Don't Be Stressed Out, Enjoy Being Pregnant
Pregnancy should be one of the most celebrated events in a woman's life. It is the fulfillment of a miracle that only women can perform --- the ability to bear and deliver life from the womb. Seen in this perspective, pregnancy can be said to be very empowering for women. However, not all pregnant women enjoy this phase in their lives. Several reports and studies have already been made about women who undergo extreme feelings of stress and anxiety during their pregnancy. As a result, the babies of those stressed and anxious mothers are also affected by their mothers' negative disposition. A stressful pregnancy can actually cause the infants to be born prematurely or become underweight. It is also said to eventually affect an infant's mood and behavior.
The stress and anxiety felt by pregnant women arise from various factors. One possible reason is that pregnancy causes women to gain weight and somehow distort their pre-pregnancy, nicely-curved bodies. Some women believe that these changes in their body structure make them look ugly and they cannot wear anymore the clothes that they used to wear before. They then feel low and develop insecurities which can contribute to their stress. Another possible reason can be the “heaviness" that pregnant women experience because of their added weight. This causes them to have low-back pains and limits them from doing certain activities that they used to do. Other career women who are forced to temporarily stop working because of their pregnancy feel bored with the change in their lifestyle. The idleness, compounded with possible insecurities, also causes their stress and anxiety. During this phase, women tend to feel lonely more often and afraid that they have to face the difficulty of delivering their babies alone. Moreover, worrying about how to lose weight and how to lose the stretch marks that they develop also stress some pregnant women.
Fortunately, some Hollywood stars and experts in this field have offered advice and tips for women on how to lessen or totally lose stress and anxiety during their pregnancy. The main goal, according to them, is for pregnant women to enjoy the whole experience. Pregnancy should be approached with a sense of excitement and liveliness, but always with utmost care. It cannot be denied that this phase is very delicate and one wrong move can either cause harm to the baby or the mother or even to both of them. However, this does not mean that pregnant women should just sulk in a corner and wait for their boring pregnancy days to be over. Every day is full of new discoveries and changes for pregnant women. The key is to be open to these changes and deal with them positively. Further advice and tips on diet, fashion, activities and losing the pregnancy weight and stretch marks are discussed below.
Diet
Most pregnant women have a misconception of pregnancy as a period of indulgence. According to obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Raul Artal, indulging on food high in calories such as sweets can pose a danger of pre-eclampsia, high blood pressure, or diabetes. “Eating for two" during pregnancy applies more to the amount of nutrients that a pregnant woman should consume rather than the amount of calories. Foods that are high in nutrients such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, lean meats and low-fat dairy products are more recommended. The top 5 nutrients that pregnant women actually need are calcium, folate, iron, protein, and vitamin C. Eating healthy can also decrease the feeling of tiredness and fatigue. Finally, avoid skipping meals during pregnancy. According to Dr. Laura Caufield, the risk of having premature labor increases among those who habitually skip meals. Eating breakfast is also important to avoid feeling lightheaded, famished, and sick to your stomach.
Fashion
Being pregnant does not mean being out of fashion. A pregnant woman can still look sexy and beautiful by choosing the right kind of clothes. Start with the bottom pieces first such as short cotton interlock skirt, black leggings, twill pants and denim jeans. Mix and match these pieces to tops with fashionable styles and colors. Fashion pieces such as boot leg jumpsuits, print dresses and coordinating pant suit are also necessary. For fabulous maternity outfits that are styled to fit their figure, pregnant women can check out top quality shops like Japanese Weekend, Belly Basics, and Duet Designs. Actresses Jennifer Garner and Heidi Klum are among the famous clients of these shops.
Activities
Some women feel tired and lazy to move around during their pregnancy. Other pregnant women are left with no other choice but to sulk at home because of not knowing what to really do. Celebrities like Catherine Zeta-Jones suggest that taking yoga classes or practicing yoga at home is very good during pregnancy. It helps pregnant women to focus, cultivate awareness, maintain optimum health, be flexible, and strong as well as develop stillness and calmness within. Practicing Lamaze techniques of childbirth during pregnancy days is also good for strengthening the bond between couples and increasing the confidence of the pregnant woman. Other fun activities that pregnant women can actually do, and some activities being unique only for them, are making pregnancy belly casts, pregnancy belly painting, taking dance classes, doing pre-baby window shopping, having a pregnancy massage and spa treatment and planning or organizing a baby bash.
Losing weight and stretch marks
Hollywood stars like Reese Witherspoon are noted to have taken yoga classes to lose weight after pregnancy. Catherine Zeta-Jones followed a strict diet of low-carbohydrate and high-protein intake. Debra Messing reported that breast-feeding her son after she gave birth helped her lose 33 pounds. Kate Hudson, on the other hand, worked out two to three hours a day, 6 days per week to lose her excess pregnancy weight. According to diet experts, losing baby weight is always a combination of proper, healthy diet, and exercise. Even simple walking around the neighborhood every afternoon while eating small portions of food every meal can already be a big help. Aside from excess weight, pregnant women are also bothered by another change, this time concerning their skin. Because of the increase in their body size, the skin adapts to it through stretching as well. However, because of this, stretch marks develop all over their body especially in the stomach area. According to some skin experts, stretch marks can be avoided through eating food that will highly nourish the skin and drinking the recommended amount of water per day. The skin is more prone to having stretch marks when it is dry, thus, taking a lot of liquids and applying moisturizer twice or thrice a day will help a lot. Finally, the best way to avoid stretch marks despite growing body size and weight is to grow gradually. The same is said about losing weight, to do it in gradation, to avoid having the horrible marks.
A Saint Louis University study has found that during pregnancy, severely obese women should lose weight while obese women should gain less weight than recommended.
The study was conducted by Raul Artal, M.D., and chairman of the department of obstetrics, gynaecology and women’s health at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
“This study confirms what we’ve suspected all along — that obese women don’t have to gain any weight during their pregnancy,” Dr. Artal said.
The study analysed the pregnancies of more than 120,000 obese women to see how weight gain affected preeclampsia.
Preeclampsia is high blood pressure brought on by pregnancy; caesarean delivery; and birth size.
The study showed that limiting weight gain of obese women during pregnancy had many benefits.
Women with a BMI of 35, who gain fewer than the currently recommended 15 pounds are less likely to develop preeclampsia, need a caesarean delivery and are more likely to have a baby of normal weight.
“Obese and overweight women should gain very little weight at all,” Dr. Artal said.
The study also found that women of different weights should gain or even lose different amounts of weight.
Dr. Artal said that the findings were significant in addressing a major public health crisis, that is, weight gain.
“It’s been shown in the literature time and time again. Weight gain increases in subsequent pregnancies because women accumulate weight with each pregnancy and don’t lose it,” he said.
He also added that the activities of mothers often determined the behaviour of the rest of the family.
“This is a multi-generational problem. The behaviour modification starts with mom. If mothers are overeating and not exercising, that’s how the rest of the family is likely to behave,” he said.
Most women who are obese can safely exercise and diet to lose weight during pregnancy, according to a small pilot study conducted by Saint Louis University researchers.
"Doctors hadn't encouraged pregnant women who were obese to limit their weight gain or have them lose weight because they were afraid it would hurt the baby," says Raul Artal, M.D., principal investigator and chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and women's health at Saint Louis University.
"We found that obese women do not have to gain any weight, and, in fact, can lose weight and it won't hurt the baby. Pregnancy is an ideal time to start an exercise and fitness program, particularly for women who are obese."
Dr. Artal is an internationally recognized expert who has conducted extensive research on exercise during pregnancy and is the lead author of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' current guidelines on exercise for pregnant women.
The new research flies in the face of the "eat for two" and "take it easy" advice that obstetricians gave to a past generation of moms-to-be.
"There are so many more obese women and men. We are witnessing an epidemic of overweight and obesity," Dr. Artal says. "Pregnancy seems to be an ideal time for behavior modification."
Pregnant women are more likely to regularly see a doctor and tend to be highly motivated to make lifestyle changes that protect the health of their babies, he added.
For this study, Dr. Artal and his colleagues examined two groups of pregnant women who were obese and had gestational diabetes, a condition common in about 7 percent of all pregnancies. Of the 96 women studied, 39 dieted and exercised to control their weight and 57 followed the diet routinely given to patients who have gestational diabetes.
Those who exercised were supervised riding a semi-recumbent stationary cycle or walking on a treadmill at least once a week. They also were encouraged to maintain an exercise routine the other six days of the week. Half of the women in the group that exercised said they worked out for at least 30 minutes a day, five times a week, which is the recommended exercise guideline for the non-pregnant population.
Significantly more women who exercised and dieted either lost or maintained their weight than women in the group that followed the standard diabetic diet, the study found.
Findings suggest the babies born to women who lost or maintained their weight were more likely to be of normal size. Infants born to women who gained weight were more likely to be bigger - 8 pounds, 8 ounces and heavier.
More women who gained weight during pregnancy delivered their babies by Caesarian section than those who lost or kept their weight constant.
Limiting weight gain of obese women during pregnancy could have future health benefits for the moms, Dr. Artal says. They will retain less weight from the pregnancy, which decreases the incidence of type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related health problems.
Dr. Artal stressed that doctors and other health care providers need to do more in educating women, particularly those who are overweight or obese, about the importance of eating healthy and limiting the amount of weight they gain during pregnancy, and added a larger study is needed.
How much weight should a woman gain during pregnancy?
For many women (including myself when I was first expecting 17 years ago), pregnancy becomes an excuse to pig out -- or at least to indulge cravings and soothe mood swings with treats. Lots of women gain more weight than they should and find it difficult to shed later on.
As Frances Largeman-Roth, whose book, Feed the Belly, is the subject of this week's "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy" column, explains, current recommendations call for women to consume just 300 extra calories per day. And that should be done only during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. During the first trimester, you can't really get away with adding any extra calories to your diet.
For the first time since 1990, the Institute of Medicine last May issued updated guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy. The new standards allow a woman of healthy weight to gain 25 to 35 pounds and an obese woman to gain 11 to 20 pounds during pregnancy.
Raul Artal, professor and chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology and women's health at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, was among the leading voices to protest those recommendations.
Artal says the guidelines allow too much weight gain for women who begin their pregnancies overweight and argues that the recommendations "were driven by one concern: If women don't gain adequate weight, there's significant risk that their babies will be growth retarded. But the scientific evidence for that is very weak," he says. Meanwhile, we know that overweight women "in pregnancy develop all kinds of co-morbidities."
Those conditions include gestational diabetes and increased risk of preeclampsia. Many women who develop gestational diabetes, Artal notes, develop diabetes and hypertension later in life. Babies born to obese women often are larger than average and require delivery by C-section, which increases the risk of harm to mother and baby. And those babies, though large, often have delayed organ development, respiratory ailments and other health problems, Artal says.
Artal has published research that demonstrates that obese women should not aim to gain any weight at all while pregnant and should work with their doctors to devise an appropriate exercise and diet program. "Pregnancy should not be a time of confinement and indulgence," he says. Even -- or especially -- women who have never learned to eat "judiciously" or to exercise should do both during pregnancy, he says.
To an obese woman, Artal says, those 300 extra calories per day "are 300 additional calories per day" that she doesn't need.
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