Eating Well For You During Your Pregnancy
Eating healthy throughout your pregnancy is the greatest
gift you could give your unborn baby, but there are also a lot
of rewards in it for you to. It's common for many moms to
be to forget that they also benefit in eating healthy through
out their pregnancy. What you eat has a direct effect as
to how well your body copes and recovers from all the physical
changes it goes through. It also helps with the physical
and emotional challenge of carrying and delivering a baby.
The truth is, most pregnant women rarely walk around all
nine months with that rosy glow everyone talks
about. The first three months some of us walk
around a nasty shade of green and in a hazy fog thanks to the
tiredness we feel those first three months. The second
three months are a little better, and we are no longer green
but we deal with other issues such as varicose veins and leg
cramps.
The third trimester, we are back to the hazy fog again and
have other issues such as swelling and heartburn just to name a
few. Some of these can be avoided with a good diet.
Eating foods that have some complex carbs can help reduce your
tiredness and staying away from fatty foods will help with the
heartburn.
Research has shown that pregnant women who eat healthy
throughout their pregnancy usually have a safe and
uncomplicated pregnancy. Studies have shown that some
pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia or high blood
pressure can be directly related to deficiencies in a pregnant
woman's diet. High amounts of sugar and polyunsaturated
fats increase this risk as well as having a low intake of
vitamin c, e and magnesium.
Perhaps for some women one of the biggest benefits of eating
healthy during their pregnancy is that it could help you during
labor and delivery. A well balanced pregnancy diet has
been said to help prevent preterm labor, which is labor before
37 weeks. A good diet can also help you cope with labor
and delivery better. Any woman who has given birth knows
how much energy it takes to endure hours of contractions and
sometimes hours of pushing. Eating healthy will
ensure that you have the energy and the stamina to get through
your little one's delivery.
Once you have delivered your little one, it is still
important to continue your good habit of healthy eating
especially in the postpartum period. Your body needs a
lot of resources to recover from all the stretching, blood loss
and not mention sleep deprivation and still take care of a
newborn. It is just as important in the months following
your delivery to continue to eat well. As my doctor put
it, it is essential to eat as though you were pregnant for at
least three months after delivery.
A final added bonus to eating healthy throughout your
pregnancy is that you may never stop eating healthy. This
is setting up the groundwork for a lifetime of eating healthy
for not only you but for your children. If you continue
to eat healthy you are setting a prime example for your
children.
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