CARBS
Grains (including breads and cereals) are basically fuel for your partner’s body, and she should have at least four servings a day. Since her body will burn the fuel first, if she doesn’t get enough there may not be enough for the baby. Grains are generally low in calories and high in zinc, selenium, chromium, and magnesium—all essential nutrients. They’re also high in fiber, which will help your partner combat the constipating effect of iron supplements. Good sources include whole-grain breads (keep her away from white bread and white rice for a few months if you can), brown rice, fresh potatoes, peas, dried beans, and quinoa.
Going Organic
Grocery store shelves are filled with organic everything. But how much of this craze is hype, just another excuse to raise prices? Well, there’s no way to give you an exact statistic, but it seems to make sense that we should try to minimize the amount of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and other nasty-sounding gunk that shows up in our food. The Environmental Working Group has a complete list (ewg.org/foodnews/list.php) of the produce items that you and your partner might want to avoid, as well as the ones that pose little or no danger (meaning there’s no sense paying extra for organic). Generally speaking, foods with peels you don’t eat are okay—and the harder the peel, the better. I’ve included a dozen of the worst and the best below. If you can’t stay away from the bad ones, at least wash them very, very carefully.
| NO NEED TO BUY ORGANIC | DEFINITELY BUY ORGANIC | ||
| Avocado | Asparagus | Apples | Bell peppers |
| Sweet Corn | Mango | Strawberries | Nectarines |
| Pineapple | Papaya | Grapes | Cucumbers |
| Cabbage | Kiwi | Celery | Cherry tomatoes |
| Onions | Eggplant | Peaches | Snap peas |
| Sweet Peas | Cantaloupe | Spinach | Potatoes |
WATER
As if she doesn’t have enough to do already, your partner should try to drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water (or unsweetened, noncaffeinated fluids) a day—more if she’s doing a lot of exercise or if she’s pregnant during the summer. This will help her to replace the water she loses when she perspires (which she’ll do more during pregnancy) and to carry away waste products. Keep in mind that at any given moment, about half of the population is walking around somewhat dehydrated, which puts them at increased risk of developing a variety of problems, including kidney stones and urinary tract cancers.
FATS
Despite all the hype about low- or no-fat diets, the fact is that your partner, like everyone else in the world, needs to consume at least some fat. She’ll probably be getting most of what she needs in the other things she’s eating during the day. But no more than 30 percent of her total caloric intake should come from fat. A diet too rich in fatty foods isn’t good for her or your growing baby-to-be. Monounsaturated fats (avocado, peanuts, almonds, olive oil, canola oil) are best, followed by polyunsaturated fats (margarine, mayonnaise, walnuts). The worst kinds are saturated fats (bacon, lard, butter) and trans fats—basically anything that has the words partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated on the ingredients panel.
“Is it organic?”
NUTRITIONAL AND CHEMICAL NO-NOS
Here’s the deal. Generally speaking, if your partner eats it, drinks it, breathes it, or smells it, so does your growing baby.
• Cigarettes. When a mother-to-be inhales cigarette smoke, her womb fills with carbon monoxide, nicotine, tar, and resins that inhibit oxygen and nutrient delivery to the baby. Maternal cigarette smoking increases the risk of low-birth-weight babies and miscarriage. There’s also some evidence that paternal smoking (exposing your partner and your baby to secondhand smoke) is just as bad. If you think the baby is somehow protected from your smoke by being inside your partner, or if you think that smoking doesn’t matter this early in the pregnancy, you’re dangerously wrong. Bottom line: if you’re a smoker, quit now. If she is, encourage her to quit and help her any way you can. Interestingly, a lot of men put off quitting—or asking their partners to quit—out of fear that withdrawal might lead to some marital tension. Bad choice. The potential danger to your baby far outweighs the danger to your relationship. Oh, and if you’re thinking of e-cigarettes (and why not? Everything else in our lives seems to have an “e” or an “i” in front of it), think again. While they’re less toxic than tobacco cigarettes, and they cut down on secondhand smoke, they’re hardly safe. Most e-cigs use liquid nicotine, which, besides being addictive, can cause high blood pressure and other heart-related issues in your wife, and can reduce blood flow to the placenta, potentially doing permanent damage to your baby. E-cigs may also contain propylene glycol, which, when heated, can turn into a powerful carcinogen. They also produce nanoparticles, which can irritate the lungs and aggravate asthma and other lung issues.
Here’s a great example of what happens when people get something only half right. Remember what I said about smoking causing low-birth-weight babies? Well, in Great Britain, smoking during pregnancy—especially among teen girls—is disturbingly common. These young girls somehow got the idea into their head that having a smaller baby would make labor and delivery less painful. What they didn’t understand was that low birth weight is only the beginning. Smoking also increases the odds of miscarriage, birth defects, stillbirth, and premature birth. Babies born too soon have a higher risk of all sorts of problems later in life: respiratory illness, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and heart problems, just to name a few. And they often go through nicotine withdrawal right after birth, just like crack babies. It also affects the mom, by increasing her risk of developing placental previa (where the placenta covers the opening to the uterus) and placenta abruption (where the placenta separates from the wall of the uterus before delivery), as well as of going into labor prematurely. Am I scaring you? I sure as hell hope so.
• Alcohol. Complete abstinence is the safest choice (although your partner’s practitioner may sanction a glass of wine once in a while to induce relaxation). Regular, high-dose alcohol consumption can cause Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a set of irreversible mental and physical impairments and abnormalities. Even moderate social drinking has been linked to low-birth-weight babies, learning impairments, and miscarriages in the early stages of pregnancy. “[I]f you have a glass of chardonnay here and there, you do so at your own risk,” writes OB Lissa Rankin in her book, What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend. “It’s probably just fine to enjoy the occasional glass of wine. There’s a big difference between being reckless (a definite no-no) and having one drink at dinner. But there’s just no data to help us make safe recommendations.” If you’re worried about any drinking your partner may have done before you found out you were pregnant, talk to her practitioner about it.
• Fasting. Unless she has a doctor’s approval, your partner should never, ever go twenty-four hours without eating. This is especially important in the first nineteen weeks of pregnancy, when the baby’s brain is developing.
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