Your Health During Pregnancy
Even if you don’t necessarily eat a healthy well balanced diet, you should make a real effort to try to when you are pregnant. Staying active is also important and if you can stomach it, make sure you are taking your prenatal vitamin. Drinking lots of water to stay hydrated, particularly in summer, is very important. Make sure you have some Gatorade or Pedialite on hand for times when you do feel dehydrated. I am an avid water drinker and I became dehydrated once or twice while I was pregnant. 2 glasses of Pedialite and 2 glasses of ice cold water did the trick to make me feel normal again.
There is a lot of hype out there regarding pregnancy and women giving into their bizarre cravings. I’ve seen women who normally were thin and fit jam handful after handful of chocolate into their mouths while pregnant. A woman must consider the fact that everything she’s eating, the baby is eating. Avoid fast foods or foods that are high in fat or processed foods.
I ate so well while I was pregnant that I actually lost 10 pounds of my own body fat. I did not gain a pound and my daughter was extremely healthy and remains healthy to this day. She is 17 months old and has never had a fever or more than a touch of slight cold.
Many women claim that they are craving fattening foods or strange things, but this wasn’t the case for me. I seemed to crave what my body needed most. I couldn’t get enough water (I also couldn’t stop peeing) and all I wanted to eat was fish, chicken and fruits and vegetables. In the morning I would fill a large breakfast bowel full of carrots, cucumber slices, grapes, apple slices, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries and I would eat that for breakfast accompanied by a large glass of water.
I drank vinegar water daily and stayed away from the sweet stuff. After I had my daughter, I continued to try to stay healthy, although when my mother died last September, I’ll admit I fell off the wagon a little bit. Especially the last few weeks, my eating habits have gotten particular poor, which has caused me to return to my pregnancy diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables.
It’s important for pregnant women to stick to lean meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grain breads and low fat dairy products. These are all essential to our own health and our baby’s health.
