Building a healthy baby
You have 40 weeks of food choices. Proceed with care, Casey Seidenberg writes.
When I was pregnant the first time, I read what I thought to be one of the greatest perspectives on eating during pregnancy.
Nina Planck, author of Real Food and Real Food for Mother and Baby, wrote, “You have about 40 weeks to build a baby.”
It made me feel as though I had some control over building a healthy baby, which ultimately empowered me to eat well.
Second, I appreciated her message that building a baby is not a sprint, but a 40-week-long marathon.
This alleviated some of the pressure that everything I did had to be perfect. A few bowls of ice cream, some lazy days without exercise or a late night out would not break my baby. This was a relief.
Although this takes the pressure off each meal, there are certain nutrients that are vital to a baby’s healthy growth:
Iron helps strengthen the mother’s blood that carries the baby’s food to the placenta. Pregnant women produce almost 50 per cent more blood.
Iron supplements are not absorbed as easily as the iron in whole foods such as red meat, fish, poultry, clams, oysters and blackstrap molasses. Vitamin C is required for the absorption of iron, so include citrus fruits and tomatoes in your meals. Green vegetables such as spinach and kale provide a vegetarian form of iron that is less easily absorbed by the body.
Protein cannot be stored by the baby so must be ingested ideally daily. Good sources include salmon, chicken, eggs, beans, quinoa, nuts and seeds.
Calcium is needed for bone and muscle growth, and to keep the baby’s circulatory and nervous systems running optimally. Foods with calcium include salmon, leafy greens, almonds, chickpeas and beans.
B vitamins, especially folic acid, help build the spinal cord and brain. Folic acid can be found in leafy green vegetables, eggs, brewer’s yeast and avocados.
DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, is needed for brain development, especially in fetuses. Sixty per cent of the brain is made from structural fat, the omega-3 fatty acids being the most essential.
DHA comes from wild salmon and other fatty fish, and even pure fish oil supplements. If you are a vegetarian and choose not to eat fish or fish oil, walnuts, flaxseed and chia seeds have another omega-3 fat called ALA, five to 10 per cent of which gets converted to DHA.
Other vitamins have important jobs. Vitamin A constructs organs such as the heart; vitamin C encourages tissue growth; vitamin D builds bones and boosts immune health; and vitamin E protects the baby’s cells. All are particularly critical in the first trimester.
“Your baby’s parts — her tiny liver, lungs, toes — are made of micronutrients called vitamins, so you hardly need to eat anything extra in the first trimester. Just eat well,” says Planck.
“Your baby’s structure — his bone and muscle — are made of calcium and protein, so have plenty of both the second trimester.”
Then in the third, “Your baby’s brain is made of fish, so it’s important to eat plenty of seafood at the end.”
It’s a common pregnancy myth that you need to eat for two. This is just not true, especially in the
first trimester when your body and the baby do not require any additional calories.
Even in the second and third trimesters, you need just a few hundred extra calories.
The progesterone you produce while pregnant makes your body more efficient at absorbing nutrients, and the best way to get your baby the most nutrition is to eat a variety of whole foods.
Another pregnancy fiction is that eating junk food is better than eating nothing at all. Junk food provides no nutritional benefit to the baby and can deplete your body of the essential nutrients you have already stored.
You don’t have to abstain completely; the joy you get from occasional ice cream, or the morning sickness relief you may feel from an occasional ginger ale is something to enjoy.
Just remember moderation wins and whole foods are always a better choice.