I'm Pregnant! Now What?

I’m Pregnant! Now What?

Congratulations on the big news! Whether or not your pregnancy was planned, you now have a beautiful miracle that is developing inside you.

Ladies, making sure you get the proper nutrition is going to be a key requirement. If you aren’t already taking a high quality folic acid, it is time to start. Folic Acid is known to help protect against birth defects. Healthmasters offers one of the best folic acid on the market, this specific 5-MTHF (B9) formula is water-soluble and can help increase plasma folate more effectively than a synthetic folic acid. You will also want to make sure you take a prenatal vitamin. Healthmasters has an Ultimate Prenatal Vitamin that’s designed to meet the higher nutritional needs for women who are pregnant, preparing for pregnancy or post pregnancy breastfeeding. This Ultimate Prenatal vitamin is extremely convenient because each can contains 30 individual packets which include all your key nutrients with optimal absorption.

Make sure you are eating organic or at least non-GMO foods. Stay away from microwaving your foods because you are zapping the nutritional value. Microwaving your food might also cause a change in the molecular structure of the food. I know this means you will be spending a little more time over the stove or more time using your oven but it is well worth it. What you ingest your baby also ingest. You only get one chance to grow this beautiful baby, don’t slack off.

Now for those of you that are dealing with “morning” sickness, believe me (Lana) when I say I completely understand what you are going through and my heart and prayers go out to you. Most “morning” sickness subsides around the end of the first trimester, but I personally dealt with “morning” sickness (which can come for a visit at any time, night or day) for over 5 months of my pregnancy. One of the things you must focus on is staying hydrated, especially if you are vomiting a lot. Personally after having to receive 3 sets of IVs to rehydrate my body, I found that I could hydrate by drinking a swallow of distilled water or organic coconut water every 10-15 minutes. Another way to help control the “morning” sickness is to never let your stomach go empty (even if you can only eat a few crackers or a piece of toast).  Our Healthmasters Ultimate Prenatal Vitamin is a more advanced stronger formula. We have found some women still have issues with nausea early in the pregnancy, so we advise in this situation that you use the Anti-Nausea Prenatal. This is the best basic prenatal that we have found that does not cause nausea even on an empty stomach in the early stages. This prenatal does not contain as much Folate as we prefer so we recommend adding in our Healthmasters Folic Acid-5MTHF with this Prenatal vitamin if possible.

When looking into what type of care you and your partner want to take whether that is the hospital route or using a midwife, I do highly recommend doing your research before making that decision.

(Austin and I’s personal Journey with making our prenatal care decision)

When Austin and I first found out I was pregnant, I really didn’t know what type of care I had available to me. So after speaking to several family members and friends, I was totally overwhelmed. Everyone had their own opinion based on their experience or just things that they had heard. Most everyone I spoke with had hospital delivery and care, but no one had a specific reason why they chose that route except that they had the option of using an epidural. Now with all the advice, opinions and ideas everyone had shared with me, whether I wanted it or not, it left me kind of freaked out and confused. (Let me just say if this is your first pregnancy you are probably going to hear every type of advice under the sun even when you don’t ask for it but don’t freak out just yet). Do your own research, go visit birthing centers, go check out hospital birthing units, interview midwives, and talk to the nurses or doctors that work prenatal care. I recommend covering all your bases. You can also do a lot of research online. Find out where you are most comfortable. If you aren’t comfortable, it’s going to make it a much more difficult process during delivery. So to get back to our journey, Austin and I got busy doing our research. I personally knew I didn’t want to do a home birth for my first pregnancy because our home isn’t that close to a hospital. Due to family history I was more comfortable with a hospital or birthing center near a hospital. After looking up different statistics (such as C-sections rates, Pitocin risks, epidural risks, etc.) and interviewing and touring the different hospitals and birthing centers nearby, I decided that one of the birthing centers close by would be the best fit for Austin and me to give birth. So I chose a birthing center with a midwife and staff with whom I was comfortable. Also knowing that the hospital wasn’t far from the birthing center facility was a relief, just in case we ran into any type of complications.

Using this specific birthing center has offered Austin and I additional educational classes such as breastfeeding, labor & delivery, nutritional classes to name a few to help better prepare for our baby. If you have these classes available take advantage of them. Keep in mind that if you learn just one thing or one subject strikes an interest for you to do more research, it was worth the class. Keep an open mind but you don't have to agree with their opinions or everything they state. As I have stated earlier in this article, do your own research!

If you are trying to get pregnant check out this article: Pregnancy tips: What is the Importance of Vitamins before Pregnancy?