Preventing Pregnancy Complications with Nutrition
Preventing Pregnancy Complications with Nutrition By Amy V. Haas, BA, BCCE Nutrition in pregnancy-a no-brainer, right? Who would think it was so controversial? Disagreement over a healthy diet during pregnancy continues to rage, with one side saying that what a woman eats will have no effect on her pregnancy and the other saying it has an enormous impact. So what’s a woman to eat? The fact is that research has been done on this subject, but with the exception of folic acid, it stopped somewhere around the 1980s when the focus shifted to drugs as the answer to curing all ills. The...
Read MoreNutrition During Pregnancy
By Amy V. Haas, BCCE The single most important thing that you can do for your baby is to eat a healthy, well balanced diet. A well balanced diet is one that includes foods from all food groups, in appropriate amounts, so as to ensure proper nutrition. Proper nutrition ensures that all essential nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins, minerals, and water) are supplied to the body to maintain optimal health and well being. Good nutrition is essential for normal organ development and functioning, normal reproduction, growth and maintenance, for optimum activity level and working...
Read MoreGlucose Tolerance test
(This is an excerpt from an upcoming book: Haas, AV; Healthy Babies! Healthy Moms! A Practical Guide to Preventing Problems during Pregnancy, Labor, and Birth , 2024) “This is a blood test done around the 24th week of pregnancy to determine if the woman has glucose intolerance. A fasting woman is given a glucose preparation to drink, and then her blood sugar levels are tested at various times. One of the major problems with glucose tolerance testing is that it does not necessarily tell us if a woman has gestational diabetes. What it can tell us is if her body does not handle excess...
Read MorePreventing Gestational Diabetes
Don’t Risk Yourself Out of a Homebirth: Prevent Gestational Diabetes By Amy V. Haas, BCCE It’s the third class in my childbirth education series – the time when I encourage my students to ask about prenatal testing – and I’ve started to dread some of the questions about glucose tolerance testing. Most of the time, when someone asks about glucose tolerance testing, I discuss the history and refer them to Henci Goer’s book, The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth. Typically, at least one person in the class decides they don’t want to be tested. That’s totally their right. But what happens...
Read MoreA new podcast!
A few weeks ago Adriana Lozada, of Birthful, interviewed me for a Podcast on Nutrition during Pregnancy. The Podcast is up! You can find it here: http://www.birthful.com/podcast-pregnancy-nutrition/
Read MorePregnancy Nutrition and Our Children’s Future
Pregnancy Nutrition and Our Children’s Future By Amy V. Haas, BCCE We hear all about eating a good diet during pregnancy to help yourself be healthier, and have better outcomes, but apparently, what we eat during pregnancy can also affect our children’s future health. Proper pregnancy nutrition can affect children in multiple ways, most specifically by helping to prevent: Prematurity, Birth defects, Diabetes, Multiple sclerosis, Behavioral problems, Poor cognitive performance, and depression. Since premature babies can potentially have multiple health, cognitive, & development...
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