Birth story part 4 : Hospital food

Probably the best part of giving birth and having that hospital stay was the food. I think nearly anyone who's given birth in Japan would agree. Even if you don't agree with the type of food that they serve, Japanese versus Western, it's still bound to be delicious as was mine.

The hospital sort of plans for the mother to be exhausted. And in need of a billion gazillion calories. For this mama who didn't care about the calories and gaining weight, it was a godsend. There was so much food on my plate, I could easily just leave behind what I didn't want to eat.

Even the things I don't normally eat I tried and they tasted delicious. One of my favorite things about the meals was that there were so many vegetables and fruit. Usually, Japan has so few vegetables and the variety is usually not that diverse. If it wasn't on a plastic lunch tray it probably could have been a four-course meal.

Breakfasts where a bit annoying because they brought them so early. But the nurses were nice enough about letting me eat them later and turn in the trays late.

Recently I was looking at reviews online of a couple of gynecologists and oncologists. A few of the negative reviews were about how many calories were in the meals served. This boggles my mind. I get that being pregnant you wind up gaining weight and many people don't want to gain that much weight. But really, to give a hospital negative reviews because they're feeding you too much seems ridiculous. Being calorie conscious is one thing but complaining because the hospital provides you over your calorie limit doesn't make sense to me. I'm actually surprised that the hospital provides so much because during the entire pregnancy I was told to lose weight and not eat so much.

There's a whole big thing in Japan about getting pregnant and not gaining any weight. There was even an article I recently read about how many babies were born too small because the mother didn't give them enough nutrients from her body because they weren't eating enough in their own diet.

One of the crazy things that I find among many of my Japanese friends is that nutrition is not part of health, it's more of an aesthetic. Your diet is a reflection of how you want to look not how you want to feed your body and strengthen it.

For part 3 of my birth story, the real chunk of actually giving birth.