Morning Sickness, Pregnancy Cravings, and Nutrition
Posted on Oct 24, 2011 | Pregnancy Health Category | | Print This Article
Let’s be honest: has any woman ever really stuck to an ideal diet during pregnancy? Eating the right balanced diet including plenty of whole grains, fresh veggies, and that horse pill of a prenatal vitamin just isn’t something that tends to happen. You do your best, but you’re always going to face at least a few nutritional challenges, especially in our world of convenience foods that just aren’t very well balanced nutritionally.
How morning sickness can ruin your pregnancy nutrition intake
That first trimester of pregnancy can be especially challenging from a nutritional perspective. Whether you have simple occasional nausea or whether your morning sickness is more severe, it’s likely to affect your diet.
For some women, morning sickness actually helps nutritionally. When you have morning sickness, you’re probably going to want to stay away from some of those foods that tend to aggravate your symptoms, such as fatty foods. That’s a good thing, to be sure.
If you have severe morning sickness, however, it can become an impediment to nutrition. You get to the place where it’s hard to keep anything down, which means your body just isn’t getting the nutrition it needs. If that happens, you need to talk to your doctor. You may need to spend some time in the hospital getting some IV fluids and nutritional components just to give your baby the building blocks she needs to grow and develop.
Good cravings, bad cravings
Giving in to your pregnancy cravings isn’t, by itself, always a bad thing. After all, women can crave just about anything during pregnancy. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones that’s craving leafy green vegetables, or maybe you’ll have a tougher time of it because you’re craving greasy tacos.
A key issue with cravings is to make sure that if you’re craving non-food items (a condition known as “pica”) that you’re not consuming them. These kinds of cravings can be dangerous, and usually result from some form of nutritional deficiency to begin with.
So, what about you? Did your morning sickness interfere with your nutritional needs? How about cravings? Did you have any, good or bad?
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