Keto and pregnant?

Niccidawn092

Good morning! So, I have been loving the keto diet, but I just recently found out I am pregnant. Does anyone have experience with this? I feel so much better following keto, but I have done research that suggests you need at least 100 gm of carbs daily. I know this cannot be entirely true as my sister-in-law was put on the keto diet for gestational diabetes. I will definitely be talking to my OB about this, I was just curious of anyone who may have gone through this before.

Thanks!

blktngldhrt

Congratulations!!! I'm following to see what others say.

I haven't gone through it but I have read in studies that mice fetuses don't react well to keto. I have no knowledge of what it would do to a human, though. The studies were also very vague about diet specifics.

Newborns and breastfed babies are in ketosis until they start consuming things other than breast milk. You wouldn't think it would be bad but I have no idea what effects a body running on ketones would have on fetal development, if any.

Let us know what your Ob says, please!

Edited because.. Autocorrect is not usually correct

truelove7

Don't have any experience with this but wanted to say CONGRATULATIONS!!

truelove7

Well, I take that back now that I think about it. I had gestational diabetes with both of my babies and each time I was put on a low carb diet. If memory serves, it was about 100g of carbs a day.

baconslave

Reddit has a ketobabies subreddit.

Dragonwolf

I looked this up a while back when someone asked about it for breastfeeding. Here's what I recall from that discussion:

1. There's not a lot of formal research on the matter for either breastfeeding or pregnancy, particularly with regard to humans. However, there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that supports keto/low-carb while pregnant/breastfeeding as a viable and healthy way of eating (in addition to the low carb recommendations to deal with gestational diabetes, which is arguably a bigger threat to infant safety/health). There is also the fact that a number of cultures (most notably the Maasai of Africa and the Inuit of the polar regions) that have lived for generations on a high-fat diet, getting their carbohydrates almost entirely from the (usually raw) meat that they ate (from the glycogen) -- if such a diet was so horrible for pregnancy, these groups would have died out long ago.

2. What we do know of how the body handles pregnancy/breastfeeding suggest that the mother's diet matters very little, beyond ensuring enough energy in general, and keeping the mother healthy. Barring actual starvation situations, the mother's body will ensure the baby has the nutrients it needs, in the proportions best for it. In the case of insufficient nutrients in the mother's diet, this will even be to the detriment of the mother's long-term health to a certain degree (hence the increased risk of cavities and bone loss in women who have had children -- the pregnancy/breastfeeding demands have leeched the nutrients from the mother's bones and teeth).

3. Growing babies need a lot of fat. The brain is fatty tissue, for one (and makes up more than 10% of an infant's birth weight), and the nutrients needed to support that early growth -- Vitamin A for vision, Folate for neurological development, D and K for bone and tooth growth support, etc. -- are either fat-soluble vitamins, or nutrients found abundantly in fatty foods.

4. While you're pregnant, odds are, most of the diet rules are going to go out the window, anyway. Morning sickness (which is neither exclusive to the morning nor exclusive to the first trimester), food aversions, and cravings will likely override most ideas of what you should be eating. Trust me, all bets are off when you can't even stomach the smell of a given food and you want nothing more than to eat a pickle and some carrots. (And yes, there is actually a purpose to the pickle craving -- the vinegar and salt are a hell of an upset stomach remedy for some reason unbeknownst to me.) You eat the best you can, with the most nutrient dense foods you can, because often, that's all you are physically capable of doing.

lulalacroix

Congrats!!!!

peabean26

Congrats! I also just found out that I'm pregnant and have many of the same concerns. Fortunately my Dr is well versed in LCHF and advises women to stay on the diet during pregnancy. He has even done a podcast describing how women with hyperemesis (which I had with my first pregnancy) can benefit from a low carb diet.

http://hypergpregnancy.com/real-cause-hyperemesis-gravidarum/

Best of luck!