Tips for a healthy pregnancy

In honor of July being National Cord Blood month, blogger Katie Moore provided this guest post on tips for a healthy pregnancy and preparing for child birth.

Tips for a Healthy Pregnancy

When women are expecting, they often carry many hopes and dreams. Some mothers hope for a son to play ball with. Other moms hope for a little girl that they will be able to dress in sweet, adorable outfits. However, more than anything else, all mothers hope for a healthy baby and a delivery free of complications.

For modern mothers, so much information is available that pregnancy and delivery can seem overwhelming. Mothers, sisters and aunts can offer so much conflicting advice that first-time mothers can be confused about the surest road to a healthy pregnancy. Any questions mom-to-be has should be brought to her doctor at prenatal appointments. A doctor can provide information on common concerns, like pain medicine, birthing options and elective procedures, like umbilical cord blood banking.

Activity

Expecting women should remember that pregnancy is a natural condition. For thousands of years women have been giving birth without medical intervention, so unless a doctor tells them otherwise, they can be as active as they feel like being. Even though some may think that pregnancy is a delicate condition during which a woman should take it easy, most medical experts agree that each woman should listen to her own body when deciding on an appropriate activity level, such as prenatal yoga. If a woman is full of energy and loves to exercise, she should continue to do so until she no longer can comfortably participate in her normal activities. However, if a woman experiences debilitating morning sickness or has little energy for extra activities, she should pay attention to the way that she feels and get as much rest as she can.

Diet

Some women, expecting to gain weight during pregnancy, eat everything they feel like eating. These women take “eating for two” to the extreme. As a result, they gain too much weight. After delivery, they regret it and have to work very hard to get rid of the excess weight. Additionally, some studies show that women who do not consume nutritious food during pregnancy raise their child’s risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease later in life.

Women do need to eat additional food during pregnancy. However, these extra foods should be healthy. Women should gain their pregnancy weight on extra servings of calcium-rich dairy, nutritious vegetables and plenty of fresh fruit. After the first trimester, women only need an extra 300 calories per day to feed their developing babies, so those calories should come from high-fiber, healthful food selections.

Stress

When a woman is expecting, hormones can make her feel crazy. She may find herself crying over insignificant events or in a rage over something small. As a result an expectant woman should find ways of reducing the stressful things in her life as much as possible. This may mean that she hires a cleaning service to do the housework or that she works fewer hours in a week. Women should be able to give themselves a break over minor things for the length of the pregnancy. A woman does not have to do everything all of the time to prove herself competent. A wise woman knows how to budget her time and energy to be most effective in her most important roles.

Pregnancy is a special time, but for some women it can be overwhelming. For the majority of expectant women, the keys to a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby are not very different from healthy living in general. Women should stay as active as possible and eat natural, wholesome foods, while resting mentally and physically as much as they can.

Katie is an active writer within the blogging community who discusses maternity, motherhood, prenatal health, childbirth and other topics within this niche.  If you have any questions or would like to connect with Katie please contact by visiting her blog, Moore From Katie or her twitter @moorekm26.

Photo credit: Mommy Crib Notes