Some myths about pregnancy still persist
Pregnancy has never been safer – a good reason for parents and children everywhere to celebrate on Mother's Day. Ironically, as major risks have receded into the past, minor risks have taken center stage. Pregnancy often feels like a minefield: Watch what you eat, watch how you exercise, watch what you do. But many of these worries are based on myths. Here are two of the most stubborn.
Myth No. 1
Prenatal vitamins are necessary for healthy pregnancies.
What to Expect, the website affiliated with the famous pregnancy advice book, explains prenatal vitamins as "an insurance policy, offering you the security of knowing that your body is stocking up on the most essential baby-making vitamins it needs to conceive and nourish your baby-to-be through a healthy pregnancy. "Baby Center, a popular parenting website, answers the question "Are prenatal vitamins really necessary?" with a solid "Yes."
Where did we get the idea that big, expensive multivitamins are necessary for a healthy pregnancy? As with so many aspects of nutrition in pregnancy, researchers studied women from developing countries, often women who were severely nutritionally deprived. Not surprisingly, for women who are chronically malnourished and lacking essential vitamins and nutrients, prenatal supplements can make a difference. Yet that does not mean they're necessary for women who already eat all the vitamins and minerals they need.
For women who aren't malnourished, nearly every vitamin and mineral contained in those bulky pills (with the exception of folate and iron) appears to have no impact on pregnancy outcomes. Since folate and iron are each available on their own, there's no need to take a huge, often nauseating prenatal vitamin, which does little more than give women expensive urine.
Myth No. 2
Pregnant women should monitor their diets carefully.
An Amazon search for books on the proper pregnancy diet turns up page after page with titles like "What to Eat When You're Pregnant: A Week-byWeek Guide to Support Your Health and Your Baby's Development" and "Eating for Pregnancy: The Essential Nutrition Guide and Cookbook for Today's Mothers-to-Be."
Despite alarming articles warning against foods from coffee to chicken wings, elaborate dietary rules aren't necessary. Myriadstudies show that nutritional changes can help women who are malnourished, but eating specific foods in specific quantities appears to have no effect on pregnancy outcomes in industrialized countries. There's no evidence that fad diets, restrictive diets or the Brewer diet, in which alternative-health practitioners advise a complicated regimen of 14 different categories of food daily, have any impact on the health of the baby or the incidence of complications.
The most important guidance for pregnant women in the United States involves foods that can transmit illnesses; that's why women should avoid undercooked meats and raw dairy products. But there is no evidence that small amounts of caffeine affect unborn babies. Studies on alcohol are more ambiguous. Although it is quite clear that large amounts of alcohol can cause fetal alcohol syndrome, the limit of safe consumption is unknown. There are some doctors who insist that if we don't know the exact limit, women should avoid any alcohol. But most believe that an occasional glass of wine or beer will not cause any problems.