Archive for November, 2007
Being a woman and that too with pregnancy, you are supposed to accord top priority to your diet. Though diet plays an important role in your pregnancy, this doesn t mean that you can lay your hands on and eat anything that you may see. In order to have a healthy pregnancy cycle you should have a well balanced diet so as to sustain and maintain two lives and you should also ensure that you get enough nutrients so as to deliver a health baby. Now with a firm seed of anxiety sown in your mind, you can find the following guidance on pregnancy diets useful.
Components of a Healthy Pregnancy Diet
Similar to any other diet, a healthy pregnancy diet is also a diet that can supply and augment your vitamins and minerals required during your pregnancy. During your pregnancy, you can take foods that are rich in fibers, nutrients and minerals and in this regard you can note to follow the standards set by the USDA food pyramid.
According to USDA, a healthy pregnancy diet should necessarily consist of six to eleven grain servings, at least 2 to 4 fruit servings, minimum of 4 vegetable servings, dairy servings to an extent of four and more, and a minimum of 3 protein servings. Though there is no restriction on your eating sweets and other fats during your pregnancy, it is always advisable to be moderate in your sweet and fat consumption and if you can additionally take folic acid with multi vitamin then you can see your baby getting stronger and healthy.
Foods to be Avoided During Pregnancy
While you are being advised on various diet aspects, you should also know that there are few foodstuffs that are to be avoided during your pregnancy. For instance, seafoods such as raw oysters and sushi and raw meat and poultry should be totally avoided, as these raw foods can do more damage to the developing fetus.
Further, during your pregnancy you should also be cautious not to take any unpasteurized milk and soft cheeses and when it comes to consumption alcohol and/or smoking habit there is no second opinion that the same should be avoided totally.
There are also certain kind of foods such as caffeinated beverage and tuna and other fish varieties that has to be taken only in moderation during your pregnancy, and when it comes to moderation you can consider taking it once in a week as the rule. Though diet soda cannot do any harm doctors advice that it should also preferably be avoided for better.
It is Two Lives!
Whenever you are pregnant, there is no necessity to inform or remind you that there are two lives involved and you are supposed to take care of two lives. However, this particular advice doesn t expect you to eat twice your regular food, but the idea is to ensure supply of all essential nutrients both to the pregnant mother and to the growing baby by eating a balanced diet.
When it comes to calorie count that has to be increased, then you can roughly decide it as an additional 300 calories a day over and above your regular requirement. A healthy individual may need around 2,500 calories a day and when you are pregnant then you should see that your calorie intake is around 2800 a day.
It is also quite natural and possible for you to develop many cravings for certain food items or snacks such as crackers or pretzels during your pregnancy and in such circumstances it will be safe for you take into account these calories too to arrive at your overall consumption.
It is quite normal for you to head for a pregnancy test if you start experiencing one of the indicating pregnancy symptoms, however, you cannot rely on pregnancy test results that you have obtained from the home kit you have just procured, as these results are capable of getting adversely affected by many factors. Most of the home pregnancy test kits are based on urine sample tests and these kits use the effect of hormones to change the color of either the container in which the urine is collected or the stick that has been dipped into your urine and based on which the test result is adjudged as either positive or negative.
There could be instances that you can end up with a false positive pregnancy test and when your gynecologist carries out a yet another test, you may be disappointed to know about your false pregnancy results. Doctors advice women to carry out their home pregnancy test only after they miss their first periods and that too with their early morning first urine alone for getting best and authenticated results. As said earlier, you can end up with false positive pregnancy test results and we will see few of the factors that could trigger a wrong test result.
Factors that Influence A False Positive Pregnancy Test
Miscarriage is one of the reasons that could falsely get diagnosed as pregnancy in any home pregnancy test kits and this situation is called a chemical pregnancy. Such situation is possible if you have had an early miscarriage and the chemical changes that have taken place inside you would have been wrongly interpreted as pregnancy. Hence it is always desirable for you to consult your doctor if you have missed one of your periods and/or have experienced other related pregnancy symptoms.
The hormones or other chemicals present in your body can also falsely be tested as pregnancy. For example, the HCG or the Human Chorionic Gonadotropin hormone shots that has been prescribed to treat infertility in women might cause your test to show up as false positive pregnancy test results.
Whenever you are using the indicator stick from the home kit, the evaporation lines on the stick may show a false status that will make you to believe you are regnant. Hence, it is advisable to scrupulously follow all the laid down instructions in any home pregnancy test kits so as to avoid any possible disappointment later.
You must first bear in your mind that home pregnancy test kits are to be used only for identifying the pregnancy possibility and they cannot serve as a foolproof method for testing your pregnancy. It is always preferable and recommended to consult a licensed obstetrician to get your pregnancy confirmed so that you can really start enjoying all the wonderful times of your motherhood.
Pregnancy is one of the most wonderful experiences in a woman s life, and the experience will be still more enchanting if it happens to be the first pregnancy. However, pregnancies are fraught with dangers too and there are many unanticipated complications that may crop up and spoil the very joy of seeing your tender baby s face. Of many pregnancy-related complications, tubal pregnancy is one that may catch you unaware especially during your first pregnancy.
What is a Tubal Pregnancy
A tubal pregnancy is actually considered to be a miscarriage and in tubal pregnancy, your fertilized egg or zygote instead of reaching your uterus and growing there, it will get lodged elsewhere in places such as your fallopian tube and this condition is termed as tubal pregnancy.
Tubal pregnancies are always considered to be dangerous, and once you know that you are an unfortunate person with tubal pregnancy, then you have no other option other than terminating it medically. Tubal pregnancies are capable of damaging your reproductive organs severely the result of which may make you incapable of conceiving a baby in future. There are also possibilities of the tubal pregnancy causing internal bleeding in you and your life itself will be in danger if you do not resort to treatment immediately.
Obvious Warning Signs Indicating Tubal Pregnancy
Tubal pregnancy is in fact a medical condition that has to be handled and treated immediately as a medical emergency. However, you tubal pregnancy can reveal itself with few specific symptoms when you are pregnant and once you know them correctly, you can easily identify your position and take medical recourse. Please bear in mind that despite your knowing that your pregnancy is in fact a tubal one, if you do not seek medical help, you will certainly risk your life and your chances of future pregnancies too. Here are few typical tubal pregnancy signs for you to know:
If you have vaginal discharge with blood in it then the chances of your pregnancy being a tubal pregnancy is very high. Vaginal bleeding is not normal in regular pregnancies and hence note to contact your doctor immediately if you happen to witness discharge with bleeding.
Your early normal pregnancy cycle will not be painful at all and if you happen to get severe pelvic pain, especially in your first trimester, then you should not lose time in getting your pregnancy evaluated to know whether it is a tubal one or not.
If you develop a severe fatigue and nausea then consult a doctor immediately
Though the symptoms of a tubal pregnancy may more or less resemble a normal pregnancy, you should be prudent enough to differentiate the signs of your tubal pregnancy from that of normal one. Further, you should also get your pregnancy properly diagnosed by competitive doctors so as to rule out the tubal pregnancy possibility.
