Surviving the dos and mostly don'ts of expectant motherhood

EMC Editorial - When it comes to your health, is it possible to be too well-informed?

If you had asked me that question five months ago, my answer would have been a swift and definite "no". Then I got pregnant.

Over the summer, I embarked on a quest for knowledge on how to have the healthiest possible pregnancy with the help of What to Expect When You're Expecting and a plethora of websites dedicated to the education of women who are with child.

The list of dos and don'ts is long and daunting. There are the obvious ones: don't drink alcohol, eat right, try not to fall down the stairs, etc.

Then there are the not-so-obvious. Did you know, for instance, that a woman is supposed to take folic acid tablets daily AT LEAST three months before conception? If you don't, the baby is at a risk of developing neural tube defects. Gee, that's a really helpful piece of information to be told after you're already pregnant. My little embryo hadn't even developed limbs, and already I was feeling like a terrible mother.

Avoiding unpasteurized soft cheeses is another big one. I eat a largely plant-based diet, so this rule is not difficult for me to follow. However, when I do eat cheese it's usually at a restaurant, and almost always of the goat variety. On several occasions, I've had to inquire as to whether the cheese was pasteurized.

Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to be a question regularly posed at restaurants. Responses ranged from pure bewilderment to clearly offended cross-examinations. My personal favourite: "Why would we serve unpasteurized cheese when it's illegal in Ontario?" (For the record, it's not.) Either way, not exactly the best way to kick off a relaxing evening out.

Lately, the advice at the forefront of my mind has been "don't sleep on your back after the first trimester or you'll cut off the oxygen supply to the baby." Admittedly, my first reaction to this rule was "how on earth could the human race survive millennia of evolution if a woman accidentally rolling onto her back in her sleep could kill or severely damage the baby?"

Indeed, when I asked my midwife about it she burst out laughing and advised me to "just sleep". Still, worrying about inhibiting the flow of oxygen to the foetus did lose me more hours of sleep than I'd like to admit.

For me, though, the number one piece of worry-inducing advice that is repeated literally everywhere is this: "pregnancy is a time of weight gain, but you have to be very, very careful not to gain too much otherwise your and the baby's health will be at risk."

Honestly people, are you TRYING to stir up the ghosts of my old disordered eating patterns at a time in my life when they would undoubtedly be more destructive than ever?

Apparently, pregnant women are supposed to eat about 300 extra calories per day, but for every half hour you exercise you add another 150 calories. Healthy eating is an extremely important part of my life, but I purposefully forgot what 300 calories looks like a long time ago and don't care to reacquaint myself.

Full disclosure: I hadn't weighed myself in almost a decade prior to my first prenatal appointment. The nurse took my blood pressure directly after and it was off the charts because I was so nervous.

I actually ended up losing weight in my first trimester due to some nasty, day-long "morning" sickness. Still, the idea of gaining any amount of weight - let alone more than the 30 lbs. you're supposed to - is a very scary thought for me.

Recently, I was talking to my grandma about my many pregnancy worries.

"I sure wouldn't want to be pregnant today," she said. "In my day we just went on with life normally and did our best to stay healthy."

Not bad advice from a woman who gave birth to six healthy children sans pre-pregnancy folic acid. Advice I should probably consider taking.