Easy Delivery Diet
Planning and following a healthy diet is highly recommended for every pregnant mother. Such a diet can ensure both the mother’s and the baby’s health. A good delivery diet can even increase your chances to have an easy delivery.
However, following a strict diet while being pregnant can be quite challenging. Pregnancy can turn your body’s metabolism into an energy-saving state. This change can make women crave more food, and gain more weight. Of course, this weight gain can cause many problems during or after pregnancy. To avoid such problems, you should try to stick with your delivery diet.
Delivery Diet and The issues with going off-diet
■ Preeclampsia;
When you do not follow a delivery diet, you can experience symptoms of obesity. During pregnancy, obesity can cause gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. Also, placental functions can get reduces because of toxemia, which can result in premature baby birth or even a stillbirth.
■ More bleeding during labor;
Overweight mothers are more prone to severe bleeding during labor. As the mother gains, her womb gets affected by this. As a result, her uterine wall contracts weakly during labor, and bleeding doesn’t stop easily. It can be so serious that the mother may require transfusions during labor.
■ The risk of prolonged labor;
Sometimes, labor takes a long time to progress. This can happen when the contractions are very weak. If this happens some labor-promoting agents are needed to be used. A proper delivery diet is designed to reduce the risk of prolonged labor by supplying your body with things it will need to get ready.
■ Large baby birth;
If a baby weighs over 8 pounds, 13 ounces (4kg) at birth, it would be considered a large baby (or macrosomia) birth. Such a kind of childbirth can be very difficult and dangerous. Not only the mother but also the baby can experience health issues in a macrosomia case. Fortunately, the main cause of this common issue is the over-nutrition of the baby. And usually, it can be avoided by following a delivery diet.
■ Postpartum obesity;
Normally, mothers gain some weight during pregnancy which is helpful for their health. After childbirth (Postpartum ) the mother’s weight should return to normal without a problem. However, if you experience this weight gain in obesity levels, your weight won’t be easily restored after childbirth. Moreover, your new eating habits and metabolism can cause weight gain to resume.
■ Risk of infertility;
Another possible adverse result of failing to have a healthy delivery diet and becoming obese is becoming infertile. When you experience obesity, your hormones can lose their balance. This leads up to changes in your metabolism. In some cases, poor ovulation comes with these changes which can cause infertility.
Delivery Diet for Easy Delivery
We know that it is not easy to follow a strict delivery diet during pregnancy. But if you think about the health of your baby and if you hope to have an easy delivery, you can surely motivate yourself.
Maybe to motivate yourself, other than considering the risks we mentioned above, you may use a few tips to make it easier to follow your diet.
■ Drinks;
First of all, we all know how vital is to drink plenty of water, especially during pregnancy. However, you may experience it yourself that drinking the recommended amount of water every day can be surprisingly difficult.
Our tip for meeting your delivery diet’s water intake goal is the use of herbal teas. Your diet should have at least a glass of milk daily. But after this glass of milk, you can fill the rest of your liquid intake goal by drinking tea. Herbal teas are enjoyable to drink, come with aroma-therapeutic scents, and offer many benefits. Just be careful about the herbals which are not safe during pregnancy.
■ Meals;
As for your meals, you should try to keep them as light as possible, and mostly salty. Eating lots of vegetables, especially green and yellow vegetables is also vital. So, you may make yourself salad meals and snacks. You can also try to eat different types of potatoes every day for variety. One day yellow potatoes, then long potatoes, then sweet potatoes, and so on.
You should also meet the necessary protein intake. However, do not focus on just meat as your protein source. You can add fish to your diet for both protein and omega3. But to avoid mercury build-up keep, don’t overdo fish meals. You can also lean on soybeans. They are both delicious and rich in proteins.
Fruits are also vital since they are delicious sources of vitamins. However, to avoid the risky build-up of some vitamins, such as vitamin C, try not to eat too much of a single type of fruit in a single day. Spread multiple types of fruits during the day as snacks.
By considering these pieces of information and tips, you can modify your delivery diet and still expect to have an easy delivery. It is all about being careful and staying motivated.
