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 folate acids on the market. This specific 5-MTHF (B9) formula is water-soluble and can help increase plasma folate more effectively than 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 food 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 ingests. You only get one chance to grow this beautiful baby, don’t slack off.

Now, for those of you who 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 dealt with “morning” sickness (which can come for a visit at any time, day or night) 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 more than my fair share of IVs to rehydrate my body, I found that I could hydrate by drinking a swallow of distilled water with aqua trace 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).  A lot of morning sickness is contributed to magnesium deficiency. So I took magnesium brain food twice a day. And soak in the bath with magnesium dead sea salts. (Our body's can absorb a lot more magnesium topically than it can orally). Our Healthmasters Ultimate Prenatal Vitamin is a more advanced, stronger formula.  

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 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 research, go visit birthing centers, go check out hospital birthing units, interview midwives, and talk to the nurses or doctors who work in 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 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-section 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 me 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!

Also make sure you look up the vaccines administered to a baby, look into the side effects. These vaccines are loaded with high doses of heavy metals/toxins. Do your own research and decide whether, for you and your child, the potential risks outweigh the benefits.

Please 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?