Ways to Stay Healthy During Pregnancy
13 Ways to Stay Healthy During Pregnancy
- Eat healthy foods.
- Take a daily prenatal vitamin.
- Stay hydrated.
- Go to your prenatal care checkups.
- Avoid certain foods.
- Don't drink alcohol.
- Don't smoke.
- Exercise Daily.
- Get a flu shot
- Get Plenty of sleep
- Reduce Stress
- Plan the right time to get Pregnant
- Stay Happy
1. Eat healthy foods.
Eating healthy foods is especially important for pregnant women. Your baby needs nutrients to grow healthy and strong in the womb. Eat plenty of colorful fruits and vegetables, whole grains, calcium-rich foods and foods low in saturated fat.
When building your healthy eating plan, you’ll want to focus on whole foods that give you higher amounts of the good stuff you’d need when not pregnant such as protein, vitamins and minerals, heathy types of fat, complex carbohydrates, Fiber and Fluids.
During pregnancy, you need to consume extra protein and calcium to meet the needs of your growing little one. Dairy products like milk, cheese, and yogurt should be on the docket.
2. Take a daily prenatal vitamin.
Taking a daily prenatal multivitamin can help ensure you get the right amount of the key nutrients you and your baby need during pregnancy. These include folic acid, iron and calcium. But in general, avoid taking extra prenatal vitamins or multivitamins with dosing in excess of what you need on a daily basis. High doses of some vitamins may be harmful to your baby. For example, extra vitamin A during pregnancy can potentially cause harm to your baby.
Folic acid helps prevent neural tube defects. These defects are serious abnormalities of the fetal brain and spinal cord. Ideally, you'll begin taking extra folic acid at least 3 months before you become pregnant.
Iron supports the development of the placenta and fetus. Iron helps your body make blood to supply oxygen to the fetus. Iron also helps prevent anemia, a condition in which blood has a low number of healthy red blood cells.
3. Stay hydrated.
When you're pregnant, you need more water than the average person in order to form amniotic fluid, produce extra blood, build new tissue, carry nutrients, enhance digestion, and flush out wastes and toxins. A pregnant woman’s body needs more water than it did before pregnancy. Aim for eight or more cups each day.
4. Go to your prenatal care checkups.
Women should get regular prenatal care from a health care provider. Moms who don’t get regular prenatal care are much more likely to have a baby with low birth weight or other complications. If available, consider group prenatal care.
Most pregnant women can follow a schedule like this:
Weeks 4 to 28 of pregnancy. Go for one checkup every 4 weeks (once a month).
Weeks 28 to 36 of pregnancy. Go for one checkup every 2 weeks (twice a month).
Weeks 36 to 41 of pregnancy. Go for one checkup every week (once a week).
If you have complications during pregnancy, your provider may want to see you more often. Your partner or support person (a friend or someone from your family) is welcome at your prenatal checkups.
5. Avoid certain foods.
There are some foods you should not eat when you're pregnant because they might make you ill or harm your baby. Make sure you know the important facts about which foods you should avoid or take extra care with when you're pregnant. The best foods to eat are freshly cooked or freshly prepared food.
There are certain foods that women should avoid eating while pregnant. Don’t eat:
- Raw or rare meats
- Liver, sushi, raw eggs (also in mayonnaise)
- Soft cheeses (feta, brie)
- Unpasteurized milk
Raw and unpasteurized animal products can cause food poisoning. Some fish, even when cooked, can be harmful to a growing baby because they’re high in mercury.
6. Don’t drink alcohol.
Don’t drink alcohol before and during pregnancy and while breastfeeding. Drinking alcohol increases the risk of having a baby with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). FASD can cause abnormal facial features, severe learning disabilities and behavioral issues. There is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant. There is also no safe time for alcohol use during pregnancy. All types of alcohol are equally harmful, including all wines and beer. FASDs are preventable if a baby is not exposed to alcohol before birth.
Alcohol can impact a baby’s health in the earliest stages of pregnancy, before a woman may know she is pregnant. Therefore, women who may become pregnant also should not drink alcohol.
7. Don’t smoke.
Smoking is unhealthy for you and your unborn child. It increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), premature birth, miscarriage and other poor outcomes. Smoking during pregnancy can cause babies to be born too small or too early. Women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have a baby with a birth defect of the mouth and lip called an orofacial cleft. Babies who breathe in other people’s tobacco smoke are more likely to have ear infections and lung infections, like bronchitis and pneumonia; if they have asthma, breathing in other people’s tobacco smoke can trigger asthma attacks. These babies are also more likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a sudden and unexpected infant death that has no immediately obvious cause after investigation.
8. Exercise Daily.
Daily exercise or staying active in other ways can help you stay healthy during pregnancy. Check with your doctor to find out how much physical activity is right for you.
Women with the following conditions or pregnancy complications should not exercise during pregnancy:
Certain types of heart and lung diseases
Cerclage
Being pregnant with twins or triplets (or more) with risk factors for preterm labor
Placenta previa after 26 weeks of pregnancy
Preterm labor during this pregnancy or ruptured membranes (your water has broken)
Preeclampsia or pregnancy-induced high blood pressure
Severe anemia
9. Get a flu shot.
The flu can make a pregnant woman very sick and increase risks of complications for your baby. The flu shot can protect you from serious illness and help protect your baby after birth, too. Ask your doctor about getting a flu shot.
Pregnant women should receive a seasonal flu shot.
Influenza is more likely to cause severe illness in pregnant and postpartum women than in women who are not pregnant. Changes in the immune system, heart, and lungs during pregnancy make pregnant women more prone to severe illness from influenza.
Vaccination has been shown to reduce the risk of flu-associated acute respiratory infection in pregnant women by about one-half.
Getting a flu shot can reduce a pregnant woman’s risk of being hospitalized with flu by an average of 40 percent.
Pregnant women who get a flu shot are also helping to protect their babies from flu illness for the first several months after their birth, when they are too young to get vaccinated.
10. Get plenty of sleep.
Ample sleep (7 to 9 hours) is important for you and your baby. Try to sleep on your left side to improve blood flow.
Sleep should never be seen as a luxury. It’s a necessity — especially when you’re pregnant. In fact, women who are pregnant need a few more hours of sleep each night or should supplement nighttime sleep with naps during the day, according to the National Institutes of Health. For many pregnant women, getting 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night becomes more difficult the farther along they are in their pregnancy. There are many physical and emotional obstacles to sleep in this stage. Anxiety about being a mom or about adding to your family can keep you awake. Fear of the unknown or about the delivery can cause insomnia. Plus, there is the getting up every few hours to go to the bathroom. It also can be difficult to find a comfortable position in bed, especially if you are a former stomach sleeper.
11. Reduce stress
Reducing stress is crucial for improving birth outcomes. Pregnant women should avoid, as much as they can, stressful situations. Recruit your loved ones to help you manage stress in your life. Feeling stressed is common during pregnancy because pregnancy is a time of many changes. You may welcome these changes, but they can add new stresses to your life. High levels of stress that continue for a long time may cause health problems, like high blood pressure and heart disease. During pregnancy, stress can increase the chances of having a premature baby or a low-birthweight baby increasing the risk for other health problems.
12. Plan the right time to get pregnant.
“If you are choosing to become pregnant at a time when you know that you’re at your healthiest, that increases your chances of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy birth,” says Dr. Meadows.
This not only means that women should make sure that they are healthy before they become pregnant, but they also should consider their age before getting pregnant. Mothers who have children early in life (earlier than 16-years-old), or late in life (older than 40) are at greater risk for having a premature birth. Also, women who become pregnant again too soon (less than 18 months in between births) are even more likely to have a premature baby.
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