Planning to have a baby?

Good nutrition for a healthy baby is important long before you're pregnant.

I can still feel the excitement when as a little girl I discovered that a baby would be in our home. My brother and I were eager to have some of the same joys our mother had been experiencing on her job as a nursing assistant in the baby wing of a nearby hospital. A number of years later I was even more delighted when I discovered that I would be a mother.

Pregnancy is perhaps one of the happiest times for a family. It's also a time when a mom is willing to make changes in her eating habits for these nine months that she would find difficult to make at any other time. Why? Because every woman wants to have a healthy baby.

Eating well and avoiding known risks can prevent many of the complications that can occur during pregnancy and labor. It also produces a healthier baby, and increases success with breast-feeding, the baby's best nutrition for the first six to twelve months.

While it's good to improve your eating habits once you discover you're pregnant, it's best to begin long before then--as much as a year and a half to two years before.

The most crucial time of your baby's development begins before you're even aware that the baby is forming. What you eat must be shared with the baby, so if you have good nutritional reserves, your baby will get what he or she needs from the start. However, if you have only marginal nutritional stores, even with good nutrition during pregnancy, you and your baby are both at risk for not optimally meeting the needs.

Take a simple inventory of how you are eating. Are you getting six to eleven servings a day from the grains, breads, and cereals group? Are you getting three to five servings of vegetables and two to four servings of fruit a day? Are you getting three to four servings of milk or its equivalent each day, and two to three servings of protein-rich foods a day?

If you are and have been for the past one to two years, and if you are maintaining a healthy weight, you're ready to consider pregnancy.

Once you are pregnant, it will take more calories to meet the energy needs for your baby's nine months of development. For most women, that is only 300 extra calories a day during the last two trimesters, a 15 percent increase in the daily caloric intake.

But your need for other nutrients increases by a much greater percentage.

For instance, you need more than twice as much folate; 20 to 30 percent more protein, depending on your age; 50 percent more calcium and phosphorus; 100 percent more iron; and up to 35 percent more of other vitamins and minerals. Those extra calories must be nutrient-dense if you and baby are to be adequately nourished. You may have to change the source of some of your present calories to meet these increased nutrient needs without overdoing the calories.

Though that seems pretty complicated, it really isn't if you just modify the basic food groups. Here are some suggestions:

Complex carbohydrate foods are the best source for the extra calories you need. This carbohydrate intake also assures that the protein in your diet is able to be used as protein. Adequate complex carbohydrates may be obtainted from seven or more servings a day from the breads, cereals, and grains group (this includes pasta and rice). Be sure the majority comes from whole grains.

You will get the extra protein you need for the baby's developing cells and the changes in your body by eating seven servings a day of protein-rich foods. One serving is equivalent to one-half cup cooked dried beans, peas, or lentils; or two tablespoons of peanut butter, nuts, or seeds; or one egg, one-half cup tofu, one-fourth cup cottage cheese, one ounce processed cheese; or one ounce of meat analogs.

Protein as well as calcium comes from three or more servings a day of dairy products. One serving is one cup milk or yogurt; or two ounces of processed cheese; or two cups of cottage cheese.

The additional vitamins and minerals you and your baby need can be obtained by consuming five or more servings of fruits and vegetables, as well as the foods we've just mentioned. Be sure to include at least one vitamin C-rich food, such as the various citrus fruits, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, or sweet peppers, and one vitamin A-rich food, such as apricots, cantaloupe, carrots, pumpkin, and other dark-yellow and deep-green vegetables, every day. Folic acid is especially important very early in pregnancy, and it is found in the dark-green leafy vegetables.

The increased need for iron during pregnancy is especially great. Iron is needed to deliver the oxygen required by your baby as it grows. Foods must be chosen carefully to meet this need. Protein foods, dried beans and peas, and some dried fruit, whole grains, and fortified cereals all contribute iron. It is also important to eat a vitamin C-containing food at each meal. This helps your body use the iron.

Calcium is vitally important for bones and teeth for both you and the baby during pregnancy as well as in the years to come. Calcium and iron are nutrients that will be stolen from your body if they are inadequate in your diet to meet the needs of pregnancy. Be sure you include a good supply of these important nutrients.

Ask your doctor before taking any vitamin or mineral supplements or medications other than those he or she prescribes for you. See your dietitian if you are unable to eat the suggested amounts from any of the food groups mentioned. Your doctor or your local hospital should be able to put you in touch with a registered dietitian.

A good outcome for a pregnant teen is perhaps the most difficult. The teen's nutrient needs are already high because she is still growing. This is compounded by the typically poor eating habits of teenagers.

Additionally, alcohol and drugs may be part of her lifestyle, both of which have detrimental effects on the baby. Thus, the nutritional concerns and requirements of the pregnant teenager are significantly greater.

In order to meet the increased nutritional requirements of the teen and her baby, an extra serving from the dairy group and the protein group are needed, in addition to adequate calories for appropriate weight gain. It may be necessary to have three nutritious snacks a day in addition to three good meals in order to meet these needs. There is even less room for empty calories--calories that do not carry their share of vitamins, minerals, and protein.

Smoking increases the risk of completing pregnancy too early and may cause the delivery of a low-weight baby. Caffeine may also have damaging effects on the baby. Alcohol and other drugs cause very significant problems to the unborn baby that can continue throughout life.

How will you know if your diet is all that it should be? Appropriate weight gain is the most significant indicator of good nutrition during pregnancy. It enables you to give birth to a healthy baby of seven pounds or more. These babies tend to have fewer physical problems than smaller babies.

What is appropriate weight gain? While this is an important topic to discuss with your doctor, in general you should gain somewhere between 25 and 35 pounds during the nine months if your weight was normal prior to pregnancy. Two to four pounds of this should be gained during the first three months, with about a pound per week thereafter. If you were underweight prior to pregnancy, or if you are a teen, you should gain closer to 35 pounds. Although pregnancy is not the time to lose weight, limiting your weight gain to 20 to 25 pounds may be appropriate if you were overweight prior to pregnancy.

Begin eating well now for a healthy baby in your future--and the joy of your life.