Eating healthy while pregnant has been an ongoing process for me that I continue to perfect. During my first pregnancy, DH and I were learning how to eat well. We still went to certain fast food restaurants occasionally, and I even remember partaking of some run-of-the-mill Costco desserts at my workplace. Shortly after Tie-Dye was born I called Taco Bell headquarters and asked for the ingredients of some of my favorite items. I was disappointed to find out that the taco meat contained sugar, and the tortillas had hydrogenated oil. Though it was difficult at the time, DH and I gave up Taco Bell for good. This encouraged us to come up with our own recipes to mimic Taco Bell food, and we developed a great Homemade Grilled Stuft Burrito recipe! (To view this recipe, click on the Comments section at the end of this blog post.)
By the time I was pregnant for the second time, my diet was substantially better. I no longer ate any refined sugar (until we went on a cruise during my seventh month and I know I ate sugar during that week!).
Now, during my third pregnancy, I've changed a few other things. This time I've been aiming for greater variety in my diet, including a lot more low mercury fish. For a great list of safe fish during pregnancy and child-bearing years check out the American Pregnancy Association's site. DH and I eat fish almost every morning for breakfast now. Another great benefit to this is that our boys eat more fish too. They love salmon or tuna sandwiches for lunch. We have been doing a 4-day rotation diet. This way we are constantly eating different fruits and veggies, proteins and whole grains. This is a big change for us. DH and I are both such creatures of habit. We would have been content eating our favorite same few things over and over again. Recently we've come to learn, however, that eating this way can cause the body to develop allergies to these foods. For instance, we used to eat eggs every day, often more than once a day. Same thing with cheese, spinach and wheat products. Now we are enjoying the tastes of new foods. Amaranth muffins, barley pancakes, corn grits, cream of buckwheat... it is a pleasant change to try new things!
As far as supplements go, I take one all-natural Rainbow Light pre-natal vitamin every morning, along with Carlson's fish oil and Vitamin C.
Something else I really enjoy, both when pregnant and not, is the delightful beverage called kefir. Kefir is packed full of pro-biotics (lots more than yogurt) and is great for the digestive system. Kefir is available in most health food stores, but you can make your own, as we do. For lots of great information about kefir check out Dom's Kefir site. My boys love it too, even though it's not sweet at all. It sort of reminds me of buttermilk.
Hopefully this new baby is benefiting from the varied diet I've been eating. There are no guarantees that anyone will have a healthy baby, but we pregnant mothers make a choice every time we put something into our mouths. We do have the power to eat the best foods possible while our babies are depending upon us for all their nutritional needs.
