What I Would Tell All Women Who Hope To One Day be A Mama
I am incredibly passionate about women who are hoping to start a family soon. I like to work with women pre-pregnancy to help them prepare their bodies for growing life. I learned recently, that the baby in the first trimester is taking all the nutrients the mother had stored up in her body//blood, before getting pregnant. You often hear of women who have morning/all day sickness and these women can lose weight, or mostly eat to survive and often their diet typically looks very much the same color. It usually consists of plain and salty food…think crackers, chips, rice. This does not seem to be a great diet to grow a healthy baby on. BUT God has designed the pregnancy in such a way that the baby will draw from the nutrients the mother has stored up in her body prior to getting pregnant. He knew the difficulty and tiring aspect that growing a life causes in a womens body and he built this into creation, to store and then use the good nutrients.
But let's think for a minute, if Mama, prior to getting pregnant didn’t have a robust diet full of greens and colors and properly sources meat and eggs…that baby is gonna suck every ounce of any kind of nutrients that Mama has in her body. After 10 months of this, and then seeking to continue to sustain life outside the womb with breastfeeding…will continue to draw on the stores of nutrients the Mama has//had. In this scenario however, baby is protected by God’s incredible design, but Mama is now depleted of many nutrients, incredibly tired from months of carrying the baby, birthing the baby, feeding the baby, and doing all of the things to seek this baby’s good…she is likely running on fumes…and long term this can be damaging to Mama’s health mental and physical. So, in my opinion the reason for the prenatals being necessary and highly encouraged, I believe these vitamins mostly sustain the nutrient levels where the Mama was before getting pregnant, preventing potential further depletion of nutrients that pregnancy and breastfeeding can cause. Thus, we see a GREAT need to prepare a woman's body to be in prime nutrient shape before inviting life to grow within her.
If I could tell all want-to-be-Mama’s to get their bloodwork done before diving into the making a baby stage, I would. I would encourage this so that they can begin to properly supplement, and eat properly to build their bodies nutrient stores up and create a good environment for babies to flourish and not deplete Mama. Making healthy changes to your diet while pregnant is incredible timing and not too late, but often it can become hard and unpredictable if the morning sickness hits too hard. I mention this mostly to reiterate the importance of prepping your body pre-pregnancy and having in place rhythms of exercise and healthy eating and supplementing as necessary, so once pregnant your body has stores of nutrients already to draw from as you may be for a few months be eating crackers and potato chips. I would add having a high quality probiotic or getting in probiotics daily is also going to be important for babies' gut microbiome to get stocked full of the good guys early in life.
Another note is often postpartum can be a result of low zinc…the last big surge of nutrients baby draws from Mama before birth is her zinc. So ZINC up :) you will know if you have too much if you get a metal taste in your mouth…but if you are low the highest safe dose is 75mg. Another key reason bloodwork can uncover issues you never would have realized.
Blessings,
Chels
