Week 12 : The Mythical Perfect Pregnancy Diet!! BOB Episode 7

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As you enter the 12^th week…there is a sense of renewed faith and belief in your pregnancy. After all, you are fast approaching the end of the first trimester and a few days later you will enter the smoothest and happiest phase of your pregnancy…the second Trimester. For many lucky women, Nausea will start to recede at the end of this week though some symptoms might linger. For others who are still suffering badly…this week will still show you the light at the end of the tunnel. All you expecting mommies who have made it to the 12^th week now there is a 99% chance that you will have a healthy bouncy baby at the end of your journey.

For many women (including yours truly) this is the time to invest more seriously in emotional and physical health (both of these parameters will have a dramatic effect on your baby). Now that nausea won’t be such a major irritant you could start thinking about ways in which your mind and body could be prepared for motherhood. Receding nausea also allows you to pay attention to following a healthy pregnancy diet.

Stop Overdosing on diet advice…

You will soon find yourself reeling under advice from random quarters about the perfect diet….your friends, relatives, neighborhood aunties and random people will offer advice in copious unfiltered doses. And just like the old adage “too many cooks spoil the broth” you will be tempted to follow pieces from every source of advice naively thinking that you are doing the best you can for your baby. There are many expectant mommies who try to revolutionize their entire nutrition plan and others who try to stuff themselves with food at every given opportunity again thinking “it’s all for the baby”. Both approaches are wrong as I learned from trial and error….and it took me a lot of time, patience and kindness towards my body to actually get going on the correct nutrition plan.

For starters, there is no such thing as a universally perfect pregnancy diet. India is a diverse country with a lot of geographical and climatic range and what works for a lady in Kashmir won’t work for a would-be a mommy from Bengal. What your body accepts and can assimilate is dependent upon years of heredity, dietary habits and individual digestive patterns apart from climate and social structure.

No Diet Revolutions Please!!

The best thing you could do in pregnancy is not to revolutionize your diet…so if you are a roti dal sabzi eater do not attempt to plunge into a rice, meat, and eggs diet. If you are someone who eats chicken biryani 3 times in a week do not suddenly embrace salads and soups every day. Your already overworked digestive system will be confused and your body will respond with acidity, nausea, headaches and a bunch of other things. What you could do is to introduce healthy changes into the framework you are used to…for example dal could be mixed dal (it’s possible to get your protein intake from a diet of mixed pulses) with a dollop of homemade ghee and the biryani could be home cooked with a side dish of cucumber raita (aids in digestion). The idea is to be kind to your body and fit in local easy to digest meals in your plans….pregnancy makes the digestive system vulnerable and its best to make meals simpler.

Go Local…Go Fresh

The term local also needs to be understood carefully….this basically means that you don’t have to spend a bomb on imported fruits like kiwi, strawberry, blueberry, and plums. Your local sitaphal, banana, mango and melons along with locally grown sabzi will supply a better quality of nutrients at a lower cost. Choose fruit and vegetables that don’t have to travel in a box across states and countries to reach you…

When I was between my 9^th to 11^th weeks…I spent a lot of time consulting dieticians, books, relatives and the Internet about finding the perfect nutrition plan. Unfortunately, the dieticians all wanted me to eat chia seeds, red meat, and oats (oblivious to the fact that I liked neither) and each relative had a completely different remedy while the Internet was a sea of confusion. My search continued till I found this lovely (and slim) book Pregnancy Notes by Rujuta Diwekar which had lots of practical and delicious solutions. That book  (it has different sections for each trimester and a separate one for post pregnancy) made my life easier and resolved my acidity, indigestion and nausea issues (without the need of medication) to a large extent ….it’s available in both paper and e formats…highly recommended!!!

Don’t Miss these other Episodes! :

• Week 7 Nausea Fact Files: BOB Episode 3
• Pregnancy Week 8 ….Dealing With Fatigue BOB Episode 4
• Pregnancy Week 9 … settling the “To tell or not to tell Question!!!” BOB Episode 5
• Looking For The Perfect Support Pregnancy Week 10 – BOB Episode 6
• The Pregnancy Rainbow Diet