So try to get more fiber than you did before you became pregnant. Try to eat about 20 to 30 grams of fiber a day. Your best sources are fresh fruits and vegetables and whole-grain breads, cereals, or muffins.
Some people use fiber tablets or drinks or other high-fiber products, but check with your doctor before trying them.
Don't use laxatives while you're pregnant unless your doctor advises you to do so. And avoid the old wives' remedy — castor oil — because it can actually interfere with your body's ability to absorb nutrients. If constipation is a problem for you, your doctor may prescribe a stool softener.
Be sure to drink plenty of fluids, especially water, when increasing fiber intake, or you can make your constipation worse. One of the best ways to avoid constipation is to get more exercise. Drink plenty of water between meals each day to help soften your stools and move food through your digestive system.
Sometimes hot tea, soups, or broth can help. Also, keep dried fruits handy for snacking. Some pregnant women find that broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, and fried foods give them heartburn or gas. You can plan a balanced diet to avoid these foods.
Carbonated drinks also cause gas or heartburn for some women, although others find they calm the digestive system. If you're often nauseated, eat small amounts of bland foods, like toast or crackers, throughout the day.
Some women find it helpful to eat foods made with ginger. To help combat nausea, you can also:. Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. Eating Well When You're Pregnant Do you wonder how it's reasonable to gain 25 to 35 pounds on average during your pregnancy when a newborn baby weighs only a fraction of that? Although it varies from woman to woman, this is how those pounds may add up: 7. Here are some of the most common nutrients you need and the foods that contain them:. Food and Drinks to Avoid While Pregnant No level of alcohol consumption is considered safe during pregnancy.
Foods to steer clear of include: soft, unpasteurized cheeses often advertised as "fresh" such as feta, goat, Brie, Camembert, and blue cheese unpasteurized milk, juices, and apple cider raw eggs or foods containing raw eggs, including mousse and tiramisu raw or undercooked meats, fish, or shellfish processed meats such as hot dogs and deli meats these should be thoroughly cooked fish that are high in mercury, including shark, swordfish, king mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, tuna steak bigeye or ahi , and tilefish If you've eaten these foods at some point during your pregnancy, try not to worry too much about it now; just avoid them for the remainder of the pregnancy.
Talk with your doctor if you have any questions about how much — and which — fish you can eat. Scientists may have looked into the effects of fetal flavour learning on infancy and early childhood, but as Alison Ventura, assistant professor in nutritional sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia, points out "not into adolescence and adulthood.
That's a good question: how strong is this effect. How long does it last? What are the other possible factors that might mediate the effect over time? You can imagine it's pretty complex — that having broccoli when you're a foetus doesn't mean you're going to love it when you're an adult. Have you seen any correlation between what you ate while pregnant and your children's tastes?
Or did yours disprove the rule? Follow Amy Fleming on Twitter. Call it the milk of life — not breast milk, but womb milk. For the first time, researchers have worked out in detail how nutrients make their way from these glands into the developing embryo.
During pregnancy, the lining of the uterus behaves quite differently to normal: the glands start storing large amounts of glucose as glycogen, which is then secreted to nourish the embryo during its first 11 weeks. But how the glycogen and other materials for baby-building were transported to the embryo and placenta was a mystery until now. To investigate, Aplin and his colleagues examined womb, placenta and embryonic tissue donated by women who had chosen to terminate their pregnancies.
Photo credit: Jonathan Dimes for BabyCenter. What is the placenta? What does the placenta do? When does the placenta form? How the placenta works Harmful substances that cross the placenta Delivering the placenta What you can do for your placenta before you get pregnant What you can do for your placenta during pregnancy. It delivers oxygen and nutrients such as vitamins, glucose, and water from your body to the baby's, and processes the waste products from your baby.
It produces the hormones that help your baby grow and develop. It allows antibodies to pass to your baby from your bloodstream. These antibodies protect against certain bacterial infections and viral illnesses, like diphtheria and measles, until after your baby is born and old enough to get his first vaccinations. How the placenta works The placenta connects to the umbilical cord through thousands of microscopic "fingers" of tissue chorionic villi containing a network of blood vessels.
Harmful substances that cross the placenta Along with all the good things that are transferred to your baby, some harmful ones can cross the placenta too. Delivering the placenta A few minutes after your baby is born, the placenta detaches from the wall of your uterus and is delivered through your vagina. What you can do for your placenta before you get pregnant Get vaccinated. What you can do for your placenta during pregnancy Here are a few things you can do to promote a healthy placenta and a healthy baby: Go to all your prenatal checkups and work with your healthcare provider to manage any health conditions, such as high blood pressure , which can cause problems with the placenta.
Use caution when taking prescribed and over-the-counter medications during pregnancy because most cross the placenta. Although many medications are considered safe for your baby , a few are known to cause birth defects. And for many drugs, there simply is not enough research to know their effects on an unborn baby. Your provider can help you determine whether the benefits of a certain drug outweigh the risks in your case.
Get all recommended vaccinations during pregnancy, including a flu shot and a Tdap vaccine to protect against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis whooping cough. Both the flu and pertussis can be life-threatening for babies, and getting these vaccines while you're pregnant enables antibodies to pass through the placenta that will protect your newborn from catching these illnesses. Don't smoke or use drugs. Placental problems, like placental abruption , are more common in women who smoke, use illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin , or abuse medications like opioids.
Talk to your provider about the risks before choosing to deliver by c-section if there's no medical reason to do so. Each c-section you have increases your risk of serious complications in future pregnancies, including placenta previa and placenta accreta.
Learn more: Placenta previa Placenta accreta Placental abruption Slideshow: Fetal development, week by week.
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