Description

Two Obstetricians advise pregnant mums on topics such as making sure their diet contains plenty of fresh vegetables, calcium and iron; the dangers of unpasteurized milk products and the value of vitamin supplements during pregnancy.

Transcript

Dr. Zoe Penn: Well the most important thing from all the big studies to reduce your risks of having small babies and having a healthy pregnancy is to eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and it's probably the vitamin content of those things that is the most important. You need to drink the equivalent of pint-and-half of milk a day to get enough calcium, but the people who find it difficult to drink milk, who don't like it very much, then find out the pot of yogurt, it's approximately equal to half a pint of milk. It's approximately equal to 2 ounces of cheese, so some combination of that each day, should give you enough calcium. Now, it's important to say, of course if your drinking milk that it should not be unpasteurized and you shouldn't be eating any soft cheeses, so no unpasteurized milk products. Any eggs that you eat should be cooked all the way through, so there is not soft boiled eggs or fried eggs or anything like that, everything must be cooked all the way through because of the risk of salmonella in particular places, so you should be aware of those and things like moose where you're not really aware that you're eating soft eggs. Dr. Pat O'Brien: There is some evidence that eating peanuts, too many peanuts throughout pregnancy can make you more likely that after the baby is born, it will develop peanuts allergy. Now peanuts allergy is uncommon and the evidence on which this is based is not that strong but for ones worth the current evidence is to avoid eating too many peanuts during pregnancy. Dr. Zoe Penn: The other thing is to keep your iron levels up, so that you don't become a knee weak in pregnancy and red meat is the best source of iron. Now if you do like red meat, make sure that its all cooked, all the way through, it should be well done, because of the risk of Toksoplasmosis with under cooked red meat. Liver used to the advice the pregnant woman, but in fact the levels of vitamin A in liver are far too high and it's something that you should actually avoid while you are pregnant. One of the other important sources of iron is green leafy vegetables. So a portion of green vegetables every day, but if you don't like meat or you are vegetarian then dry fruit is a very good source of iron and particularly dried apricots. Dr. Pat O'Brien: There are vitamins supplements which are aimed specifically at pregnant women and certainly if they can help, particularly for women who hasn't - doesn't have a well balanced diet, but it's not a good idea to just take any vitamin supplements that come off the shelf or vitamin supplements that the women has taken outside of pregnancy because certain vitamins taken in excess can harm the baby.