Pregnancy and Diet - Should We Avoid Anything?

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Ethical parenting starts from the moment one conceives – your first responsibility is to ensure your child receives optimal nutrition, through you, to grow into a beautiful baby human. One may not take this time seriously enough, and eat whatever they choose to and as much as they want. At the same time, we are told by health authorities what you should eat and what we should avoid, but should we really avoid these things? Will they affect our growing child negatively if we do or will our growing child be affected negatively if we don’t?

During my own pregnancy, I decided to research and look into the areas that I was told to exclude or restrict. Being someone who suffers from asthma, these restrictions seemed to be more crucial to me, as according to health authorities, my child would be more prone to asthma or allergies as a result. It didn’t seem to me to make sense to exclude the nuts, raw fish/eggs and shellfish – so I didn’t. I concluded after my research that it was best to expose my baby to these things, in small amounts, then to exclude completely because surely that would be more detrimental to his health. Even recently, I have seen on the news that it is now advised that mothers do not exclude peanuts from their diet completely if they have allergies, because of my very reason for not excluding foods. And that by not eating them, you child is more likely to get allergies instead! (http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91168-1285008,00.html)

This is the very reason I tend to avoid listening to health authorities and make my own well-informed decisions. I mean this isn’t about me, this is about my son, so I needed to take the time. In terms of diet, it might just be best to follow their advice, but clearly they were wrong about the peanuts. So my suggestion to anyone who is pregnant, would be to go with your own instincts and also to look into your diet yourself. I ended up eating raw egg yolk, sushi, sashimi and nuts! Of course I didn’t eat too much, for precaution, but I have always felt it was important to expose him to this. You shouldn’t do something just because you are told. Everyone has enough sense to know what to eat to maintain a healthy diet – a healthy diet to them and no matter your decision on it, as long as you are informed and have taken the time to pick the best option available, you are doing what is best for your child. I don’t think it is necessary for me to preach what you SHOULD eat, because that is your decision and as a mother, you are most likely to make the best choice.

Some links I have found useful in my search for an optimal diet are as follows:

http://www.youngerthanyourage.com/13/breastfeeding.htm (Although about formula milk, if you scroll down there is a section on maternal food).

http://www.waidiet.com

http://www.living-foods.com/articles/rawpregnancy.html- this article covers one woman’s experience over, not only pregnancy, but after. Thought provoking and well worth taking the time to read.