Healthy Choices

Eating Right
Proper weight gain is important to ensure your newborn is delivered at healthy birthweight. This is the time when your expanding uterus takes centerstage. Your body changes to accommodate your growing baby. Weight gain at this stage is vital as your body alters to insulate your womb and store up energy.You should allow your appetite to guide your food intake, taking the extra sffort to eat healthy while avoiding salt and junk food. During the second and third trimester add about 200 to 300 calories to your diet per day, depending on your pre-pregnant weight. Proper weight gain is important to ensure your new born is delivered at healthy birthweight.

Excessive weight gain is not necessarily harmful for either you or your baby, but makes postpartum weight loss more difficult. Also, you will be more prone to backache, leg pain, varicose veins, and fatigue.

You want to ensure that your baby gets the best nutrition, but be sure to include low fat dairy products and lean meat so as not to gain too much weight too quickly. Avoid being too obsessive about gaining a precise weight but vary your diet to avoid eating too much of one thing.

Empty calories should be avoided; this includes soft drinks, cakes, chocolates and ice cream. True, you may get the worst sweet cravings, but indulge moderately. Vary the vegetables, fruits and grains you consume, ensuring a sufficient supply of all the basic nutrients at every meal. Not only will this be good for your body and your baby development, but it also ensures that you don’t get bored with the foods you eat. The same old vegetables and dishes could get monotonous very quickly.

Consuming plenty of fluids and keeping well-hydrated is essential for an expectant woman. Drink at least eight - 10 cups of water everyday. Increase this if you are physically active or if the weather is hot. Once you have enough fluids in your diet, you’ll be urinating frequently and your urine should be pale or colourless. Reach out for plain water instead of the sweetened soft drinks with empty calories.

Working out.
Moderate exercise during pregnancy is not only safe but recommended, unless otherwise stated by your doctor. For many pregnant women, stretches and a regular light workout prove an ideal way to relax. About 30 minutes of regular exercise everyday is a good for healthy women having normal pregnancies. If you can’t spare the time, try to exercise three times a week. It will help increase and maintain your strength, flexibility, endurance and stamina, which will all help with an easier childbirth.

Whether you’re at work or at home, incorporating some form of exercise will help keep your energy levels up and promote better sleep at night. Pregnant women who exercise regularly have a better sense of well being and will find it easier to maintain her general overall health. Exercise also reduces the stress of the delivery for both the mother and baby while preventing the backaches and varicose veins.

Drugs During Pregnancy
Prenatal vitamins are safe for expectant mothers, however check with your doctor before buying some over-the counter. Your doctor will prescribe the adequate iron, calcium, or folic acid if you them. Remember never to double dose if you have missed once - just carry on with the next dosage as usual.

Run all medications you took prior to getting pregnant with your doctor and he or she may recommend a substitution if one is deemed harmful to your baby. For example, the drug accutane or Retin-A which is taken for acne, can produce multiple devastating birth defects affecting the foetal brain, limbs, face and heart, if taken during pregnancy. And of course, recreational drugs that you may have taken before you got pregnant are likely to cause harm to your baby - inform your doctor of any drugs you may have been taking just before or after conception

Smoking and Alcohol
If you are smoking before becoming pregnant, now is the time to stop. Research has shown that smoking harms the developing foetus - the list of defects and complication that is both long and alarming. It has been proven that smoking also doubles a woman’s risk of having low-birthweight baby, which in turns increases the chances of health problems like cerebral palsy, mental retardation and also learning problems. There is also a notable increase in placental complications for expectant women who smoke.

Keep away from passive smoke as well. Studies suggest that regular exposure to second hand smoke also significantly adds to foetal health complications. Before you start showing, don’t be afraid to let the people around you know that you protest inhaling their second hand soke - just say you’re expecting and would mind not puffing in your presence. Simply walk away from smokers whom you can’t get to stop lighting up.

Whatever you eat or drink while pregnant goes directly through your bloodstream and into the placenta. This means that alcohol that you consume is first absorbed into your bloodstream before being broken down by your liver, passing though the placenta and to your unborn child.

Pregnant women who drink alcohol expose their unborn child to Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. This refers to a pattern of mental and physical defects. Alcohol interferes with your unborn child’s ability to get enough oxygen and nourishment for normal cell development in the brain and other body organs. Doctors and gynaecologists differ about the amount of alcohol that’s allowable for a pregnant women - so avoid alcohol just to be safe. There’s plenty of time to indulge once your baby stops nursing.