30/01/2022
Pregnancy + wellness = one healthy mama & baby
Staying active during pregnancy can help make your pregnancy a lot easier — and it can even make your labor shorter and recovery faster. Getting active during pregnancy may also make it less likely you'll have complications like: Gestational diabetes (a type of diabetes that happens during pregnancy)
During pregnancy, exercise can:
* Reduce backaches, constipation, bloating and swelling.
* Boost your mood and energy levels.
* Help you sleep better.
* Prevent excess weight gain.
* Promote muscle tone, strength and endurance.
* May decrease your risk of gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and cesarean delivery.
* Promotes healthy weight gain during pregnancy.
* Improves your overall general fitness and strengthens your heart and blood vessels.
These activities usually are safe during pregnancy:
* Walking. Taking a brisk walk is a great workout that doesn't strain your joints and muscles.
* Swimming and water workouts.
* Riding a stationary bike.
* Yoga and Pilates classes.
* Low-impact aerobics classes.
* Strength training.
* Hiking.
Prenatal yoga, hatha yoga and restorative yoga are great choices for pregnant women. They literally calm the body and mind, and therefore helps baby relax and learn to relax. Talk to the instructor about your pregnancy before starting any yoga class. Be careful to avoid hot yoga, which involves doing vigorous poses in a room heated to higher temperatures.
Nutrition. Eating a nutritious diet during pregnancy is linked to good brain development and a healthy birth weight, and can reduce the risk of many birth defects. A balanced diet will also reduce the risks of anemia, as well as other unpleasant pregnancy symptoms such as fatigue and morning sickness.
Consume foods and beverages rich in folate, iron, calcium, and protein. Talk with your health care professional about prenatal supplements (vitamins you may take while pregnant). Eat breakfast every day. Eat foods high in fiber, and drink fluids (particularly water) to avoid constipation.
Foods rich in folic acid include lentils, kidney beans, green leafy vegetables (spinach, romaine lettuce, kale, and broccoli), citrus fruits, nuts and beans. Folic acid is also added as a supplement to certain foods such as fortified breads, cereal, pasta, rice, and flours.
The bottom line
* Get moving.
* Eat healthy foods.
* Take a daily prenatal vitamin
* Stay hydrated.
* Go to your prenatal care checkups.
* Avoid certain foods such as: -High mercury fish, undercooked or raw fish, undercooked, raw, and processed meat such as: -lunch meat and hot dogs, (make sure they are cooked or microwaved till hot), raw eggs, caffeine, and unpasteurized (raw) milk products.
* Don't drink alcohol.
* Don't smoke.
* Get a prenatal massage (they work wonders for swelling, relieves lower back pain and other aches and pains associated with pregnancy, improves sleep, prepares your body for labor, improves range of motion, and teaches baby to relax by sensing mama relaxing. (Baby feels what mama feels).
Send this to any mamas-to-be in your life!
I also coach pregnant women to help them along their wellness journey and create customized workout and nutrition plans. Contact me for more info!
Stay well, Brittany Byma, LMT, CPT, Wellness Coach