Pregnancy All-in-One For Dummies
Overview
Your all-encompassing guide to having a happy, healthy pregnancy Are you an expectant parent looking for sound, expert guidance as you prepare to welcome a new addition to your family? Pregnancy All-in-One For Dummies has done the legwork for you, offering a one-stop compilation of the hottest topics and most relevant information culled from several successful For Dummies pregnancy titles. Covering everything from conception to the delivery room—and beyond—it gives moms and dads-to-be the reassuring answers they need during this very special time. Your pregnancy and childbirth experiences should be happy ones, but they're bound to be rife with questions—especially if you're a first-time parent, having a child later in life, or embarking on your first multiple birth. Luckily, this friendly guide is here to put your mind at ease, offering authoritative coverage of everything you can expect to encounter in the first, second, and third trimesters of pregnancy, as well as all the special considerations you may come across along the way, such as diet, exercise, labor and delivery options, breastfeeding, and so much more.
- Make pregnancy and childbirth an enjoyable experience
- Find out about nutrients that are critical to your baby's development
- Get authoritative guidance on making a birth plan
Why turn to dozens of pregnancy resources when all the helpful, down-to-earth guidance you're looking for is right here, in one convenient place?
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The Experts at Dummies are smart, friendly people who make learning easy by taking a not-so-serious approach to serious stuff.
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pregnancy all-in-one for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Moms-to-be and their partners have a lot of questions when they first discover they’re expecting. The first questions of many soon-to-be parents focus on big-picture issues: how the baby develops, how to ensure a safe and healthy pregnancy, and what to expect during each trimester. Yet even small comforts can mean a lot when you’re carrying another human being inside of you.
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If you want to feel great during pregnancy, radiate good health, wake up refreshed and energetic and stay that way all day long (well, most days, anyway), avoid major health problems, and provide all the nutrients your baby needs, you must regularly eat well. Here are five tricks that will set you on the right path during your pregnancy:
Fill up on the good stuff.
Postpartum
During pregnancy, your biggest stumbling blocks to regular workouts may have involved getting motivated to work out, finding the energy to exercise, and finding time to work out on long days that included visits to your healthcare provider. After the baby is born, however, your biggest challenges may be what in the world to do with your new baby during your workout and how to find time between all those feedings, changings, and your baby’s other needs — in addition to still being short on sleep and time.
General Pregnancy
For a few pregnant women, vomiting during pregnancy becomes so excessive that it can harm them or their babies. This condition is called hyperemesis gravidarum. Typically, hyperemesis gravidarum is characterized by severe nausea, vomiting, weight loss of more than 5 percent, and evidence of dehydration. Check your symptoms and compare to the information below to recognize the difference between morning sickness and serious illness.
Labor
It’s one thing to know, plan for, and write a birth plan based on a scheduled cesarean birth; it’s quite another to get into labor — sometimes nearly all the way to the end — and then find out you need to have a C-section.
Most of the time, an unscheduled cesarean isn’t an emergency. In that case, you have a chance to ask questions and make your wishes known about who will be in the operating room with you and whether you want to have your baby with you right after birth (as long as neither you nor the baby has life-threatening complications requiring immediate care).
Heartburn is common during pregnancy and can happen at any time throughout your 40 weeks, although it often gets worse in the second and third trimesters. Heartburn has two causes, and both are related to the sphincter muscle that connects the esophagus to your stomach. The progesterone your body produces relaxes that sphincter muscle, and your growing uterus presses on it.
Birth plans make pretty great advocacy tools, but they aren't always perfect. Here are some common birth-plan pitfalls and how you can avoid stumbling into them:
Not making a plan because you feel overwhelmed: Considering all the options for your birth can be overwhelming. So many choices to make! If you feel exhausted just thinking about it, remember that you don't have to have an opinion on every aspect of birth.
General Pregnancy
Carbohydrates (or carbs, as they're often called) are your body's (and your baby's) preferred source of energy, providing you with the glucose you need to keep your brain functioning. Some examples of carb-containing foods include grains (bread, cereal, oatmeal, and tortillas, just to name a few), fruits, vegetables, milk, desserts, and anything that contains sugar.
General Pregnancy
Although a handful of pregnant women have trouble gaining enough weight, most are at a higher risk of going overboard and putting on too many pounds. Typically, that extra weight comes in the form of 20 or 30 extra pounds of fat, resulting in a total weight gain of 50 or 70 pounds over the course of the pregnancy.
General Pregnancy
Your body undergoes dramatic changes during pregnancy, and these physical changes can make women downright uncomfortable for much of the 40-week duration. These changes range from how your heart and lungs operate to how you process the food you eat to how your muscles and joints change.One of the best ways to alleviate the discomfort of many of the changes your body is experiencing is to exercise.
Exercise has four main components: intensity, duration, frequency, and type. By putting these components together during your pregnancy, you build strength, cardiovascular fitness, and flexibility without injuring yourself or being uncomfortable. All four pieces of the exercise puzzle fit together, though, so you need to think of each as you and your healthcare provider develop a workout plan.
General Pregnancy
Rule number one of pregnancy nutrition: Don't let anyone tell you (and don't tell yourself either!) that you're eating for two. Thankfully, your baby will never be as big as you while inhabiting your uterus. To think that you need to eat as many calories to support your baby as you need to support yourself is misguided.
Labor
Most delivery rooms are sterile-looking places because, in fact, they have to be germ-free. However, that doesn't mean that you can't do something to enhance the atmosphere while you're delivering your baby. You won't be allowed to light candles in a hospital, but you can tape some photos to the wall, bring a boom box to play some background music, and even spray a favorite scent into the air.
General Pregnancy
You're not the only one who benefits from your fit pregnancy — your baby gets in on the action, too! Women who exercise during pregnancy see the following benefits in their babies.
A better-functioning placenta
Okay, so your baby may not thank you for producing a better-functioning placenta the way he would thank you for, say, a car when he turns 16, but a better-functioning placenta is actually better for your baby than any hot rod will ever be!
During the first trimester (weeks 1–13), you want to continue whatever physical activities you’ve been doing. If you’re new to exercise, get into exercise very gently. Either way, consider the following potential modifications and tips during this trimester:
If your breasts are sore, you experience morning sickness (or nausea/vomiting any time of day), or you’re experiencing extreme fatigue, cut back on your routine or forgo exercise until you feel better.
During the second trimester (weeks 14–26), you may feel better than at any other time during your pregnancy. Continue to monitor your body's reaction to exercise, and if you feel good enough to do so, consider increasing the duration or intensity of your workouts. Also keep the following potential modifications and other tips in mind:
Sometime during this trimester, you want to shop for a new sports bra, because your existing one is probably getting too tight.
In the third trimester (weeks 27–40), depending on how you feel, you may need to switch to low-impact activities, such as walking, swimming, and indoor cycling. In fact, some women are so fatigued and have so much difficulty moving around that they aren't able to exercise at all during the third trimester, but if you can, keep it up.
Postpartum
Studies show that women who exercise during pregnancy have a much easier time returning to their pre-pregnancy weight and size than women who don't exercise while pregnant. In addition, having a fit pregnancy also gets you up and around faster after you deliver and helps you not crumple while carrying your ever-growing baby in your arms.
Even though you may be nervous about the weight you'll gain, pregnancy is not the time to go on a fat-free diet! Fat plays a key role in developing your baby's brain and keeping your brain and nervous system running smoothly. It's also an energy source for your body and helps keep you feeling fuller longer.
Aim to get 20 to 35 percent of your calories from fat.
The best way to gain weight during your pregnancy is to gain it gradually. Doing so ensures your baby is getting good nutrition throughout the entire 40 weeks. The pounds you gain will distribute themselves in various tissues of your body, including fat and fluid, as well as your developing baby.
Gaining some fat deposits when you're pregnant is normal and actually necessary!
The key to post-pregnancy weight loss is to take it slow and steady, just as you did when gaining weight while you were pregnant. After all, you didn't gain all those pounds overnight, and they certainly won't come off that fast!
As you get started, focus on eating smaller portions and leaving a few bites behind on your plate.
Now that you're expecting, your goal is to avoid gaining the "pregnancy 50" (or more). Without exercise, you need only about 300 extra calories per day to gain enough weight to feed and support your developing baby — not twice as many calories as you needed before you became pregnant.What happens to many pregnant women is that they follow the "eating for two" advice and see pregnancy as a time to eat whatever they want in whatever quantity feels good — and pregnancy can make you feel very hungry!
When you're pregnant, the key is to eat small quantities frequently throughout the day. People tend to focus most of their nutrition attention on what to eat or what not to eat. Not nearly enough attention goes toward how to eat.
Eating frequent, small meals
In the first trimester, the goal of eating small amounts frequently is to prevent nausea by having a little bit of food in your stomach at all times (that way, your stomach doesn't have to go into acid overload).
You may wonder why you should bother considering all the many options for dealing with events that may not even happen during your birth. The reason is simple: Thinking straight is much easier when you're not in labor. And unless you bring your laptop into the labor room, researching your choices is difficult when you're in the trenches, so to speak.
General Pregnancy
Plenty of mothers-to-be are intimidated at the thought of considering the pros and cons of a medical procedure — especially if they then decide to go against their medical practitioner's protocols or routines. If you feel unqualified to make decisions about childbirth, the good news is you're not the first person to confront all these choices, and you don't have to make them on your own.
General Pregnancy
Some nutrients are of special concern during pregnancy, and you may want to take a closer look at them so you can really understand what they do for your growing baby, how much of them you need, and what you can eat to get them.
Folate (folic acid)
Folate (the food form), also called folic acid (the supplement form), plays a key role in developing your baby's spinal cord early in pregnancy, but it's also an important nutrient to get later in pregnancy.
General Pregnancy
Moms-to-be and their partners have a lot of questions when they first discover they’re expecting. The first questions of many soon-to-be parents focus on big-picture issues: how the baby develops, how to ensure a safe and healthy pregnancy, and what to expect during each trimester. Yet even small comforts can mean a lot when you’re carrying another human being inside of you.
One of the best ways to get yourself ready for childbirth is by exercising during your pregnancy. Anyone who tells you that childbirth is a breeze isn't being very honest with you. Childbirth is hard, and you don't want to approach it without being physically ready.
Having a less complicated delivery
Several research studies have shown that women who exercise have fewer complications during delivery, including instances of fetal intervention because of abnormal fetal heart rates, forceps deliveries (in which a large tong-like tool helps the baby come out), and cesarean deliveries (in which the baby is surgically removed from the uterus).
General Pregnancy
Protein is made up of amino acids, which are basically the building blocks of every cell in your body and in your developing baby's body. Aim to get 20 percent of your daily calories from protein (that's about 100 grams per day if you're eating a 2,000-calorie diet).A single gram of protein contains 4 calories.
During your second trimester (weeks 14 through 27), you need to take in an extra 300 to 350 calories. The second trimester (weeks 14 through 27) is a time of incredible growth for your baby. She goes from weighing only about an ounce at the end of week 13 to weighing more than 2 pounds by the end of week 26.To support your little one's growth during this phase of pregnancy, you need to consume about 300 to 350 extra calories per day.
During the third trimester (weeks 28 through 40), you need to take in an extra 450 to 500 calories. During the third trimester, your baby gains about 4 more pounds. Because you're now carrying around even more weight than you were in the second trimester, you need to consume more calories so you have the energy to cart that extra weight around.
A birth plan not only helps you to cope during labor and delivery; it also helps you think clearly and logically about the kind of birth you want and what that requires. Maybe you're wondering what your birth-plan options actually are. Here's a list of the basics:
Where do you want to give birth? You may give birth at home, in a hospital, or at a birth center.
Everyone's ideal image of birth is different. One mother may consider the perfect birth to be in a well-equipped hospital with an immediate epidural, and another mother may consider her perfect birth to be at home, with no drugs, and in a birthing pool. There's nothing necessarily right or wrong about these different visions (although most people think their ideal birth is the best one!
General Pregnancy
During pregnancy, you're literally forming a new life within your body — an act that requires more than just carbs, protein, and fat. Vitamins and minerals are also important members of the nutrition team, playing many different roles in the growth and development of your baby.A supplement is one way to ensure you're getting the vitamins and minerals you and your little one need throughout your pregnancy.
In a nutshell, a fit pregnancy means that during the nine months between the time you conceive and the time you go into labor, you're doing the following:
You're setting yourself up for an easier labor and delivery. This is what you've been waiting to hear, isn't it? Women who exercise during pregnancy deliver their babies about five days earlier, spend less time in labor, experience fewer complications during labor and delivery, have fewer inductions and cesarean deliveries, and need fewer drugs to relieve pain than women who don't exercise.
Labor
Whether you’re in labor, being induced, or having a cesarean delivery, you need to be admitted to the hospital’s labor floor. If you preregistered earlier in your pregnancy (ask your practitioner about the process), your records are already on the labor floor when you arrive, and a hospital unit number is assigned to you.
Put simply, a birth plan is a document you create to communicate your wishes and requests to your medical practitioner, the birth team, and your support team (whether that's your partner, a doula, or someone else). You write the plan months before labor begins, when you have time to research and think through your options — preferably before contractions make concentrating difficult!
General Pregnancy
Losing weight isn't uncommon during the first trimester, especially if you experience a lot of morning sickness. But if you get well into your second trimester without gaining much, if any, weight, your doctor will likely inquire more about your nutrition and exercise habits. He or she may even refer you to a registered dietitian (RD) for customized guidance.
General Pregnancy
The majority of the extra calories you get while you're pregnant should come from three sources: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Of course, variety is the spice of life, and it should definitely be a part of your diet, whether you're pregnant or not. If you eat the same foods all the time, you get the same nutrients all the time.
General Pregnancy
Although many options exist, everything isn't available in every birth facility or with every medical practitioner. Birth location policies and your medical practitioner's practices have a big effect on your options and on the chances of getting the birth you want. Planning early for the birth gives you time to do the following:
Interview medical practitioners: If you start planning early, you'll have more time to consider the right practitioner for you and have time to switch if necessary.
A written birth plan helps you communicate your concerns and wishes to your medical practitioner. Discussing your plans for childbirth before you go into labor is essential, and having a written plan in hand can be a huge help.
Never assume your medical practitioner's idea of the perfect birth is similar to your own.
Being pregnant obviously comes with specific nutrition requirements, but so does giving birth to your child and recovering from that birth. No matter how you end up delivering, your body will require energy and specific nutrients to heal itself.
Eat protein foods (think meats, eggs, dairy, and beans) because they're essential for repairing your body.
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