Food restrictions during pregnancy

[AliGrylls]

I just need to get this out of my system.

During my pregnancy I have found it a little much because everytime I order certain things in restaurants people look at me as if to say "should you be eating that?"

In addition, at my ante-natal booking in appointment I was asked "do you drink?" - honestly 2 small glasses of wine per week. I was told I needed to stop completely. The list of foods I was given to avoid seemed endless. Even things I had never thought about (mayonnaise being one).

AIBU for thinking that pregnant women are treated like idiots nowadays and as if they are incapable of working things out for themselves. Why can't they just tell us the risks (which are usually so minute anyway) and then let us make the decisions?

I appreciate that maybe there are some thickos out there but personally I find the attitude that people take towards pregnancy really patronising.

Tigurr, if you were in france, they'd be very pleased with the weight thing
They really closely monitor your weight. You can eat what you like foodwise, but none of this 'eating for two'
If your MW thinks you've put on too much weight, you have to diet!
I think their recommendation is a kg per month

I didn't drink a drop (not even on my 30th birthday!) when I was pregnant with DD. Before you have be done as smug (I was a little) if/when I am pregnant again, I will have a couple of glasses a week (as long as I dont feel too sick) and I will pretty much eat what I like. I think that you mellow with second time pregnancies/babies.

It has got rather silly. My SIL is so paranoid that even though she was 36 weeks pg she declined to come with us to a kids petting farm type place "because of toxoplasmosis."

I really wanted to say "FFS you silly bint you can't inhale it - just don't go cuddling lambs and I'm sure junior will live to tell the tale. "

I didn't because I am nice Despite being 4 wks pg at the time I braved it like the trouper I am.

I agree, it is too much. It's great that pregnant women are armed with so much advice about what is known to have a potential effect on an unborn baby.

It's less great when that becomes such a font od judgement that a pregnant woman is stressed beyond belief.

It's always nice when a piece of standard advice changes during your pregnant/post-natal period. Happened to me with recommended ages for weaning in 2003 (WHO advice moved up from 4-6 months to 6 months or bust). DD was 5 months at the time and had just had her first baby rice on advice of HV. At the next visit, HV expressed shock that DD was having solids before 6 months. Suddenly, a massive salt pot appeared in my hand. I have been applying pinches of it ever since!

Got me thinking about other restrictions now that have a tendancy to become blown out of proportion...

Hot baths (in my first pg I was terrified of even a luke-warm shallow one...)

Sleeping on your back/right hand side in 3rd trimester...

Getting out of breath...

Carrying blades of grass objects that weigh anything at all...

Shouldn't dye your hair...

Take pain relief... (was told paracetemol was the ebil in my 1st pg)

I am 7 mos PG, and I said on my FB status I was tipsy at the weekend.
She replied with 'WHAT?! And you are PREGNANT?!'

Oh fuck off.

Oh god. I have a chum who recently qualified as a holistic therapist. She's lovely, but dude does she rattle my cage with her off-pat blanket prescribed advice.
"But you're not allowed coffee....."
"Not allowed by whom exactly, Sue?"
"Your health care professional would tell tou not to...."
"What I am allowed to do, as an intelligent and well-informed woman of 37, is to read the stats and studies and make my own mind up".
Thankfully, she's one of these who doesn't mind being informed or corrected, or taking on board another's viewpoint, so she listened v intently when I told her how bleedin' irritating it is to be treated like you have an IQ of 80 and a habit of downing arsenic every day.
Read the studies, make your own mind up.
I do however, avoid vitamin A rich foods and owt unpasteurised (although this is mainly down to my squeamishness about animal milk in the first place.

Whats the deal with the no hair dye thing, I've heard a few people mention it before?
Makes no sense to me whatsover, how could it possible be harmful to a foetus? Does the dye get into my bloodstream? How? Surely that would be a bad thing if I wasn't pregnant? Don't get it.
And coffee? Why the hell not? One pregnancy book told me not to eat much fruit "because of the sugars" ! That one went right in the bin then!

deemented just make sure the white is cooked so you go and cook yourself a load of runny poached eggs and enjoy!!

my midwife told me last week to cut down on fruit because of the sugars in my wee sample, what she didnt know was that the day before i had eaten two doughnuts and a mars bar

jopie it is just certain hair dyes i think, i just asked my hairdresser and she confirmed that the one she uses on me is fine as it is a semi permanent one. i think it is basically just bleach you have to watch out for.

oh and this is my first pregnancy and i have been a total rebel!! with the full support of my mum as she was pg with me in 1972 and didnt have any of this clap trap to deal with and i am fine - honestly - despite the mackesons stout and cheap sherry she regularly consumed -

I love prawns and won't stop eating them. I also found the stuff told to you after birth a bit weird too. when i relayed to my mother that talculm powder was a no-no nowadays she responded "well, it is amazing any baby survived the 70's at all then!".

In both my pregnancies I have eaten coleslaw, peanut butter, shellfish, soft and blue cheese and smoked salmon. And I've dyed my hair.

I didn't tell my midwife tho'.

Here's another one - when i was pregnant with my twins in 2004, my feet used to swell up like balloons, so dh went out and bout me a foot bath/massager thingy. I happened to be using it one day wen the midwife came and she went ballistic saying i shouldn't be using one while pregnant as it could send me into prem labour!!!

(she might have had a point though... my boys were 28 wekers...) But i don't think excessive use of footspa was a contributory factor...

when *weekers

Why is talcum powder out? I have been thoroughly marketed too and a baby that doesn't smell like Johnson & Johnson baby powder just doesn't smell right to me!

I think it's out because it's been linked to asthma/breathing problems in newborns. I could be talking crap though.

LOL if going into labour was as easy as using a footspa I think there would be a huge market for them! (Went to 42 1/2 weeks with my first despite intense reflexology designed to get things moving)

I'm probably going to get shouted at for this, but I figure that stress has to be the worst thing for bumps. Therefore I avoid stress by doing exactly what I want to do when I want to do it and staying away from people and information that tells me what I am allowed and what I'm not. If your prebump can survive that period of time when you didn't know you were preggers it's just as likely to survive the rest of it!

Hair dye???????

I've been dying my hair red for the past 18 years and didn't stop when I was pregnant.

And my stable diet when pregnant was Revels, McDonalds cheeseburgers, porridge, Guiness and bananas

oooops

I decided to avoid stuff with a listeria risk because after reading what happens when you get it, I figured not worth it.

Other than that, bring it on, with unpastuerised cherries on top.

Im only 12 weeks pregnant and last week I was in the local supermarket buying some wine for a BBQ my DH and I were going to. (2 bottles of white if anyone is interested)
It is my second pregnancy and I have put a lot teeny bit more weight on this time round and was wearing this nice flowy smock type top thing and OMG the looks I got because I was sauntering down the eisle looking quite pregnant with two bottles of wine in my hands. hee hee

hair dye isnt because its harmful but hormone changes can change the color or could make hair brittle under hair dye there for break its just a thing some people do find out when pregnant

I found my great big pregnant belly a very useful place to balance a beer can. DH used to think it was hysterically funny to do so at BBQs purely for people's massive overreactions.

I didn't actually drink the beer (because by that stage everything tasted vile anyway.

People seem to think that pregnant women are public property. No idea why.

YANBU.

It is all way OTT, the risks are tiny, and the blanket bans ridiculous.

Things I have avoided this time are things which are past their use by that I would normally sniff and snaffle. Unpasterised cheese. Pate.

That's it actually.

Oh and I have runny yolks at home but not the caff at work lunch.

I was rereading my book and it stipulated "sleep on your left hand side". It didn't say why, or anything. Just this random instruction. WTF??? I am hardly going to lose my baby if I lie on another side in the night

With all these guidelines and advice that control so much of our daily lives it's amazing the human race ever managed to survive at all!

I wonder about all this dietary advice for pregnant women, especially wine drinking. What research has been carried out in Mediterrranean countries? They all seem to produce reasonably healthy kids!

i actually sleep more comfortably on my right side, and my baby is still kicking me at 40+1

my MIL used to be a midwife and when i asked her about smoked salmon she said 'my professional advice is dont touch it - my personal advice is to go for it - and have a glass of pinot grigio to wash it down!!'

i love my MIL