters and should only be an increase of about 300 calories, a small meal or extra snack. The recommended weight gain is anywhere from 11 to 40 pounds.

With this information in hand, I was a bit disconcerted by what I was experiencing. If I didn’t need extra calories yet, why was I so hungry? It wasn’t even a hunger I could ignore… the only way I can describe it, is that I had to eat. In order to stay sane, I honored it and ate; but, that also meant I started gaining quite a bit of weight in my first trimester.

I’m grateful that in the province of Alberta, mothers expecting multiples are automatically referred to a dietician to help work through their nutritional needs. After my first meeting with the dietician, everything I was experiencing started to make sense and I felt a weight lift. So, here are the things I learned about nutrition in twin pregnancies that I wish I knew from the start.

1. You need to eat A LOT

This isn’t really rocket science, but I was shocked when my dietitian told me how many calories I needed to be targeting every day. The amount depends on your pre-pregnancy weight (many resources still go by BMI in their guides), but is anywhere between 3000 and 4000 calories. I wasn’t a big eater pre-pregnancy, so this was a far cry from the extra 300 calorie snack I was eyeing up. Knowing how much I needed to be eating was incredibly reassuring to me. I had done the right thing by honoring my hunger in those early months.

2. You need quantity and quality

It sounds so great, doesn’t it? Permission to eat as much as you want of whatever you want? (side note: you don’t need permission to eat whatever you want. I’m a firm believer in “all things in moderation”). To be honest, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It wasn’t an all access pass to the snack aisle. All those extra calories needed to be comprised of nutrient rich foods to make sure I was getting the necessary protein, vitamins, calcium and iron to grow those babies. It’s hard to get a litre of milk in a day.

3. It’s good to gain weight in the first and second trimesters

This also led me to breathe a sigh of relief. Early weight gain is actually a really good thing in a twin pregnancy because it contributes to your babies being born at a healthy weight. Very often, twin pregnancies are shorter than singletons, which means it’s important to make the most of the time you have. Similar to caloric increase, the recommended weight gain for a twin pregnancy depends on your pre-pregnancy weight or BMI but is typically between 25 and 54 pounds.

4. Your folic acid needs are higher than a singleton pregnancy

Again, not super shocking – there are two babies, so naturally you’re going to need more of certain things. The reason this one stuck out to me was because I was surprised to learn that many prenatal vitamins don’t supply the necessary amount of folic acid for a twin pregnancy. In fact, the #1 doctor recommended prenatal vitamin, Materna, only supplies 600 mcg of folate. The recommendation for a twin pregnancy is 1000 mcg. As a workaround, I added a 400 mcg tablet of folic acid to my vitamin regimen, then switched to the Jamieson 100% Complete Prenatal Multivitamin when my Materna ran out.

Conclusion

If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t waste any time worrying about how much I was eating and whether I was gaining too much weight in my twin pregnancy. In the end, listening to my body’s needs and honoring the hunger that I was feeling, put me right where I needed to be. Still, I was incredibly grateful for the information and help I received from a registered dietician. It put my mind at ease and helped give me confidence in my food choices, knowing that I was giving my babies everything they needed to grow.