Advice on Food to eat and avoid in pregnancy

[WentOnABearHunt]

Hi Everyone, I am very new to this. I am interested in what all you pregnant ladies think about the advice you were given on the types of food you should be eating and avoiding in pregnancy. Did you get given a list of 'banned' foods? Were the risks of eating certain foods explained? Did you feel you were being given advice you were free to take or leave or was it clear you were meant to 'do as you were told'?

Could it have been done better? What advice would be useful to receive?

This is a really good article by Zoe Williams that should help you make up your own mind: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/may/29/health.medicineandhealth

And despite being a journo myself, I have to ask are you one? (Nothing wrong with it I just want some clarity)

no i am not - i am training to be a midwife and I am really interested in antenatal care and the advice given to women with the view to improving how I practice. I am also pregnant myself (which adds an interesting dimension to it I suppose!)

The guidelines change so often it's hard to keep up. I suspect that is why most of the health professionals/midwives I've come across in pregnancy aren't up-to-speed with the current guidelines.

It must be very frustrating for them that they keep changing all the time and they must (understandably) consider it one of the less important aspects of the care they provide, but it is frustrating as a pregnant woman not to be able to get a straight/conclusive answer on what you can and can't eat.

Still, putting it in perspective, I guess I'd rather my midwife was up-to-speed on my clinical care and I unnecessarily avoided some foods for a few months, than she had an encyclopaedic knowledge of types of safe cheeses, but missed a potentially fatal pregnancy complication

Good luck with your training and your pregnancy.

We need an app! That way when advice gets changed, we know about it straight away. This is my second baby and I'm still really confused about some things. Smoked salmon (midwife says yes, others say no), stilton (midwife says no, NHS website says no etc...). I think at the very least the NHS should have a current banned foods list on their website... Not the confusing contradictory guff that they have now (for instance, in one paragraph they say you should avoid mouldy cheeses, then in another, hard cheeses like stilton are okay). Just adds to the anxiety.

Whenever I find myself worrying about these things I think back to my mum's pregnancy advice from the 70's. in effect, watch out you don't eat too many carbs (in case you get fat and your husband leaves you) and if you're going out for drinks, be careful in your high heels as you might fall over. Much more workable if you ask me!

NHs says yes to stilton

I think it is easy enough for someone to click onto the NHS guidelines on what to avoid, I don't understand why HCPs cannot also do so once in a while and stop giving out conflicting advice which potentially stresses out mums to be.

Sorry I meant to say the NHS says yes... To stilton I mean. You're quite right FoofFighter, if we can be arsed to google these things, why can't they?