Driven Crazy by Pregnancy Perfectionists (Especially On The Web!)

Here’s the cliffs-notes version of what my doctor told me when I got pregnant the first time: Take your vitamins, don’t drink too much, and stay off the internet. He said that in 30 years of being an OB-GYN, he’d only seen two women who had a food-related illnesses that pregnancy message boards will have you believe are so rampant, and both had gotten listeria poisoning from eating homemade, unpasturized cheese sent from relatives out of the country. Just remember – you’re pregnant, not disabled, and women have been having babies for millenia without all of the paranoia. Relax, ignore the worriers, and enjoy your pregnancy!

Here is one piece of advice that I wish I was given with my first pregnancy, and the only one I give to my pregnant friends:
Trust your instincts and yourself!
It is ok to read up, see what is out there, learn tips and tricks, but you have to sort through it and decide for yourself what works for you. This continues when you have children. Nobody else can tell you what to do but yourself. If you feel confused, sit down and breathe, take a quiet moment to clear your head and try to “feel” what is right for you. Meditation is a great booster for tuning yourself into your own instincts.

Knowledge can be a good thing when used wisely. But not when it is used to hold people up to unattainable standards or when it is ignored. I’m finding a little of both from this hopeful mom-in -the-making. Take your bath, eat your cheese – heck, have a glass of wine My ob told me too! Helps you relax. But just one, just once in a while, not every night. Yet, when reading your note I stopped a little short with the medical pregnancy and the step class. Some personal experience with a close friend says not at any cost. Yes, stay fit, but be careful and listen to your body. You might need to go slower or stop for more breaks or not get to hot. (Notice, I didn’t say not to go! I even laid an entire brick walk-way at my house during my first pregnancy, and my child is just fine.) Good luck.

Trust yourself. Read up, and know what the possible dangers are, and then weigh them versus your sanity and comfort, and the risk of them actually happening.

The paranoia drives me NUTS. I’m about 6 weeks out from my due date, and people go CRAZY. But you know what? I’ve had 3 drinks while pregnant (normal, reasonable sized ones of about 3-4 oz, not the stein you get at a restaurant), I eat soft cheese as long as it doesn’t specifically say unpasteurized, I don’t microwave my lunch meat, I don’t use a thermometer on my hot dogs, I drink caffeine occasionally, and I eat runny egg yolks.

You’d think I was the devil incarnate.

But you know what? When I need protein and can’t get firm eggs down? I’m going to do what I need to do. I want a ceasar salad from a restaurant? I’m going to use my common sense and realize that they’re probably not serving dressing made with unpasteurized eggs to ANYBODY.

Much like with kids, and, well, LIFE, yes, there’s danger out there. But you have to weigh the paranoia and decide what’s worth it. We needed help to get pregnant as well, and I spend enough time focusing my worries on getting enough vitamins (I have a genetic issue where I don’t process folic acid properly) and on the blood thinners I’m on that it’s really not worth the time or energy to me to worry about all that other stuff.

Now, of course, I don’t change the cat litter… but that’s only partially out of pregnancy fear. 😉

My husband and I are going to start trying for our first baby this spring. Just this morning I was lamenting that gone are the days when women just got pregnant and kept living their lives, instead of drastically changing the way they do things. This article, and all of the articles I have read on this blog so far, have helped me see through the “mania” that has slowly gripped this country over the last few decades. I’m sure when I get pregnant I’ll abstain from drinking alcohol, but not exercising during pregnancy seems unhealthy and absurd. I think I’ll abstain from the pregnancy books, too.

Stay as far away from the ‘What to Expect’ series as you can. Eat what you want. My midwives also told me to have a drink once in a while if I really felt like it, and since when do we not take baths while pregnant?! All three kids, I was TOLD to take baths. Soothes the nerves, helps the joints, relieves the added weight. And, ummm… water birth? Yeah, that happens in a deep tub of warm water. I mean, that’s what the kid lives in! Warm liquid. AAaaaanyhoo…
I drank my coffee, I ate peanut whatever, I ate tomatoes, broccoli cheese, beans, literally never even contemplated what I should or shouldn’t eat. Got great prenatal care, listened to my mom and friends of her generation (she still likes to point out that she was a smoker, and nobody has any lung problems, except me, the only one for whom she was a non-smoker, and whom she didn’t nurse. 1966 here). The one thing I absolutely under no circumstances ever did was to change the cat box. What a great excuse to get out of that job! My youngest is 17, and I haven’t changed a cat box since well before he came along 😉
Enjoy your pregnancy. That’s the most important thing you can do. Don’t get neurotic, don’t overworry, don’t stress too much. Just enjoy your pregnancy.

I am 35 weeks pregnant, and I can relate to your frustration with “recommendations.”

A lady yelled at me for reaching on on a shelf to retrieve a book. Apparently the baby was going to strangle on the umbilical cord if I lifted my arms. I don’t know how librarians have children, if that were the case.

I have a feeling the ridiculousness won’t stop at birth. There are a lot of people in online birth forums vowing to use rear facing car seats until their child is 80 lbs. I look forward to putting my 1 year old in a front facing seat.

Allow me to echo what all the other pregnant and no longer pregnant moms here have said. Stressing over every little thing is WAY worse for baby than relaxing and enjoying your pregnancy, allowing yourself “forbidden” items in moderation when you want to. Pregnancy isn’t a disease, you don’t need to be cured, and massive dietary changes are probably more harmful than helpful. A glass of wine every now and then is less harmful than feeling stress. A warm (not HOT, but warm) bath is soothing, which is better for a baby than a cool bath that doesn’t help alleviate your aches and pains. Aerobicize if you feel up to it, just take it a little easier than you would if you weren’t preggers.

By the way, if you enjoy exercise and the step aerobics get to be too much, I can’t recommend yoga enough. It’s a nice gentle exercise that helps work your core, which as you know is gonna need lots of strength here in a few months.

Congratulations, and best of luck, mama!

I’ve almost fallen prey to the paranoa myself, primarily the “the baby feels everything you feel” thing. I’m getting my braces off in the spring and I don’t want to wait (and possibly give birth while snowed in! D:). Hubby managed to talk some sense into me.

I’ll be sure to buy into the kitty litter one though. No cat poop for half a year? Awesome!

I had my children in 99 and 02 and those What To Expect When You’re Expecting books were huge. They suck. Every problem imaginable listed month by month. I only kept it because it had a good list of milestones each month. Read The GirlFriend’s Guide to Pregnancy. Funny and real.

I found the Girlfriend’s Guide series a refreshing alternative to the ridiculous What to Expect… books. The former focus much more on how to mitigate some of the less pleasant physical side effects of pregnancy, without hitting you over the head with five nonsensical warnings per page about the great damage you do to your fetus if you so much as look at soft cheese after your second week. To second the comment above, women used to cheerfully smoke and drink throughout their pregnancies, and I’ve talked to more than one woman of my mother’s generation who actually was prescribed and took methamphetamine-style diet drugs because her OB was a real stickler for avoiding weight gain. None of these kids turned out to be mutant slime creatures from the deep or have more or less than the appropriate number of fingers, toes, or heads. Overall, I’d suggest talking to older women, not the panicky first generation of helicopter children who are giving birth to their own kids right about now. Women over, say, 55, are much more realistic and fun than their younger counterparts.

Oh – Thank the lord there is more than just me and husband out there. We have taken to calling our friends the POD people of pregnancy… These highly educated and generally sane people turn into completely illogical crazy people when pregnant. I actually have gotten myself into hot water with several of them over the cheese issues. the argument goes something like this

POD person: I can’t eat that Brie from Whole foods, it is not pasteurized.

me: Ah yes, so you could have velveta with all its dyes and chemicals, but some all natural cheese from a reliable source, which women have been consuming for hundreds if not thousands of years – that’s out for you. sure – that makes sense.

POD person – [ angry silence and generally a husband yelling at me for being mean]

Really – I have run out of tolerance for it. I have a one, exactly one renegade friend who knows that she can go out to dinner or lunch with me when she wants to be “bad” and go against all of the “advice.”

My best friend, a doctor, was in on the whole thing – I thought that she may have seen the light of logic – but no.

The worst – some of them are keeping the “rules” during breast feeding, because you can’t be too safe. I can only imagine that the kids will have no immunity what so ever.

I ate soft cheese, drank a beer or a glass of wine on occasion (my Dr. actually told me I could have up to an ounce of alcohol a day), had sandwiches & sushi on a regular basis and even sat in a hot tub while I was on a cruise. If I started to feel too warm while in the hot tub, I got out for a bit.

Both my kids are normal (relatively speaking that is ~wink~) and healthy.

When people commented to me about “You can’t do that you’re pregnant” I looked and them funny and usually did it anyhow much to their horror. The only thing I really didn’t do was lift anything heavy. Hell I even set up a medieval tent at on of our camping events by myself.

Like someone above said, the best thing is to listen to your body and not over do it and find a Dr. that you feel comfortable with and is honest with you, not one that is going to make you feel incompetent every time you ask a question. Heck my Dr for my first pregnancy was even supportive when I told him I decided to go to a birth center instead of the hospital. Incidentally he was the backup Dr. just for the birth center and I knew I would have been in good hands if I actually had to be transferred to the hospital. I was so happy with him and the way he handled everything I have recommended him to many friends.

Congrats, and don’t let those people get you down.

I tell my kids that God made them out of Chicken McNuggets because I ate so many of them when I was pregnant (with all three children)…

With regard to food allergies… I had people tell me DON’T eat peanut butter while pregnant (which I did a LOT!) and also TO eat it… both pieces of advice were given (by two different people) with the idea that each theory would help avoid peanut allergies. I ate a lot of PB during pregnancy and none of my kids has any food allergies…. and they love Chicken McNuggets. 😉

I am a doctor, and I spent most of each pregnancy wanting to post a sign on my tummy that said, “BACK OFF!”

If even your own colleagues, who KNOW better, can’t keep their mouths shut, what do you expect from the ravings of the internet masses, who regularly spew woo and goo about medical conditions (and, YES, pregnancy IS a medical condition!)?

Turn off the damn internet, stop googling, tell your MIL to go to hell, hole up in a corner and enjoy your pregnancy.

If you dare to go out in public –and I have to tell you, I think there was something to be said for the Victorian attitude that pregnant women should not be out where they can be seen (not for the public, mind you, but for the woman’s peace of mind)–get a t-shirt printed that says: Six months. Girl. Now Mind Your Own Business.

To the originally writer, congratulations! I’m six months pregnant and have completely ignored the existence of the “What to Expect” books. So what do I refer to? The Mayo Clinic’s pregnancy guide, The Panic-Free Pregnancy (love this book!), and the Internet–after all of which, I ask questions of my OB or his nurse.

I have avoided cold cuts and soft cheeses (but I have accidentally eaten bleu cheese twice–oh, well, I’m doing my best), and have cut back on (but not stopped) my peanut butter intake (my policy is “minimization, not elimination”). But in general I’ve tried to follow my usual policy of moderation in all things. I have a cup or two of tea a day, eat small, healthy portions throughout the day, and have a scoop of ice cream for dessert–every day! (That last part may change if the results of my gestational diabetes test aren’t good, but I’ll address that when the need arises.)

But I’m also getting as much sleep as my body and mind will allow (less than random strangers tell me I should get) and, since we adopted a dog last month, have been walking every day–lots more than I did before I was pregnant.

Throughout, when I start to wonder if I’m doing something that will hurt the baby, I remind myself of all the horrible conditions (throughout time, and around the world today) under which women successfully bear and raise children, and move on with my life.

On the whole ‘pregnancy isn’t a disease’ thing… my daughter’s midwife, during the birth prep classes, made a giant point, through videos and other means, of making sure her clients understood that birth is part of the sexual repertoire, not a sickness, not an illness, not a disability. On that note, try not to let any doctor or whatever caregiver make you hold your breath when you push. This causes tears. Open throat, open vagina. Tight throat, tight vagina. Try it… trippy stuff. Oh. And definitely definitely kegel. Those things are very effing helpful both before AND after… even YEARS after *wink*

First let me say that I have made a lot of (moderate to extreme) accommodations to make sure that my pregnancy is as healthy as possible. I know I’m a bit paranoid, but it was only by some miracle that we even got pregnant after 10 years of effort, so I guess I’ve just been particularly nervous about something going wrong.

BUT, that being said, I don’t think that women who simply use common sense and ignore all the paranoid advice that I’m following are putting their babies in danger of any kind. I think that, for the most part, developing babies are pretty durable, and if you use your good judgment (i.e. avoid sticking your fingers into electric outlets; perhaps take a pass on the thrice-daily martinis; etc…) you’ll probably be just fine. Like Lenore says, “it’s really not all up to you.” Fate, genetics and luck also play a pretty big hand in this. 🙂

When my daughter was born almost 3 years ago now, she was born with a underdeveloped lungs at almost full term. She spent a week in the NICU until her lungs finished developing. Her doctor at the time told my husband and I that he is seeing more and more cases like this. Why? Because mothers are taking too good care of themselves and the babies. Babies need a certain amount of stress while they are growing and developing to trigger certain hormones that they need.

Oh, but one thing — have those books been significantly revised since the early 90’s? Maybe they’ve gotten worse — I just remember my experience with them with my first couple kids, and thinking that the tone was rather uptight, but the info was useful. I don’t think I cracked them much after my 15 year old was born, having them pretty well memorized by then.

I helped push a truck out of a snowy ditch when I was a little over 8 months pregnant, to the horror of my father. I knew I was fine, and the baby was even more find.

Trust yourself. I dug up too much info with my first pregnancy and felt lost. My second, I mellowed a bit and just let it happen. Both kids are healthy an fine.

Sometimes I think we just have WAY too much free time on our hands. 🙂

Good Luck!

YES LENORE! This is the current mania – that unless we do all and be all and give all, we are denying our children the chance to rise to the TOP of the pile! It is only when we realize we don’t really care about the pile as it were, we can relax into doing things the way that works for US. As individuals.

When I was pregnant with my third child, at age 38, I was already put into the advanced aging mama category – without anyone looking into my history at all. The fact that both my mom and grandmother delivered healthy babies well into their forties and had late menopause mattered not. All mothers were lumped together into the advanced maternal age grouping. It was with this in mind that when I delivered my fourth and last child, at age 42, we opted to deliver at home where I could call the shots with my midwife’s advice. I know I would have been hooked up to every tube and monitor on the planet otherwise!

We have to do things based on the information we get and from there based on our gut. With all the dogma and overkill of information, we are teaching children to tune out their gut. And I know, in my own experience, my gut has saved me from many, many struggles.

Keep up the great work Lenore. You are giving words to what so many people are feeling!

Bernadette
Austin, Tx

My kids were born 21 and 17 years ago and some of this advice I’ve never heard of. Avoid soft cheese? Nuke lunch meat? That one sounds counter intuitive. The What to Expect books were new then and I remember being scared to death by them but not changing my lifestyle too much. I even worked in a veterinary clinic and changed many, many litter boxes. I just made sure I wore gloves and washed up well afterwards. BTW, both my kids are healthier than normal and brilliant! ^_^

Did everyone see the trailer for the new movie Babies that compares the first year of life in several different countries? It was posted in this blog a few weeks ago. http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/the-babies-are-coming/
I think it will be fascinating and look forward to it.

What a relief to find this post and discussion!

I’m 18 weeks pregnant, and on my first doctor visit to confirm the pregnancy (it was so unplanned that I wondered if I’d made a mistake on the home test), I got a laundry list of things I was not allowed to do.

I think I’ve broken every one of them: sushi, tuna sandwiches, lunch meats, soft cheeses, the occassional sip or two of beer or wine, soy, raw cookie dough.

And I’ve had such a difficult pregnancy fatigue-wise (I’m still sleeping 10–11 hrs/day, down from 15–16 early on), I can’t imagine getting through without a cup or two of black a tea each day. My first doc told me absolutely NO caffeine–no black tea, no green tea, nothing. Supposedly, it puts you at high risk of miscarriage. But the only published evidence on that was in women who drank more than three cups of *coffee* per day.

Then there are those stupid books with their stupid expectations of exactly when and how much weight you should gain. I started off with a BMI of 22, (the mid-point of normal) which means, according to the popular pregnancy books, I should only gain 25 pounds total–nothing in the first trimester, 1/2 lb week in the second trimester, 1 lb/week in the third trimester. Which, it should be noted, only adds up to about 20 pounds.

Well, I’ve been so queasy from week 3 onward that I have two choices: eat something that sounds palatable or puke. Really, if I go for more than a few of hours without a decent meal, I vomit. And if I don’t eat before I go to sleep, I puke in my sleep.

By week 16, I’d gained 12 pounds. If the BS in the books is to be believed, I’m on track for gestational diabetes and a massive, undeliverable baby.

Fortunately, I found a sane midwife. When I went to her with my weight concerns, she just took one look at me and said, “You look fine.” Huh? “Really, if you were gaining too much weight too quickly, you’d look fat, and you don’t.”

I wish more doctors would assume a similar attitude.

So glad to see I’m not the only one who is driven to deink on this subject. I remember when I tried to question the wisdom of the “no lunchmeat rule” while pregnant. I was craving ham and turkey sandwiches and wanted to make sure what doom would be held if I indulged in my craving. I could not find one incident of somone dropping dead, babies born with extra ears or even a you’ll gain an extra 2 pounds by eating the meat. All I got was vague references to the nitrates with no solid evidence of any problems post pregnancy.

My friend and I used to joke that we were going to start a rumor about green beans being bad for you during pregnancy We wanted to see how fast it would spread while giving no definitive proof or reasoning why the beans would be harmful. We would sit at baby showers whispering in womans ears and then sit back and watch green beans stock plummet.

Oh, I drank coffee while I wasa pregnant too.

I just reread one of the things that cracked me up… rear-facing until 80 pounds?! That is hilarious! Do they have any idea how old an 80 pound kid is? My youngest was 4’7″ and 68 pounds in 8th grade! He did skip a grade, but still… our current state law here would have required that he still be in a booster. 4’9″ and/or 80 pounds. He’s now 17, 6’1″, still skinny as a rail, but completely perfectly fine. And brilliant. 3.97 as a sophomore in college. Yeah. 17.
Just the mental image of a 9 year old in a rear-facing car seat is absolutely hilarious! Lanky legs all scrunched up… probably feet in the back window, or over the back of the seat if a minivan or SUV, which of course it would be… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That being said, I did get the booster that allows a 5-point buckling to 65 pounds for the grandkid. He’s one of those ‘let’s fiddle with this until we figure out how to work it’ kinda guys though. He’d be out of a buckle in about .73 seconds. So, 5 point harness it is until he can keep his sticky little paws off the mechanisms.

and @ jim…
us too. Those are totally our friends, and even more so when we were having our kids in the very early 90s (90 and 92). We were Deadheads in the Bay Area. 70 thousand little kids, wandering around Dead shows. Most of them had good ear protection, and no shoes. And very tangly hair. And were having SO. MUCH. FUN!!! All those kids are doing just fine. Some are in college, some are living in the mountains being their own artsy ne’er do well types. All are healthy, bright, funny, talented young adults. And sidebar… I don’t think any of them over the age of 17 live at home. Neither of mine do.

When we were trying to get preggo, I was pretty worked up about my wife’s beer tooth (like a sweet tooth, but with beer). By no means did she drink too much, but she did like a fine Oregon microbrew or two with dinner.

My feeling (and from all the fear-mongering literature I read) was even a little beer could affect a little tiny blob of cells growing and if we were trying to get pregnant, why even take the risk by having some with dinner. My mom (who raised me Free Range) gaffah’ed me saying if a couple of beers before knowledge of implantation damaged kiddo development, the world would be full of a bunch of beady eyed “Deciders.”

The more I thought about it, the more I agreed. I’ve been teaching sixth grade for 4 years now, and I wonder how many students I’ve had that are products of a passion filled, alcohol induced night.

Now my wife and I are 25 weeks along with identical twin boys (We’re the 1 in 400–fate, luck, whatever; in this case being a statistic is awesome!) They are healthy as far as we can tell. My wife eats sushi, does pilates, and has even eaten a sausage or two.

Since reading “Free Range Kids,” we have found solace in the fact that we don’t have to, and shouldn’t worry about every little thing. This is good since we have several friends who are also due soon and are partaking in the newest fad of forking out big bucks to go to special classes that prepare you for labor and how to take care of the kid after it’s arrived. One friend told me the class suggested the guy ask what kind of color his girl wants to visualize when she’s laboring. I can just imagine… “Honey, remember…visualize light mauve, there…that’s good.”

Meanwhile she’s telling me to STFU and to get the hell out. =)

I wonder how humanity has lasted this long without those dumb classes.

Anyway, love the book, love the philosophy, especially since we are having two at the same time and who has the energy or time to helicopter over twins.

After 15 straight weeks of 24/7 morning sickness, I can tell you: the best foods to eat when you’re pregnant are the ones that don’t make you throw up, regardless of the “experts” say.

And no matter how “good” it is for you, if it comes back up, avoid it like the pregnancy police avoid their lunch meats.

Are you kidding? I loved “What to Expect” and the dietary rules when I was pregnant. It was great that I, by virtue of pregnancy law, couldn’t eat rare meat, fish, sushi, runny eggs, blue cheese or drink anything caffeinated. See I hate all those things anyway so I had an excuse for 9 months other than I’m a really picky eater. And everyone had to follow my wishes for food because, afterall, I didn’t just not want to go to the Fish Palace because I hate fish but because I’m pregnant and fish can harm the baby. “What to Expect” made pregnancy easier than pre-pregnancy life for me. I started to make things up. Anytime someone suggested something that I didn’t like to eat, I told them that it wasn’t good for the baby. Hey, maybe that’s how these rules started in the first place – some smart pregnant women made them up so that they didn’t have to eat things or do things for 9 months.

Really, I couldn’t take prenatal vitamins and did so many things I was told not by books from eating peanut butter and lunchmeat to taking hot baths to cleaning the litter box to gaining 50+ pounds and my child is perfectly healthy (and wasn’t a monster-sized baby).

gramomster, I’ve come to the point where I just automatically tune out the stuff about size and car seats without even thinking about it. My kids have all been really small for their ages, but it runs in the family. If I were to follow the car seat height and weight guidelines I’d have teenagers in boosters — literally. So not only do I ignore it, I have the ability to entirely mentally block on the whole subject. I keep my kids in car seats to about the point where a normal sized child of the same age would be. That always keeps me well within the laws, anyway.

God, what happened to pickles and ice cream? When I was growing up, mothers were told to take long walks and lay off alcohol. Now we do baby Mozart (Check Penn & Teller’s Bullshit: Season One Episode Five for the truth on that. Check Season Six for Lenore’s episode) and pop pills; ridiculous. Listen to your cravings, people. More often then not, it’s your body telling you it’s low on some necessary vitamin or element.

I just wanted to chime in for the mom-to-be: my kids are 5 and 7 and I remember how much pressure there was to do EVERYTHING right during pregnancy and labor and trust my every detail to doctors or experts or whatever. There really is – in this day in America – so much of this pressure. But (the vast majority) of pregnant women are tough and so are their babies. Pregnancy is a natural – not necessarily a medical – process. Like midwife Ina May Gaskin says, “Remember that you are as well made as any monkey.”

Good luck avoiding the crazy-making “advice” and lectures! I’d love to tell you it stops with childbirth but… 🙂

Wishing you a happy birth!

pentamom, oh heck yeah. with you on the carseat size thing. I never in a million years would’ve put my kid in a booster to go to highschool, but Michigan also didn’t have this very restrictive law at that time. Law is about 2 years old. Kid would’ve been illegal out of a booster until 15. Hah, haha ha ha. Like that would ever happen. Grandkid is still 3, so booster for sure for a while. Squirmy little bugger. My kids were in belts around 5. Daughter was tall, but skinny. As she remains. 5’8″ plus, and lucky to hit 125 with a steady pizza and beer diet. It’ll bite her in the proverbial ass at 35, but she’s got another good decade and change.

vdrfolnir… I must’ve been low on pastrami and swiss!

I worked at a caterer’s with a woman who was pregnant. She actually got really mad when I would offer to lift her tray for her. She lifted trays right up to her delivery, and her child is FINE. She worked just as hard as everyone else and never ever even once used her pregnancy to get out of doing her share of the work.

I don’t know if I’ll do EXACTLY like her, but c’mon…. women been doing this forever, and you gotta figure momma knows best.

Here’s what you need to know: maintain whatever level of exercize you’re accustommed to as long as it’s comfortable for you. Don’t smoke. Minimize alcohol consumption ( a little bit once in a while is just fine, really) Stay out of the hot tub and sauna. Wear your seat belt as low on your hips as you can, under your belly when you start to show. Eat whatever you want. And start thinking about giving birth at home or in a birth center

I love how everyone here is giving advice! You see, even on Free Range people can’t help telling you what you should be doing during your pregnancy. Seriously, anyone who is posting a list of dos and don’ts is entirely missing the point.

It seems like we are so uptight about pregnancy and parenthood in this country. I have friends from Europe & around the world who are so much more relaxed than we are here, we over medicalize everything. Taking even the basic enjoyment out of a walk because hell you could fall down! When really our bodies as women are designed to carry children, yes we can’t go wild & probably shouldn’t join the rodeo for bull broncs when preggers but we should be able to use basic common sense, trust our instincts, & relax. So enjoy your cheese & life! By the time I got to baby #3 during the pregnancy my level of worry was way down & my enjoyment of life was up.

Put the books away, limit the internet and all the crazy advice you can run into and trust yourself and your instincts. You already know what to do and when you need some advice I am sure you have some trusted people to ask, hopefully that includes your doctor.

I wish you well!

Lots of answers already! I’ll chime in, anyway, since I’m also pregnant (21 weeks!). I will admit, though, that I’ve been far more careful/paranoid than most people, but that’s due to a prior late-term miscarriage. That said, I still try to be realistic.

At my first prenatal appointment, my doctor gave me a booklet of various information, including what foods/medicines to avoid. I’ve followed it pretty closely for two reasons: a) like I said, I’m paranoid (and some of the things in the list ARE known to cause problems), and b) the items in that list tended to make me sick, anyway.

The key for whatever you put in your body is to remember that pretty much everything you eat will also go to your baby, but it will be a fraction of the amount that you’ve consumed, so moderation is key. Did you know it’s actually considered safe to consume up to 200mg of caffeine a day? A can of Mountain Dew has something like 40-50mg, and it takes about 15oz of coffee to hit that limit (so if you’re only drinking one caffeinated drink a day, you’re probably fine). Another food that is typically on the “do not eat” list is fish, but the thing is, it’s only certain kinds of fish that doctors recommend you avoid completely, namely high-on-the-food-chain fish, such as shark and swordfish, because of the mercury levels. Mid-range stuff, such as tuna, is supposed to be limited (for the same reason), but doesn’t need cut completely. In fact, the Omega fatty acids are SPECTACULAR for your baby. So eat the fish, but if you can, go for the stuff with lower levels of mercury.

Regarding the hot water thing, what I found (and I found it to be a good idea), is that it’s not recommended to be in HOT water (as in, things like hot tubs), because it raises your core body temperature (because you can’t sweat to regulate your temperature), which can raise the temperature in the womb and could have adverse effects. The question then becomes “how hot is too hot?” Like someone else said, if it burns, it’s too hot. Your comfy shower or bath probably won’t be too much, and it starts cooling as soon as you stop adding water, anyway.

The exercise thing? Please… I think the most important thing is to listen to your body and not push yourself too hard, make sure you drink enough water, and wear clothes that are breathable so you don’t overheat. Low-impact stuff is generally recommended, more for your own health than that of the baby (I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to still walk when I’m 60). Remember, your joints, muscles, and bones are under enough strain and are softening so they can expand as needed for birth. Ever really look at the exercises they recommend you do? They’re Yoga and Bellydance moves (on a side note: highly recommend bellydance, it’s awesome for keeping in shape while pregnant and it practically designed for pregnancy; but as a bellydancer, I’m biased =P ).

@Shannon — While I agree that those that go on to extremes about the “evil” of hospitals are a little…out there, they’re not entirely without a good point. The sad fact is that the US infant mortality rate is among the lowest of First World nations, and many believe that it’s due (at least in part) to the overly-high rate of unnecessary medical interventions. For example, a doctor might take action if the labor goes on “too long” (as in, more than a couple hours), which often leads to the baby going into distress and a c-section being called for.

Your breech situation is also an interesting one. While it can potentially become an emergency, it’s also possible for the mother, through movement, to reposition the baby, without the need for medical intervention.

Also, the midwifery field isn’t as unregulated as you think. While there is a class of midwives that aren’t certified, there are also several classes of midwives who ARE certified, with at least one of those classes being not only certified midwives, but nurses as well. That means they carry the same level of expertise as many of the people that you’d have at a hospital. They also have tools to fix non-emergency complications and won’t hesitate to go to the nearest hospital in the event of an emergency. There are also birthing centers, which do deliveries exclusively, and can be a good option for typical (“low-risk”) pregnancies, because they have more tools available than a home birth situation would have. Midwifery regulation also varies by state. For example, some states require midwives to be certified.

However, home births and birthing centers aren’t for everyone. For example, I’ll be delivering at a hospital, due to my past experience. What’s important, though, is that you know your boundaries and what you can do and can deny (and THAT you can deny, or demand more info before making a decision), and that the ultimate decision for pretty much everything is up to you.

on the no exercize… i’ve worked on farms and with horses entire life… 7 months preg in july and the kicker on the bailer broke. so we had to throw bales[50-60 lbs] on wagon. i tried to getout of doing it due to the baby and my doctor said why not, you do this all the time! also rode through all thre kids, actually the only way to calm the kicking on my first… guess what all three turned out fine.

I drank Pepsi at least once a day, I ate candy and chips like they were going out of style, I never exercised, I skipped several Dr.’s appointments, and I stopped taking my vitamin after the first 2 months. (Even before that, I forgot it almost half the time.) I’d bet my (healthy) first born child that *whatever* you do this pregnancy, you and the baby will be fine.

Even if you have cats, you’re probably fine to empty the box since you probably were exposed to that disease (what’s it called again?) years ago and now you already have an immunity.

@Shannon.

I find this interesting, as I’ve encountered the opposite. Those I’ve known, it’s always the ones who have ultimate faith in the professionals in all things that are the most active helicopterers (word? maybe…), the ones who follow all weird rules, have bi-weekly ultrasounds, play the Mozart, have the scheduled induction… the often highly educated ones, which makes sense, as they also have the most invested in the whole expert thing.
The folks I’ve known, myself included, who are more free-range in their ideas about parenting are also those who take more ownership of their pregnancies and births. I had a hospital birth with my first kid. Awful, horrible, terrible experience. Overridden at every turn. Forced to stay basically tied to the bed by monitors for 16 hours. I was low risk, had been in perfect health my whole pregnancy, had absolutely no reason to be denied the chance to walk the halls at least. Had Demerol injected into my IV as I was refusing the medication. “Oh honey. You don’t KNOW what you want.” Literally. That is what the nurse said to me as she injected the Demerol into my line. Great. Thanks for acknowledging my intelligence.

Okay, absolutely I agree totally that the advances in medical knowledge and ability to intervene when needed have been the primary determinant of the fall of infant and maternal mortality. That being said, I believe we have done the uber American thing of, if some is good, more must be better, so let’s do WAY more! That’ll be way better! And in fact, it is not. We have taken medical intervention to such an extreme that med students never see a ‘normal’ birth, as ‘normal’ now is induced, medicate, monitored, and managed. After immense amounts of research and talking with women of all sorts and experiences, I chose not to go that route again.

Kids 2 and 3 were born at home. With highly qualified midwives, who worked with a back-up OB who had followed me throughout my pregnancies, and who would have taken over primary care had I needed to be transported. One woman had been an OB RN for 10 years before moving to midwifery, her partner was a certified EMT with a firefighter husband in our town of 1200, and the midwife for my last kid was a PA, with licensure for oxygen and pitocin. I was in very good hands.

My daughter went to a birthing center, staffed by amazing women, about 3 miles from the hospital, where they had great relationships with the medical staff. They rarely had to transport. Because, in a normal birth, (which, by the way, most medical students have never seen, because we start out the process with interventions), there is very low chance of an emergency arising. Of course, one wants responsible caregivers who will move them to a medical setting should it become necessary! And it does! My best college friend had two girls, both homebirths. Then in her last pregnancy, she developed pre-eclampsia, her midwives sent her to the hospital to be induced, and moved into the role of doulas. And doulas are very helpful for those women and families that don’t have support systems nearby. If you don’t have good friends, mom, sisters, etc to help with an older child, or to do your dishes, or run your laundry, or hold the baby while you shower, it is really overwhelming really quickly.

Anyway, we also, while having a low infant and maternal mortality rate, do have higher rates than many other developed countries, and in many if not most other developed countries midwives still deliver the majority of babies, even in hospital settings. We also have a crazy high c-section rate. Here is a link to the WHO information.

http://www.childbirthconnection.org/article.asp?ck=10456

Fascinatingly enough, in 1965, when we had a fairly low infant mortality rate, we had a c-section rate of 4.5%. We now have a rate of around 30%. Normal, everyday interventions that are largely unnecessary are a listed contributor to this high percentage. The WHO recommends between 5% and 15% as the range in which c-sections are helpful and necessary. We’re double the top of the range. Which can be read as at least half of our c-sections are unnecessary. Which is why I chose to have 2 homebirths, and why there was no way in hell I was sending my kid to the local hospital to give birth. The rates at that hospital for c-sections in young mothers is over 50%. My daughter was 16. She got great prenatal, took care of herself, ate well, etc. She gave birth, in about 7 hours of labor, to an 8lb 12oz boy. Healthy as a horse. She didn’t tear, she had him latched on before the cord was cut, it was awesome. And I knew without a doubt that if she ran into problems, we’d be at the hospital. But because it was NEEDED, not because that’s what we’re supposed to do.

We have really shameful statistics on maternal mortality as well. But that’s another rant altogether.

Nutshell: thank goodness we have the knowledge to intervene when necessary. Wish we had the wisdom NOT to intervene when it’s NOT necessary.

Hey Mama-to-be! Don’t sweat it! I ate sushi, climbed ladders, painted – indoors, lifted objects over ten lbs., shovelled snow, spread gravel with a shovel, and gardened -without gloves. I have seen that there are some parents who drink, smoke and do drugs from day one to week 42 and still have babies who thrive. There are also those who do everything “right” and have something unfortunate happen. I think these overbearing individuals with all the rules are simply stating them so that stupid people won’t go overboard. Obviously, don’t paint in an area without ventilation – but if a doctor or author does not put it in a book, Suzie Stoopid will go and do just that, causing her baby to suffer from lead poisoning because she’s using an old can of lead-based paint from the 60’s she found in her dad’s basement. I’m convinced warnings are for those who cannot think for themselves and for those who’ll sue as soon as an opportunity arises. Look at those ads for medicines – the whole ad takes up 4 magazine pages…95% of it is “if you have this don’t take this with that under these conditions and may cause blah blah blah.” You’ll be fine.

Jean: That :”at most 0.5% alcohol” thing is actually a legal standard that applies to any beverage that’s not considered an alcoholic beverage. It applies to fruit juice. It applies to pop. It applies to iced tea. It even applies to bottled water. A NA beer is very unlikely to contain more alcohol than orange juice. At that concentration, it would be impossible to raise your blood alcohol level detectably even if you drank it by the gallon; your liver would destroy the alcohol before it had a chance to get into your general circulation.

(There’s some semantic confusion because members of Alcoholics Anonymous call NA beer “near beer,” which outside of 12-step circles refers to beer with an alcohol concentration of around 3% (regular beer is between 4.5%-5.5%). The latter definitely will get you smashed if you drink enough of it.)

Some years back, I was in line at a coffee shop with my baby when I noticed a very pregnant woman behind me. I told her “I have one bit of advice for you,” and you could see her stiffen. Then I said “*It’s ok to ignore everybody’s advice*.”

She immediately softened and regaled me with tales about how her parents were giving her all kinds of advice that was totally against what the doctors were saying, and expressed how much she appreciated my words. I already knew from experience what she had been going through (sometimes I wonder how my husband lived to be an adult considering the advice I’ve received).

So thank everyone for their concerns, ignore their advice, and move on with your life.

You know, the one thing I wanted them to tell me that I couldn’t do anymore was work. But apparently it’s perfectly fine to work a high-stress job right up until the minute you drop the baby. What I found interesting was that after I had the baby, by emergency c-section, I read about a study saying that moms-tp-be that stay home and rest the last month of their pregnancy have a significantly lower rate of c-sections.

Eat your cheese, have a beer or some wine, have some caffeine. Just whatever you do, do NOT – I repeat – do NOT read anything about breastfeeding on the internet. If you think the pregnancy boards are bad…

@ gramomster I couldn’t agree with you more.

Check out one of my favorite pregnancy authors http://www.hencigoer.com/

OB practices follow standards of care which are basically set by lawyers. Most of the invasive care that is done is for CYA reasons, not because it is necessary.

I loved being pregnant except for all the prenatal visits.

I am so thankful that my doctor gave me the following advice (similar to others above): stop drinking except occasionally, take your pre-natal vitamin and don’t eat too much mercury (or fish with mercury.) I didn’t cut out sushi, soft cheeses (hard to get in USA anyway), etc.

We are on a Mad Men marathon right now since my husband has the flu. This is a great show for realizing how crazy, over-the-top we are these days with safety, germs, etc.

I think the worst thing I did my first pregnancy was read the What to Expect book. I regret it now when I look back at the pregnancy and how miserable I was and how guilty I felt because I couldn’t follow all the “rules”.

I remember the big ones for me were the caffeine and sleeping on your side. I almost solely drank iced tea back then so I thought I had to give it up. I cut back to 1 glass at breakfast (we usually went out with my fil to his local hangout) but we only went a couple times a week. It was then that I realized I had a dependence on caffeine to keep my migraines in check. After 3 days of no caffeine I have one monster migraine that won’t go away even with medication. But I kept up the no caffeine rule and just suffered with mind splitting pain day after day (to the point of tears).
I slept only on my sides for 6 months. By the end of the pregnancy I was in so much pain in my shoulders and hips that I couldn’t get comfortable no matter how I slept and cried myself to sleep every night and felt overwhelming guilt when I finally gave up and slept on my back (but only for a few minutes at a time because I could suffocate the baby).
It was insane.
But despite the rule following I did a lot of things the Pregnancy Police would frown against. We went to Disney World for our honeymoon when I was 3 1/2 months pregnant and I went on the Safari ride and one of the roller coasters. I single handily moved (well, almost) from our apt to my in-law’s house. That meant I packed, carried boxes, loaded them into our pickup, unloaded them and carried them into my inlaw’s house. I was 8 months pregnant. And about a month before I was due I took my husband to a WWE event where it was super loud.

My daughter is now 9 1/2 years old and perfectly normal, healthy and smart.

And I learned some lessons. I’m now about 12 weeks into my 6th pregnancy (my 5th child, had a miscarriage with #5) and I refuse to look at pregnancy websites or advice.
I do and eat what I please. I drink as much caffeine as I like and, amazingly, I’ve cut back without even thinking about it. I just don’t have a taste for tea or pop. I eat lunch meat whenever I like (did that with all my kids). I take super hot showers because there is no point to shower if they aren’t scalding hot to me. I sleep however I’m most comfortable…back, side, stomach, whatever. I sleep with a heating pad which I’ve done since I was 12 years old because of back problems. Basically nothing in my life has changed except I’m utterly exhausted all the time and my sense of smell is so heightened that every smell in the house makes me sick, lol.

I didn’t make it through all the comments because I’m at work and should get back to it but…Someone mentioned lamenting the days when pregnant women could just continue on with their lives. Exactly! Another thing for the original poster to remember is to trust her instincts after the baby is born also. My daughter was born in February. I was at the mall with her the day after I had her and people thought I was the worst mother. Taking a baby out of the house, in the winter no less, and exposing her to germs at such a young age. Also, I should be resting after such an ordeal and not out shopping. Phooey! I felt fantastic, was stir crazy from being in the hospital and wanted to do something fun. It really never ends. Do what feels right for you and your family.

I don’t have any advice, other than to echo what everyone else has said about throwing out “What to Expect”.

I found “Your Pregnancy Week By Week” to be helpful, but the book I loved best was actually one I bought for my husband — “The Caveman’s Pregnancy Companion” — mostly down to earth, light on the OMG don’t do this, and full of charts.

but really all you can do is practice saying “my doctor and I are handling my care, thanks for your concern” and changing the subject 🙂

I’m guilty of this. The other night, I went out with some of my husband’s friends and one woman there was pregnant. As we were leaving the restaurant, we saw her in the parking lot… smoking.

After letting me vent my indignity for a moment, my husband explained that she had tried to quit smoking, but that her doctor felt that her symptoms of withdrawal were actually more likely to harm her fetus than the smoking would. So in her case, the doctor recommended that she slowly cut down on smoking and not try quitting cold turkey again.

And thus I was taught yet again that assumptions help no one. My assumption was that this was a horrible monster who obviously didn’t care at all for her child and would probably try to eat it as soon as it was born. Turns out, she was just doing what most parents do – the best she can.

You are SO WRONG! I ate no vegetables and only pizza and bagels with cream cheese in the first trimesters of my pregnancies. Now, ALL THREE of my children talk back to me. Had I know, I would have suffered through those cups of steamed spinach and fought the reverse peristalsis TOOTH AND NAIL.

Okay, I’d like to set the record straight on one thing about car seats, for people who are determined to turn their kids at one year old just to prove that they can. For me, there’s a difference between being free range and just plain ignoring science. As Lenore’s said here before, car accidents are one of the top killers of kids, so why don’t we keep them from riding in cars? I can’t do that, and I won’t keep my kid in a bubble, but I will make their experience riding in cars as safe as possible within reason, and that includes following incontrovertible scientific evidence, as discussed below.

New advice: Rear-facing car seats safer for children until they are 2

by Lori O’Keefe • Correspondent

Toddlers between the ages of 12 and 23 months who ride rear-facing in a car safety seat are more than five times safer than toddlers in that same age group who ride forward-facing in a car seat.

Overall, children under the age of 2 are 75% less likely to die or experience a serious injury when they ride in a rear-facing car seat, according to the first U.S. data to substantiate the benefits of toddlers riding rear-facing until they are almost 2 years old (Henary B, et al. Inj Prev. 2007;13:398-402).

There is a common myth that rear-facing toddlers whose feet reach the back of the vehicle seat are more likely to suffer injuries to the lower extremities in a car accident, according to a commentary co-written by Marilyn J. Bull, M.D., FAAP, AAP District V chair and one of the co-authors of the study. However, lower extremity injuries are rare with rear-facing seats, Dr. Bull wrote in the commentary (Bull MJ, Durbin DR. Pediatrics. 2008;121:619-620).

Rear-facing seats are more likely to support the back, neck, head and pelvis because the force of a crash is distributed evenly over the entire body. Forward-facing children are more likely to be injured because the force of the crash is concentrated on seat belt contact points, and younger children’s heads are disproportionately large for their small, weak necks, according to the study.

“I teach my medical students that parents worry about leg injuries but that it is far better to send children to orthopedic specialists to have lower extremities treated than to send them to neurological specialists to have cervical spine injuries treated,” said Dr. Bull. “I put it into the context of rehabilitation potential: fracture vs. paralysis.”

In Sweden, children ride in rear-facing seats until the age of 4, which has been proven to be 90% effective compared to children who ride unrestrained. However, car seats are engineered differently in Sweden to allow older toddlers to remain rear-facing longer.

“Since motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death in children, the Academy must do whatever it can to educate our members and the general public about the safest ways for children to ride in motor vehicles,” said AAP President David T. Tayloe Jr., M.D., FAAP. “We should make sure all of our members know to encourage parents to keep their children in rear-facing car seats as long as they do not exceed the size limits of the car seats.”

Dr. Bull noted that it takes less than 30 seconds to tell parents that children are five times safer riding rear-facing until their second birthday — a statistic that is likely to stick with parents.

About 10 years ago at the height of the listeria hysteria I worked in a (pasteurised) soft cheese factory as QA manager, in our factory all cheeses are . At the factory we had cheese tasting 2-3 times a week. (blue, white and product development). Our pregnant factory manage participated in all until she left for maternity leave.
My pregnant SIL was horrified when I told her. Child was fine of course.

Sometimes you do have to wonder with all the things our mothers did wrong, how come we were born and healthy? We all must be miracle babies.

I think, as mothers, we so often rely on outside information (the internet, our doctors, etc…) when our instincts would serve us pretty well if we just listened. If *you* think what you are doing might not be so good for your fetus, don’t do it but I can tell you that eating a piece of bleu cheese or taking part in a step class isn’t going to hurt your fetus. The never-ending stress might.

You really do know what is best. Congratulations on your pregnancy!

The person who wrote “what to except when you’re expecting” obviously did not ever experience morning sickness, all day nausea, and food aversions during pregnancy. A better title for that book would be “what to worry about when you’re expecting”.

Do not read “Girlfriends guide to pregnancy” or other such books or web sites that have no scientific content that are -produced by middle-aged-well-to-do-white females that have low IQs/low self esteem/no common sense and have nothing else to occupied them selves with.
Take this from a veterinarian: for ages women that were unable to read/ lived in starving w. war II desolated countries/ even in the middle of the Sudanese refugee camps have been giving birth to healthy children!!!!!

However, Stephanie, you can get seats that front-face *but have a five point harness* up until 80 pounds or so, and many of those are convertable (they rear-face until 40 pounds, then you turn ’em around), which is probably where the confusion comes in.

I had a colleague nearly spill the beans about my pregnancy (she guessed early) in front of my boss because she was so concerned about the rooibos tea I ordered at Starbucks. Which is, for the record, herbal and totally fine.

At about 15 weeks I broke down and ate deli meat. And I have been sipping alcohol at random times throughout– good wines only, the stuff I really miss. I can’t wait until I’m postpartum. My first dinner out will be back to that Italian place with the great muscat I couldn’t enjoy a whole glass of.

Oh yes, and I got the seasonal and H1N1 flu shots, totally “unnatural.”

B. Durbin — *laughs* I’ve LOST 25lbs since I found out I was pregnant (I’m quite a bit overweight, so the baby still certainly has plenty of supply, and he can have it, as far as I’m concerned), and my boy’s still measuring about a week ahead in size and weight (according to the charts I’m finding, at 19w, he should be about 8-9oz….he measured something like 11oz at my last ultrasound).

My husband yelled at me a few weeks ago, because I slid the couch about two feet to show him what I was talking about after we argued about how to rearrange the living room for whatever reason. I’m just like, “sliding isn’t lifting, because it used different muscles in a different way than lifting. Besides, I’d rather spend 30 seconds doing that and dealing with the matter, than spend the rest of the day on edge with you.” Suffice to say, he clammed up pretty quickly. =D

Greta Koenigin — Heh, bagels and cream cheese were my life saver at some points until about 16 weeks. It was pretty much the only thing that looked good and I could hold down. Right now, Chicken Ramen has been a main staple in my diet (at least for dinners). I know so many people that would probably yell at me for the amount of sodium I’ve had, but I think it’s not only keeping my blood pressure up (despite all the salt from the Ramen and other soups, the pickles, and the chips, my BP hasn’t much exceeded 120/80), but also keeping my electrolytes in balance against all the water I drink.

Re: the rear-facing thing a couple have mentioned —

I actually read an article one time regarding the rear-facing thing. Did you know that we are safer while rear-facing? What cracked me up about the article (and what I remember most) is how it mentioned that we should all be rear-facing if it were possible to drive like that. It’s because you’re less likely to get whiplash and other head injuries. I think it’d be both a cool and hilarious idea to see cars that were set up so you’d drive backwards (my guess with a screen so you think that/operate like you’re driving forward).

My advice: ignore it all. Stay off the web, don’t read books, leave the room when people try to give you advice or comment on how you’re doing things. Repeat after me: “women have been bearing children for millions of years, women have been bearing children for millions of years, women have been …”

I had a really good pair of books called “Your pregnancy week by week” and “The first year week by week” that were fact based and didn’t lecture.

If you practice these things now, you’ll get good at it by the time the baby is born and you’ll be all ready to face the legions of people who will spend the next 18 years giving you unsolicited advice.

I’ve been eating lunch meat all during my pregnancy, no one told me not to, lol. Doctors and midwives say the baby is fine though. I refuse to read any books or read on the internet about what I should be doing though because I’m anxiety prone and I knew it would drive me crazy. My midwife said, exercise even if it is just taking a walk, take your vitamins, drink plenty of water, and that’s what I’ve been doing.

I don’t see how anyone could stand food restrictions during the first trimester if they are having “morning” sickness though. Pretty much the only thing I could eat was pizza. I hardly ever touched a vegetable or fruit the entire first trimester and I REALLY tried to. But I would just puke it up. My midwife said it was fine and the baby would be fine as long as I made sure to take my vitamins.

I forgot to mention on the whole “lying on your back” thing—

The nurses told us that you figure out when it’s time to stop lying on your back because you get uncomfortable very quickly. The pressure on the vena cava causes dizziness, leg tingling, etc.

They ALSO mentioned that you feel these things long before any harm comes to your baby, and even if you’re asleep the discomfort will either cause you to wake up or to move naturally. Just as well, as I keep waking up with my hips flat and a cat draped across my legs, anchoring me down, belly still of to the side.

My youngest child is 10, and many of the current warnings weren’t in effect when I was pregnant. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t like sushi, but I certainly ate more than a little deli meat during three pregnancies. In the course of those same pregnancies I went to having one or two caffeinated drinks in my entire first pregnancy to having one or two a day by my third. The kids are all fine!

My favorite advice came from my doctor when I asked him about doing exercises on my back while pregnant. I’d been warned against it. He said, “Well, the thing people worry about is the weight of the baby cutting off the blood flow to your brain. If that starts happening, you’ll get dizzy. So, if you get dizzy, roll over!”

Relax and enjoy as much as possible! If you’re a sushi lover, soft cheese lover, etc.– indulgence shouldn’t be an issue!

If you are having a normal pregnancy, please don’t stress about every little thing. Enjoy, keep walking or swimming or with the yoga, etc. I had a pregnancy fraught with risk factors that just kept coming– gestational diabetes at 12 weeks (so no splurging for me, as I became the poster child at my perinatologists for blood sugar control), going to modified bed rest/pre-eclampysia, etc. By the end, my goal was to stay out of the hospital bedrest ward and at home until it was time for delivery. But I did manage to keep working at home and even trundle to the grocery store the day I delivered. Just listen to your body & baby moving around. Most people’s instincts are better than they think, one just needs to pay attention.

But I had a full-term,healthy, active baby boy, now 21 months. Those websites and “discussion groups” online– just ditch them. I never found them in the least helpful, and some “moderators” just dispensed downright *dangerous* advice (along the whole “alternative” medicine/foods route). I’d looked at the “what to expect” books long before I became pregnant and wasn’t impressed then. The Mayo Clinic guide is good, another poster also recommended it (although it didn’t have any info on two of my risk factors).

Remember, this is YOUR baby. YOU are in charge, the parent. Just as in ‘regular’ life, everything in moderation is just fine. People open their mouths and say ridiculous things– just smile, nod, and get on with your day. There’s no such thing as a “perfect” pregnancy, so enjoy the one you’re having. And the sleep. Really really enjoy the sleep, even with the expanding belly. (My toddler still doesn’t sleep much…) Oh, as for nursing? Hagen Daas really helps boost milk production. 🙂 And cold compresses when the milk is coming in. Not warm.

I’ll be the only one on here to somewhat defend the “What to Expect…” book. I didn’t follow the advice, but there were some things in there that helped out (like not freaking out over the tar poopies as opposed to my then-hubby, who didn’t read it!) LOL Take the facts of pregnancy out of the book, and leave the Nazi-like diet tips and such alone.

My kids are both adopted. I had zero control over the pregnancy. Their birthmother ate whatever she could afford, and worked as a housekeeper to feed herself and her other children until the last minute. For my second son’s pregnancy, she actually got some prenatal vitamins. My oldest son was 5 lb 4 oz at birth, and has some discolored dental enamel due to poor prenatal nutrition. But otherwise? They are perfectly fine. No allergies, mild asthma in one kid, astigmatism in the other. Normal, average, generally healthy kids, without me obsessing over whether they got Mozart at 15 weeks gestation or whether or not I was in the same state as a smoker, or anything like that. Somehow, they survived being born in a third world country without anyone reading ‘What to expect’ and wringing their hands. So chances are, if my kids can come out fine, then the average US baby will come out fine too.

I’m 9 months pregnant and was at the local indoor pool/water park with my 2 year old and we went down the big, windy water slide together and about half the people there were horrified when I emerged from the water and the other half were cheering me on. (Please note that it drops you into some pretty deep water so there is no chance of a big BANG when I landed). Anyway- my point is that using your critical thinking skills is the way to survive gestating and parenthood. I think the point is that there is a ton of common sense you already posess but we’re rendered so insecure we cant make normal decisions anymore. Look at the info and decide for yourself….and then have that small glass of wine with the brie 😉

I ate sushi, drank diet coke, toasted each trimester with a glass or red wine (and each week of my third pregnancy), rode my bike, did step-aerobics and kick boxing, ran, drank coffee, ate whatever I wanted, slept on my back, and sat it a hot tub.

When my kids were born, they were in a baby jogger at four weeks, the bike trailer at two weeks (bungee cords and the carseat), and hiked in the rain from the time I could get up and out. On the way home from the hospital with my third, we went to a Christmas party (can’t beat the free babysitting from my parents!) I have a deep distrust of band wagons and I did what was comfortable and made sense to me. My kids are all great.

I’m 18 weeks pregnant, and I teach 8th grade English. I have 13-14 year old STUDENTS trying to tell me things I do that are “bad for the baby.” I’ve lost patience with the whole thing and have taken to telling the kids that people who can’t remember to indent their paragraphs don’t get to tell me how to care for a fetus.

They also want me to name the baby Kanye.

Hi, this will be my first time commenting! This is a subject that cracks me up and, at the same time, annoys the heck out of me.

My son is 7 years old now and has no health issues whatsoever. In spite of that, I’ve had women *freak out* at me over what I did and didn’t do during my pregnancy. (And yeah, I’ll admit it. Sometimes, I relish sharing just to see the reaction of the pregnant helicopter questioning me.)

I had blue cheese and half a glass of chardonnay almost every day throughout my first trimester. I had a hot bath everyday. I stood, sat or laid down whenever I felt like it. I walked at least a mile or two everyday. I once had a man get downright angry on the bus when I said “no thanks” to his offer to pull down the ‘handicap’ seat. The bus wasn’t full and I had been sitting for 15min at the bus stop- my body wanted to stand. I wore nothing but chunky, two and half inch heeled shoes. Oh, and I didn’t take any vitamins, pre-natal or otherwise. My OB told me not to bother since I was craving healthier foods than I ever wanted before. And she didn’t freak about my stranger cravings. I craved the smell of shoe polish and actually carried a small tin with me at all times. She said as long as I wasn’t huffing it or eating it, why worry?

Pregnancy really agreed with me and I really think listening to my body and intuitively listening to my unborn son were the keys. I really just continued with those attitudes after the birth. I was SO proud when, at his first birthday party, he ate his first handful of dirt!

When my mother was pregnant with me she thought she had gone into labor… she went to the hospital, and they told her I wasn’t ready yet- to go home, have a glass of wine, and come back the next day. I have a very successful job, graduated summa cum laude from college, and was the valedictorian of my high school class. You are going to be fine! Have a great time with the baby!

The carseat thing drives me nuts. I’ve personally weighed the odds and decided to turn my kids when I did. The whole extended rear facing thing became popular when my oldest kids were toddlers and the advice was keep them rear facing until 30-35lbs (the limit on most convertible seats back then). The annoying thing was they only considered the average sized child and assumed you’d be turning them by 2 1/2 or whatever.

My oldest child is tiny. She didn’t hit 30lbs until she was about 4 1/2-5 years old and wasn’t 35lbs until she was 6 1/2. She’s 9 1/2 (10 in June) and only weighs 45lbs. She’s still in a booster (backless) despite laws in our state that say it’s legal for her to be out of it and we did keep her harnessed until she was 6 1/2 and almost 40lbs. We’re still not sure how long she will stay in the booster. She’s only 4′ tall so she physically is too small to not use it. I’m thinking if she is still so tiny by 12 she can move to sitting on a pillow like my mom did while she was driving because she couldn’t see over the steering wheel (even though she was 5’5″ like me).

I find many of the ERF advocates are as batty as the breastfeeding ones (which I avoid with a passion since I CHOSE to formula feed).

My one observation over the years is that the worst thing to ever happen to new expecting mothers is the advent of parenting message boards. I posted to my first one when my oldest was 4 months and all through my next 2 pregnancies and was made to feel like crap because I didn’t do things the way the “experts” and books said to do it.

I joined one with my 4th pregnancy but left within a month because I did everything wrong and no matter what we were discussing (from feeding, diapering, vaccinating, car seats, discipline, etc) I was doing it wrong by their standards and they (the other moms in the group) had no problem ganging up on me to tell me I was a lazy, useless, selfish person for not doing the very best for my children.

I basically told them to go screw themselves and never went back. I checked on the group once when my daughter was about a year old and the only people still posting there were the “perfect” moms who seemed to be there just to confirm they were doing everything the right way and talking bad about the moms who chose to do things differently then them. Gag.

plug your ears, follow your heart. instinct will lead you in the right direction.

This is really an excellent post, I really enjoy reading it.

sorry, there are no guarantees in life. i followed the rules for the most part, though not to any extreme — probably didn’t eat enough vegetables or get enough exercise (still don’t). but i did have every prenatal test to make sure everything was fine. it all came out normal. i felt fine, the pregnancy progressed fine, the birth came early but was otherwise fine –and then my daughter was born with a birth defect. one that would have killed her in an earlier age; fortunately we’re not in an earlier age, and they fixed it and she is TOTALLY fine now too.

and for a while i blamed myself — what did i do?? was it that glass of wine i had before i knew i was pregnant? was it one too many babyback ribs from chili’s? was it my shocking avoidance of pregnancy yoga?!? then i realized — it was nothing. it was a misfire during the building process. a dropped stitch. no process is foolproof or perfect. this was a universal truth we all understood a few generations ago. but we’ve become so accustomed to the illusion of control that modern life gives us that we’ve become responsible for EVERYTHING that happens to us, and that’s just ridiculous. little of what’s going on in there is in your hands. so you may as well relax.

avoid smoking crack and perhaps sky diving. other than that, really, it’ll be fine.

Nearly 68 years ago, I was adopted as an infant. Then two years later, I suffered a ruptured appendix. Probably due to something my bio-mom had for dinner.

I have 4 perfectly healthy, perfectly happy, perfectly average children and by no means did I “do” their pregnancies “perfectly”. And it dawned on me one day that these fetuses and infants are a LOT more resilient than we give them credit for. And that a woman’s body (in most cases) knows exactly what it’s supposed to do. Please, new Mommas, relax and try to enjoy the process. And learn how to smile politely and nod when someone offers you a piece of advice that makes your toes curl.

Sally, you are absolutely correct, it shows that you’re an authority on the subject. I admire someone that takes the pride you have and with your projecton of information. oSo when i actually do sit down to read material, I appreciate well written and organized blogs like this one. I have it bookmarked and will be back. Thanks.

Great post.

Very informative.

I read all the comment.But the below one impressed me a lot.

The person who wrote “what to except when you’re expecting” obviously did not ever experience morning sickness, all day nausea, and food aversions during pregnancy. A better title for that book would be “what to worry about when you’re expecting”.

I had my children in 99 and 02 and those What To Expect When You’re Expecting books were huge. They suck. Every problem imaginable listed month by month. I only kept it because it had a good list of milestones each month. Read The GirlFriend’s Guide to Pregnancy. Funny and real.