Confession time: with a little less than a month left in my pregnancy, I can’t stop marveling at what it means to be a woman, the chance to be a vessel of creation, and the responsibility — and yes, challenges! — with which this sacred role arrives.
Like most children, as a kid I grew up feeling a certain sense of invincibility, taking my physical wellbeing for granted, and waltzing through my adolescence as if it would forever be a given that I’d always be healthy and strong. Cut to right now, this moment in my mid-forties, as I stand on the precipice of motherhood, a moment in life when I’ll not only have to be the healthiest version of myself for my own good, but for that of another living creature who, at least in the initial moments of their life, will lean entirely on me.
The truth is that pregnancy has made me think a lot about optimizing my body and mind, which is why I feel it’s so perfectly fitting that my husband Arron, our founder, runs a wild-caught seafood company, whose sustainably-sourced, top-quality seafood species have been such a fundamental part of my nourishment, especially during these last nine months.
According to the American Pregnancy Association, “new research confirms that it is critical to your baby’s development to eat fish during pregnancy,” and wild salmon appears as the first species on its list of low-mercury, high in omega-3 and sustainable seafood choices a pregnant woman can make. Now I understand why I have been making homemade sockeye tacos obsessively throughout my term! Because somewhere deep down in my matrix of maternal intuition, I have known that the super-nutrients of this species are just what my baby needs. Not to mention the benefits they have for me — less inflammation, mood enhancement, and better sleep, to name just a few.
And on the subject of women’s health — since October happens to be not only National Seafood Month, but also Breast Cancer Awareness Month — I also found it fascinating to learn that a study in the Journal of Nutrition revealed that eating EPA and DHA fatty acids from fish very well could help stop the proliferation of breast cancer cells and reduces the progression of breast tumors. The study showed that women diagnosed and treated for early stage breast cancer, who were given higher levels of EPA and DHA, reduced their risk of recurrence by a whopping 25%. Most noteworthy to me was the fact that these benefits came not from consuming fish oil supplements, but rather eating the fish itself. While I love that we only source sustainably-harvested species, what I love even more is the fact that these very foods are so potentially healing for our members.
I’ll end by saying that I suppose it’s no coincidence that we refer to her as Mother Nature. After all, she certainly does seem to know best.
Live wild!
Monica
Pictured above: a festive homemade sockeye taco assembled in a pregnant-and-can’t-imagine-
