Detoxing Your life for a Healthier Pregnancy
Here's a wake up call: What you are putting into your body during pregnancy (and even before it) are literally the building blocks that your baby will use to build his or her body.
Woah.
And yet, many women continue to put junk in their body throughout the entirety of pregnancy.
And no, I'm not saying we all have to be perfect. I sure as heck am not. But I certainly am more conscious!
As we prepare our nurseries, let us also make it a priority to make their little home in our womb a nurturing environment!
Here are my top 3 biggest tips to ensure you're creating a safer and healthier environment for baby as they grow these next several months! (Bonus points if you're not even pregnant yet, and start doing these simply because you think a baby might possibly, maybe, potentially be on the horizon in the somewhat near future!)
ORGANIC, ORGANIC, ORGANIC!
Any good health-care provider would tell you that organic food is ideal, and I'm no exception to that rule. But what many may overlook is the HUGE importance of this especially during pregnancy. It's truly not expressed strongly enough.
While the pesticides in conventionally-grown food alone are a problem during pregnancy simply because they're nasty chemicals that we shouldn't be putting in our bodies, it gets much more serious than that. These chemicals actually leech other vital nutrients from our body. Yikes!
Have you heard of folate/folic acid and how important it is for neural tube development (the foundation of a healthy baby)? Of course you have. Well, the nasty junk in non-organic food actually steals folate from your body. One step further, and you'll find that low folate levels are a contributing factor to midline defects such as lip and tongue ties!
Yes, I'm telling you that even if you are getting good quality diet and supplementation sources of folate, but are still eating non-organic food, you are throwing away a lot of your nutrients! (And with how expensive the high quality supplements can be, I know that I definitely don't want to be throwing that away!)
So not only do organic foods actually have higher nutrient quantities, they will also ensure they're NOT stealing the nutrients you're getting from other sources! That's a nutrition win-win right there!
OMMMMM
DE-STRESS YOUR LIFE, MAMA!
I know, that is SO much easier said than done. And I definitely have my own moments on this one. But... there's just so much to think about, right? What should I eat? What can I eat? How are we going to prepare the nursery? Ohmygosh is my mom going to barge in on the delivery? How are we going to pay for all the diapers...or anything else? What if I get sick? What if, what if, what if?
Trust me. I get it.
Deep breath.
When we go through our pregnancy with fear and anxiety, it literally shifts our nervous system into a mode of stress (aka fight or flight...something I talk about often). When our body is shifted into this state, it can no longer properly function and produce the hormones your body needs to proceed through pregnancy (and labor, especially!) without any assistance. And I want your body functioning the way it's supposed to at all times, but ESPECIALLY during pregnancy (you know, considering it's controlling TWO lives). So taking care of your stress level should be high on your priority list!
I'll talk more about Pregnant Mama's Mental Health (with tips and tricks!) in another post, so stay tuned!
LEARN TO MAKE YOUR OWN HYGIENE AND CLEANING PRODUCTS
This was a tough leap for me to take. I believed what everyone else believes: It's cheaper and easier to just buy these products. And perhaps for some things, that may be true, but my husband and I have found that the vast majority of hygiene and cleaning products we use were VERY easy and VERY affordable to make! It's kind of like that difference between going to the grocery store to buy ingredients vs. going to a restaurant for a meal. Do you end up spending more at that one grocery trip than you would at your one restaurant visit? Yeah, probably. But you also get a lot more meals out of the grocery trip, as well as the meals being better quality.
But here was the REAL reason that making our own stuff really mattered to me:
If I bought the pre-made concoction, I could read the ingredient list all I wanted, but it was still difficult to know truly how "clean" of a product it was. On the other hand, if I bought the ingredients, they always listed their exact source, so I knew EXACTLY where every bit of my home-made product came from. This brought us a lot of piece of mind in the products I use on my body, and around our house for our family. Most of them were just a few simple steps to put together. I dare you to try it yourself!
Do you have any other top tips that helped you to detox your life during pregnancy? We want to know! Post it below!
In THIS blog, I go more in depth on specific actions to take (i.e. ingredients to watch out for, etc.), so check it out! It's not written to be pregnancy-specific, but they are great guidelines that apply to pregnancy as well!