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Eating during pregnancy
and drinking during pregnancy
directly affects your baby

eating during pregnancy

You would be absolutely correct if thinking that your drinking when pregnant and your eating during pregnancy are important. They impact on your growing pregnancy in a much more important way than you might realize. What goes on in your womb is nothing short of amazing. Think of it as your babies eating class-womb!

This is why it's really never a good idea to go on a diet of restriction and deprivation when you're pregnant, your growing baby needs it's nutrients. That's why eating during pregnancy is such a big deal. So, if your doctor is concerned about your weight during pregnancy then make sue you choose a weight loss plan that is SAFE for you and your unborn baby.

Dr Keith Godfrey, of the Medical Research Council at the University of Southamptons 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.”

So if you're wondering what to eat when pregnant, think about the nutrients in the food you're eating. Generally speaking, if it's good for you, it's good for baby.

Your eating during pregnancy
becomes what your baby will prefer

Amongst new Mum's there is a lot of uncertainty and debate about what to eat when pregnant. The important thing to remember is that whatever you are eating during pregnancy, it is already impacting on your baby's food preferences, be that blueberries, lemons, tomatoes, grapes, corn or just plain old junk food.

Look at this fascinating research about how a baby's preferences are affected by flavors of our drinking during pregnancy and also our eating during pregnancy. Expectant mothers were given a daily dose of carrot juice to supplement their diet during pregnancy whereas a control group only drank water. After birth, the infants of the carrot juice mothers would later eat more cereal if it was presented to them with carrot juice. 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 eating during pregnancy of the mother, 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.

flavor 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.

If you're invested in giving your child the best start in life - you need to really understand what is going on in the womb during that 9 months, and how that continues into childhood. I'd highly recommend reading How to get your Child to Eat Healthy the easy peasy way..

It's packed with amazing research about how your child's eating habits are being formed starting in the womb. It's simply the best book around to bringing up children without food fights who love healthy food. But children's food preferences start in the womb, so get it NOW!

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 flavors 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?

For the most fabulous, kid-friendly eating guide, I can highly recommend 'The Green Eating Guide.'

Alcohol 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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