Top Tips for Healthy Eating during Pregnancy

Eating during pregnancy is mostly about eating healthily. There are however a few extra things that you do need to know.

If you have a well balanced diet prior to pregnancy you should have good stores of most of the vitamins and minerals needed for a healthy baby, in which case there will only be a few minor adjustments that you need to make.

If however your diet has been poor in the lead up to pregnancy, you will need to be a bit more careful in order to avoid anaemia or other vitamin deficiencies.

Many women put on a huge amount of weight during pregnancy as they feel the need to "eat for two." The growing baby is only small and requires feeding in proportion to its size. In addition to this, the mother's gut absorbs nutrients more efficiently during pregnancy. It is quality of food, not quantity that is important

You may be surprised to hear that the optimum weight gain during pregnancy is only 12.5kg (27lb). During the first trimester (the first 3 months) there should be little or no weight gain, and thereafter a pound a week is what you should aim for.

You should avoid dieting; healthy eating is your goal.

Your energy requirements are exactly the same as pre-pregnancy until the last trimester (the last 3 months) at which point your calorie requirement only increases by about 200 calories.

What vitamins should I take?

1. Folate (folic acid). All pregnant women should take a 400mcg supplement as soon as they start planning a pregnancy, which should be continued until the end of the first 12 weeks. This aids placental implantation and also helps prevent spina bifida (a congenital spinal cord defect) from developing in your unborn child. Other sources of folate in the diet might be wholegrain or wholemeal bread, leafy green vegetables and pulses

2. Iron. The blood becomes more dilute as the pregnancy progresses and it is very common to become anaemic, especially in the final 3 months of pregnancy. Your midwife or GP will check your haemoglobin level through your pregnancy and if you become anaemic will recommend that you take an iron supplement. Eating foods rich in iron can help prevent anaemia. Good sources of iron are lean red meat, eggs, baked beans, leafy green vegetables and apricots.Cooking with a balti pan can help as the food absorbs iron in the cooking process.Tea binds iron, so you should avoid drinking it if you are anaemic. Replace it with orange juice as vitamin C encourages its absorption

3. Calcium. Your requirement doubles during pregnancy. This is partly offset by the fact that the body's absorption of calcium is improved. Not eating enough can lead to dental caries. Foods rich in calcium include dairy products such as milk, yoghurt and cheese (use low fat varieties if possible). Other sources include dried apricots, brown rice, tofu, and tinned fish (the ones with the soft bones that you can eat). If you do take a calcium supplement, take one that is specially formulated for pregnancy.

4. Vitamin A. Too much vitamin A can harm your baby so it is important to avoid liver or liver products which are very rich in vitamin A, through your pregnancy. Other sources of vitamin A such as carrots and tomatoes have vitamin A in much lower concentrations and are good to include in your diet.


What other precautions should I take with food during my pregnancy?

1. Prepare all food from fresh if you can avoiding pre-packaged foods such as pate, pre-packaged cooked meats and pre-packaged salads or coleslaw. They can carry a bacteria called listeria, which although only causes a mild flu like illness in an adult can cause miscarriage and still birth if it affects the your baby.

2. Wash all your fruit well to remove all insecticides. If you can, buy organic as the fruit or veg will be chemical free.

3. Cook chicken, fish and eggs well to avoid salmonella.

4. If re-using foods, make sure it cools quickly and that you re-use it within 24 hours and heat it through properly before use.Take care with cheese. The old rule used to be to avoid soft or blue cheeses as they were un-pasteurised and can cause an infection in the unborn child called listeria. However not all hard cheeses are pasteurised and some soft cheeses are,so the safest thing to do is check the label and if you are unable to tell if the cheese is pasteurised or not, then avoid it.

4. Limit your caffeine intake to 4 cups coffee or 6 cups of tea a day. Make sure you drink plenty…at least 8 cups of fluid a day.

5. There is still conflicting evidence that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can damage your unborn child. Until there is more evidence, probably the best thing to do is avoid it altogether.

6. If you suffer with morning sickness, make sure you eat little and often, as low blood sugar can worsen nausea. Avoid fizzy drinks and fatty foods. Ginger and peppermint are good natural anti-emetics. Try ginger or peppermint tea or gingernut biscuits

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Here are our Top Tips on How To Get Your Kids to eat Healthily

Here are our Top Tips on How To Get Your Kids to eat Healthily
Fruit and vegetables are a rich source of vitamins and minerals essential to your child's health and development. They also contain "anti-oxidants" and fibre which will protect your child against developing heart disease and cancers in the future.

Healthy patterns of eating set at a young age ensure that good habits are carried into adulthood. In short, if your child learns good habits at a young age he or she is far more likely to be a healthy adult.

The recommended intake of fruit and vegetables for children and adults is 5 portions a day. Getting the kids to eat fruit and vegetables however can sometimes seem like an uphill battle.

You do not need to give your child 5 adult portions a day from babyhood. A small explosion may ensue if you did. However, their diet should be balanced and should contain a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. A good way to measure a child's portion is what fits into the palm of the child's hand.

Fresh fruit and vegetables contain the highest concentration of vitamin C but frozen, dried and tinned fruit and veg still contain plenty of goodness and the full quota of fibre and therefore count towards your daily quota.

Here are a few hints:

1. Set the example by doing it yourself-kids copy their parents. Also there is new research to show that babies whose mother has eaten wide variety different foods while pregnant develop wider and more adventurous tastes for food as children. It would seem that sense of taste could "transfer" while the baby is still developing.

2. Encourage kids to try everything that is on their plate but don't force them to finish it. Kids have heightened sense of taste compared to adults, therefore bitter veg such as broccoli and spinach can be difficult to enjoy. Research show that repeated exposure to a taste accustoms the taste buds and increases the chance of the child eating it. This can take over 10 attempts. Don't put child off by forcing them to finish, but do encourage them to try.

3. Get the kids involved in choice of what they eat. Take them shopping and let them choose the fruit and veg and help plan the menus and help with the cooking. Not only does this encourage them to eat what they have produced but it develops them an essential life skill.

4. Letting the kids grow their own veg can be really inspirational for them. Not only do they taste better than those shop bought items and you know that they are not coated in insecticide but they kids get exercise while helping in the garden. If you have a small garden or nothing at all, it is possible to grow veg in pots on the patio or on the window sill.

5. Make the food into fun shapes on the plate-grated cabbage or carrot makes great hair, slices of tomato or cucumber can be eyes for example. Use loads of colour. This not only makes the plate look more attractive but ensures that the kids are getting a wider variety of vitamins and nutrients

6. Hide fruit and veg in their favourite dish-try chopping carrots up into spaghetti sauce or setting fruit into a jelly. Use low sugar jelly if possible.

7. Play a game. I spy can be tweaked a little. For instance you might say "I spy with my little eye something that rabbits like to eat" and rather than answering the kids have to take a mouthful of the lettuce leaf on their plate. The first person to finish their mouthful gets to go next.

8. Try threading fresh fruit onto a kebab stick or open freezing grapes for a summer fruit snack.

9. Fresh fruit smoothies are a great way to get your kids eating fruit. Make your smoothie sugar free. A glass of juice counts as a portion, however beware that no matter how much juice you drink in a day, it only counts as a single portion. Fresh juice concentrates are also high in sugar, so make sure you dilute it.

10. Make a competition in the family to see who can eat the most portions of fruit and vegetables in a week and then reward the winner with a small treat.

Babou in Homes and Gardens

I wish we could be in Homes and Gardens every month

Ideal Home Magazine Come to Devon

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Ideal Home Magazine Come to Devon

http://www.housetohome.co.uk/articles/Children_039_s_floor_cushions_from_Babou_469469.html

We welcomed the team from Ideal Home Magazine to our home for a photographic shoot and were featured extensively in their June 2010 edition. We thought we would share some of the images from that feature. It was great fun - really,really full-on - and  they enjoyed getting out of London, spending a day at the seaside  and sampling some locally caught mackerel, cooked by Nigel  !!! 

Top Tips for helping your baby sleep well

We thought we would share these great tips from our good friend Dr Beth De Souza on how to help your baby sleep well -
http://www.babou.co.uk/pages/Top-Tips-for-helping-your-baby-sleep-well.html
Beth is a successful author and GP in Devon, and,with 2 children of her own, she speaks from personal experience.
If you have any tips of your own you would like to share with us, we wouild love to hear from you.

Babou bed and bath for baby, boy and girl

Welcome to our very first blog post, which coincides with the launch of our new designs, which have been incredibly well received by the media. We couldn't have hoped for a better reception - all the hard work seems to have paid off.
Here's a sneak preview of one of our favourites http://www.babou.co.uk/products/Checks-and-Spots-in-Taupe.html
Our Checks and Spots in Taupe is for style conscious mummies who want to avoid the obvious choices of blue, pink and  cream!