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Eating during pregnancy
and what your drink
directly affects your baby

You're thinking my drinking and eating during pregnancy are important - right? And you'd be absolutely correct thinking that. In fact, what goes on in our womb is nothing short of amazing. Think of it as your babies class-womb!

Dr Keith Godfrey, of the Medical Research Council at the University of Southampton's School of Medicine, explains: "During pregnancy, the developing baby is wholly dependent upon the mother for an adequate and appropriate supply of nutrients. Everything the mother eats is filtered through the umbilical cord.”

Your eating during pregnancy
becomes what your baby will prefer

eating during pregnancy

For example, expectant mothers were given a daily dose of carrot juice to supplement their diet during pregnancy. The control group only drank water - the infants of the carrot juice mothers would later eat more cereal if it was presented to them with carrot juice when they went onto solids.

One of the biggest factors the determines a child's food choices is familiarity. The flavors of a mother's diet during pregnancy, infuse into the amniotic fluid.

Thus, according to Dr. Birch and her colleagues, depending on the diet of the mother's culture, unborn children become familiar with:
• to cinnamon, oregano, lemon and tomato if they are Greek;

• soy sauce, garlic, brown sugar and chili would dominate, if they are Korean;

• tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, oregano and basil, if they're Italian

• corn, beans, chili, garlic, tomatoes and limes if Mexican.

flavour of the world

Children also develop the physiological abilities to handle foods they're exposed to in the womb. For example, Mexican babies, who are exposed to a lot of chili in the womb eat chili way earlier than other children.

Eating during pregnancy
Eat the rainbow way

Yip, think how fabulous fruits and vegetables look all stacked up. A feast from nature for our eyes. And did you know that the various colors are usually pointing to a key nutrient.

eating during pregnancy

Red = contain an antioxidant - lycopene - thought to be good for reducing cancer. (Think red: tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, cherriews)

Orange and yello = also contain lycopene, beta-carotene which is turned to vitamin A in the body, flavonoids another antioxidant, potassium and vitamin C.(Think orange:carrots, oranges, sweet peppers)and (Think yellow: sweet peppers, sweetcorn, lemons)

Green = calcium and folate, vitamin C and beta-carotene (Think green: lettuce, cucumber, courgette, celery, spinach, kale, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, rocket, kiwi fruit)

Blue and purple = anthocyanin - another type of flavonoid, vitamin C, fiber and lutein- another antioxidant). (Think blue/purple: blueberries, aubergine, purple broccoli)

White = allicin, which may help your body to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and fight off infections more easily.(Think white: onions, garlic, leeks, pears, green grapes)

The closer to nature our food, the better chance we're giving our child a healthy start. The more processed the less nutritious.

Can we help our child develop a
less sweet tooth?

This raises for me another interesting thought. Children are genetically wired to prefer sweet things. And we know from research that when infants are given sweetened water during infancy are more likely to prefer sweet drinks at later ages, than children not fed sugar water who will drink very little of it.

But given how flavours from the mothers food reach the child via the umbilical cord and amniotic fluid, what happens if a mother's drinking during pregnancy consists of lots of coke, pepsi or soda drinker? Or her eating during pregnancy has donuts and cream puffs as a regular part of her diet? What impact might that have on her babies later taste preferences?

Mother's drinking during pregnancy

It’s not only food, but also substances that our unborn child responds to.

In one experiment, babies registered changes in fetal breathing and heart rate when mothers drank coffee (regardless of whether it was caffeinated or decaffeinated).

And drinking during pregnancy has reactions in the fetus that can be measured. An experiment measuring fetal reactions to mothers drinking one ounce of vodka in diet ginger ale, found that fetal breathing stops within 3 to 30 minutes and lasts more than a half hour even though the blood alcohol level of the mothers is low.

When the mothers’ blood alcohol levels went down as the vodka worked its way out her system, fetal breathing movements increased proportionally.

Given the effects of oxygen starvation to the brain, it makes me wonder if this hiatus in breathing could explain why pregnant mothers who are heavy drinkers during pregnancy produce children with fetal alcohol syndrome . There's no doubt that a babies physiology responds to, and changes according to what the alcohol mother is ingesting during her pregnancy.

Moderate drinking during pregnancy may be beneficial

Doctor Yvonne Kelly, from University College London, carried out the study finding that light drinking during pregnancy (one to two units a week, or on occasion) could be beneficial for your child.

Boys born to mothers who had up to 1-2 drinks per week or per occasion were less likely to have conduct problems and hyperactivity. Girls were less likely to have emotional symptoms and peer problems compared with those born to abstainers.

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My Pregnant Body

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