What every pregnant woman should know

Giving your baby the best possible start in life

If you want children, then possibly the most important and rewarding time of your life is preparing for conception, and then giving your baby the best start in life while you nurture him or her in your womb.

As your baby will be drawing on your own vitamin and mineral reserves, it’s a no-brainer you’ll want to eat as well as you can during this time.

Your baby’s food choices begin in your womb

If you want your child to make good food choices, you can teach them from a very young age – before they’re even born in fact.

Because research shows that what you eat during pregnancy not only nourishes your baby inside you, but may shape its food preferences later in life. So if you eat greens when you’re pregnant for example, your baby will have more desire for green vegetables once it’s born and weaned than if you didn’t.

Another source of ‘inspiration’ for your growing baby is the amniotic fluid that surrounds it in the womb. Babies while in the womb consume amniotic fluid daily and this is actually flavoured by the foods and drinks the mother has eaten in the preceding hours.

“Things like vanilla, carrot, garlic, anise, mint — these are some of the flavours that have been shown to be transmitted to amniotic fluid or mother’s milk,” says Julie Mennella, an expert in taste in infants at the Monell Chemical Senses Center Philadelphia, and whose work has been published in the journal Pediatric.

To determine if flavours are passed from the mother to the baby via the amniotic fluid, researchers at the Center gave women garlic capsules or sugar capsules before taking a routine sample of their amniotic fluid — and then asked a panel of people to smell the samples.

“It was easy to pick out the samples from the women who ate garlic.” says Mennella. And as the sense of taste is actually 90-percent smell, Menella explained, we know that the babies can taste it.

Mennella says there isn’t a single flavour they’ve found that doesn’t show up in utero. and that these flavours create memories for babies leading to lifetime preferences for these foods or smells.

Looking after you and your baby before and during pregnancy

Folic acid at 400iu’s is widely recognised as being essential for normal foetal development and ideally is taken for at least three months before conception. Don’t panic if conception happened unexpectedly, it’s better to start late than not at all.

Our Pregancy ‘All in two’ is a multivitamin & mineral supplement that has been specifically formulated for conception and during pregnancy with Bioactive B Vitamins, including 400µg Folate.

Of course, during pregnancy, your diet should meet your needs as well as your baby’s. This means the provision of adequate amounts of essential elements including Iron, Copper, and Zinc.

Copper is a trace mineral found in all plant and animal tissues and is essential for forming red blood cells. This is especially important during pregnancy, because your blood volume increases by about 30 to 50 percent. Copper also helps form your baby’s heart, blood vessels, and skeletal and nervous systems. During pregnancy, your body’s demand for copper increases to 1 mg/day – so consider foods high in copper, such as whole grains, nuts and potatoes for a while, or choose a supplement with an absorbable form.

B vitamins are also important for red blood cell formation and supplementation for mums-to-be can be beneficial and may even help with “pregnancy/baby brain”. These are mental shifts (and actual physiological brain alterations) that can leave you feeling forgetful, absentminded, or just plain out of it!

Listen to your body

Looking after yourself during pregnancy is as important as looking after your baby when it’s born. You need to relax, eat well and listen to what your body is calling for.

Reducing your toxic load before and during pregnancy is a good idea, so look at what you can cut back on chemical-wise. For example choosing organic natural soaps, shampoos and moisturisers is a good shout.

Baby’s brains are also very sensitive to radiation. But while you can’t mitigate every source of Electromagnetic fields  (EMFs) in the world around you, reducing your baby’s exposure, by keeping your mobile or tablet away from your womb whenever possible, is ideal.

Remember, you’re growing another human being inside of you – an incredible privilege and one to be honoured. So take time to delegate tasks especially when you’re feeling tired or are close to term. You don’t need to do it all, that’s what family and friends are for, they want to help, so let them, it’s not a sign of weakness or lack of control, it’s just a wise thing to do.