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Yay! So now there is this beautiful and amazing journey ahead of you when your body slowly goes through a lot of changes and creates a life inside of you. Isn’t it beautiful? This is the time when you slowly transform yourself from being a women to a mother. So this time is extremely important to take care of your body as you are creating this life inside of you. Here are some of the tips which helped me to make my pregnancy easier and hope this helps you too. Always make sure with your health care provider before applying these tips and whether they are safe for you or not depending on your pregnancy.
Since every body is different and every pregnancy is different, so some of you may experience some things differently than others, which is absolutely okay as long as you and your baby is healthy. During my experience in pregnancy, I had horrible morning sickness but luckily it lasted only for the first trimester. I wonder why its called morning sickness since it lasts whole day and night. But wait, I am not here to scare you, since every experience is different and you might not even get morning sickness during your pregnancy. My morning sickness started around 8 weeks of my pregnancy . My favorite foods like dumplings, pizzas started grossing me out. Food aversions really started to kick in and I could not eat anything. Everything would smell really horrible. The only thing I could eat was saltine crackers, apples, and some plain rice . One thing to avoid morning sickness is to keep yourself hydrated even though you don’t feel like drinking water, but it really helps. Keep some crackers or other snacks that you can eat by the bedside. I would wake up around 4 am in the morning and munch on the crackers to avoid throwing up in the morning. Sucking some fresh ginger also helped me with the nausea. My doctor prescribed me some medications for my morning sickness but I didn’t felt like taking it as I was staying home at that time and it was manageable. As mentioned earlier, it was not that bad and it slowly subsided after 3rd month or the first trimester.
Obviously a well balanced diet plays a huge role in your pregnancy. You should be getting all the nutrients from a well balanced, good quality wholesome foods. Due to my food aversions in my first trimester, I was not eating a lot of meat or good quality protein for a long time in my pregnancy. But during my OB/GYN routine checkups, my doctor suggested me to eat lot of good quality protein as the baby`s weight was less than the average gestational weight. So, I started incorporating more good quality proteins and meat in my diet. Besides good quality protein, lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy, whole grains, probiotic rich foods and a well balanced diet were also included in my diet during my pregnancy.
Good quality prenatal vitamin and liquid iron Salus-Haus – Floradix Iron & Herbs -17 oz was also something I never skipped during my pregnancy. I preferred liquid iron because this was easier to take with water and did not make me constipated. Due to my morning sickness in the first trimester, I was unable to take some brands of prenatal vitamins as they would also make me nauseous. Therefore, I started using the ones that were made with organic ingredients,wholesome and were fermented. After switching to New Chapter Perfect Prenatal, 96 Ct. 2 Pack , it was easier for me to take even on my empty stomach and also it didn’t left a strong after taste in my mouth which was really important for me during those times of food aversions and morning sickness. Besides them, I also took high quality prenatal DHA Nordic Naturals – Prenatal DHA – 180ct for brain and cognitive fetal development (this was not recommended by my OB/GYN, but I used it on my own ). A good gut flora was really important to maintain especially during pregnancy since it helps in strengthening the immune system and prevents your body from various disease. Not only it helps with the mother`s health but the microbiome from her body is also passed to the baby through placenta, bloodstream and also during normal delivery. Therefore healing my gut during pregnancy was a top priority for me as it would help in shaping my baby`s health in the future. So good quality probiotics Jarrow Formulas Jarro-dophilus + Eps (2 PACK) 240 capsules was also something I used throughout my pregnancy to maintain a healthy gut flora.
Staying healthy and taking plenty of rest were also my top priority during pregnancy. As a yoga lover, I started doing prenatal yoga after my first trimester. Prenatal yoga are particularly designed to do during your pregnancy as it focuses especially for pregnant women. Also these are safe and gentle, unless there are some pregnancy complications and has amazing benefits. I especially enjoyed kundalini prenatal yoga during my pregnancy which really helped me to stay calm and positive and at peace . The various yoga poses that I did during my whole pregnancy prepared my body for easy labor and fast delivery too.
Walking was another form of physical activity that I continued during my pregnancy. Besides having numerous benefits during pregnancy it also increases flexibility, open up the hip muscles which helps in easy and normal delivery.
These above mentioned tips were incorporated regularly during my pregnancy. As a result, my labor also went very smooth and delivery was very easy. Within 3-4 hours of labor my sweet little baby was born healthy. The next day we got discharged from the hospital. Besides these my postpartum healing also happened pretty fast.