Eat (a wide variety of) veggies

Research shows that exposing your baby to variety of nutritious foods when pregnant and breastfeeding increases the likelihood that the baby will accept those tastes down the road. Make those upcoming toddler years hopefully a little easier by increasing the variety of your own vegetable intake now!

If you want more details...

This is a link to a USDA website intended for health professionals where you can enter your height, weight, activity level, and stage of pregnancy (or lactation), and the website will calculate your recommended daily intake and your tolerable upper limit intake for vitamins and minerals, in additional to suggested caloric intake. If you are concerned about whether you are getting enough or too much of any specific nutrient, this site will give you specific guidelines.

The screen shot on the right is a part of the data output from what I entered for myself. The "check/uncheck all" button doesn't seem to be functioning, so you have to manually click on each macronutrient, vitamin, and mineral you are interested in seeing.

Though the nutrition in pregnancy section of the new www.chosemyplate.gov nutrition website is not yet functional, here is a somewhat blurry screenshot of a pdf with details on the current nutrition in pregnancy recommendations. Click here for the actual pdf.

Iron Women

Most pregnant women are encouraged to routinely take an iron supplement, especially in the second and third trimesters. Anemic mothers have an increased risk of preterm delivery, and there are also some concerns about the impact of maternal anemia on a developing baby’s neurological development. However, too much iron can also be problematic, both in terms of discomfort in the short term, and in possible increased risk for coronary heart disease in the mother. Some studies also show poorer fetal health outcomes when mothers consumed excessive iron (most of us are on the other end of the spectrum). Iron is more easily absorbed if taken in more than one dose throughout the day, and if consumed with a food high in vitamin C. If your diet contains high levels of iron, discuss with your doctor or midwife whether/how much you should be supplementing iron. Current recommendations are 27 mg/day, though vegetarian sources of iron are not as easily absorbed as meat and poultry options. Vegetarians may need to increase iron intake to 33 mg/day.

How does this add up?

Molasses Cookie (made with blackstrap molasses)= 2.7 mg iron

1/2 cup cooked spinach= 2 mg iron

½ cup lentils- 3.3 mg iron

3 oz dark turkey meat or 3 oz Sirloin= 2 mg iron

½ cup Total cereal= 18 mg iron

Total= 28 mg iron