The Expectant Father. Armin A. Brott
• Overdoing it. If she can’t carry on a normal conversation while exercising, she’s working too hard.
• Overheating. Your partner shouldn’t overdress, and she should keep her workouts moderate. Remind her to take plenty of breaks and drink lots of water before, during, and after the workout.
• Hot tubs / steam baths / saunas. During the first six to eight weeks of the pregnancy, it’s best to stay away from anything that could raise your partner’s body temperature above 102°F (39°C). To cool itself, the body moves blood away from the internal organs—including the uterus and the fetus that’s inhabiting it—and toward the skin. After eight weeks, she should be okay. But even then, if she does decide to slip into the hot tub, make sure she drinks plenty of water.
One final word of advice: Do not panic if your partner did any of these things before you found out she was pregnant. First of all, there’s nothing you can do about it now, and torturing yourselves won’t undo it. Second, the chances are slim that anything she did will have an impact on the baby in any significant way. Just be careful from here on out.
Whatever you do, remember that you and your partner will get the greatest benefit and least chance of injury if you exercise regularly—thirty minutes on as many days as you can—rather than sporadically. Here are some great ways of exercising together:
• Walking—doesn’t matter whether it’s fast or slow, through your neighborhood, on a trail, or on a treadmill.
• Running—but do yourselves and your knees a favor: get good shoes and run on a soft surface.
• Low-impact aerobics and low-impact exercise machines such as stair-steppers, treadmills, and bicycles.
• Swimming, water aerobics, or snorkeling.
• Cycling—stationary or street is fine, but you should probably skip those bumpy dirt-bike rides.
• Tennis or golf.
• Light weight-lifting.
• Yoga—but avoid extreme stretches; this can cause damage to your partner’s connective tissues, which are somewhat weakened during pregnancy.
Before starting any kind of workout program, discuss the details with your provider and get his or her approval. If you’re doing anything that will work up a sweat, be sure to get enough fluids. Both of you should drink a glass or so of water an hour before starting and another four to eight ounces every fifteen to twenty minutes while you’re working out.
Nutrition
Although the names keep changing (once upon a time it was the Four Basic Food Groups, then came the Food Guide Pyramid, then MyPyramid, then MyPlate), the principles of good nutrition haven’t changed all that much since you learned about them back in sixth grade. And a healthy pregnancy diet looks pretty much like a healthy nonpregnancy diet: eat plenty of fruits and veggies, whole grains, and lean protein, limit fats and salt, and drink a lot of water. There are a few differences, though. Now that your partner is pregnant, she’ll need more calcium, folate, iron, and protein (we’ll talk about this in detail below). Overall, after the first trimester, she should get about 300 more calories a day than before (more if she’s carrying twins or better). Of course, if she was underweight before the pregnancy or is pregnant with multiples, she might need a little more than that. Defer to her doctor on this one.
If she was overweight before getting pregnant, this is not the time to go on a diet. At the same time, the fact that she’s “eating for two” is not a license to eat anything she wants. In fact, a growing body of solid research is finding that what a woman eats while she’s pregnant can directly—and permanently—affect the baby’s long-term health and risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and other diseases. Her practitioner will undoubtedly suggest a diet for her to follow, but here are a few important nutritional basics to keep in mind:
CALCIUM
Calcium is critical to the manufacture of the baby’s bones. And because so much of your partner’s calcium intake goes directly to the baby, she needs to make sure there’s enough left over for herself—1,200–1,500 mg per day. If not, the growing fetus will leach it from your partner’s bones, potentially increasing her risk of developing osteoporosis later in life. The best sources of calcium are milk and other dairy products. But if your partner is allergic to milk or is lactose intolerant (a condition that affects as many as fifty million Americans), many doctors will advise her to stay away from it—especially if she’s planning to breastfeed (her milk allergy could be passed to the baby). Good alternate sources of calcium include pink salmon (canned, with soft bones, is okay), tofu, broccoli, calcium-fortified orange juice, eggs, and oyster-shell calcium tablets.
FOLATE
Folate (or folic acid) is a B vitamin that plays an important role in preventing neural tube defects, which are major defects of the brain and/or spine. These defects happen in the first few weeks of pregnancy—often before a woman knows she’s pregnant. Since about half of all pregnancies are unplanned, experts recommend that every woman of childbearing age take a folate supplement, just in case. Your partner should get around 600 micrograms per day during the pregnancy. Some docs bump that to 800 micrograms per day for the first trimester. Folate is so important that many grain products, including some flours, pastas, and cereals, are fortified with it. Additional good sources of folate include asparagus, avocados, bananas, beans, beets, broccoli, citrus fruits, dark green veggies, eggs, lentils, seeds and nuts, and yogurt.
IRON
Your pregnant partner needs 27 mg of iron per day—nearly twice as much as before. If she doesn’t get enough, she may become anemic and begin to feel exhausted. She should try to get three servings of iron-rich foods per day. Spinach, dried fruits, lean beef or poultry, fortified cereals, and legumes are all good sources, but since a lot of your partner’s iron intake is being used to manufacture the fetus’s blood, she may need still more than she can possibly get from food alone. If so, her doctor will prescribe some over-the-counter supplements, but probably not until sometime after the third month. If possible, your partner should take the tablets with a glass of orange juice—it (along with other sources of vitamin C) will help her body absorb the iron. One warning: iron supplements frequently cause constipation.
PROTEIN
The average woman needs 45 grams of protein a day, but your pregnant partner should take in about 70 grams per day. If she’s pregnant with twins, however, she’ll need to up her protein intake by another 20–25 grams a day, but not until she’s in the fourth or fifth month. When the fetus is eight weeks old, it has about 125,000 brain-cell neurons. But then production goes into hyperdrive—one thousand new neurons every second—so by the end of the nineteenth week, there are more than twenty-five billion, the most your child will ever have.
Many nutritionists believe that a high-protein diet—especially during the first nineteen weeks of pregnancy—supports this surge in brain-cell growth in the baby. Fortunately, most women already eat plenty of protein, so your partner won’t need any encouragement to eat more. But if you feel you need to be involved, lean proteins are always the best bet.
Low-fat milk is one of the easiest sources of protein: one glass has about 8 grams. Drinking milk may have other benefits as well. Dr. Fariba Mirzaei of the Harvard School of Public Health found that daughters of mothers who drank four glasses of milk per day while pregnant were 56 percent less likely to develop multiple sclerosis than daughters of women who drank less than three glass per month. Other researchers have found a positive connection between an expectant mother’s milk drinking and her children’s height (they’re taller) and IQ (they’re smarter). If your partner can’t drink milk, high doses of vitamin D produced similar results. But check with her practitioner before she takes any supplements. Other good sources are skinless chicken, lean meats, low-fat cheese, tofu, peanut butter, and cooked fish (but be careful with fish; see “Nutritional and Chemical No-Nos” on pages 40–43). Eggs (cooked, not raw) are another