Calculating Goals for Pregnancy

Protein - shoot for 0.75 - 0.82 grams per lb. Bodyweight (adjust as weight alters)... Minimum is 0.60 g/lb. for a non pregnant person.

Dietary Fat - 0.45 grams absolute minimum per lb. Bodyweight (more would be better for hormonal health, pregnancy health, etc, up to 0.70 g/lb... adjust as weight alters)

Fill in carbs with the rest of your calories, preferably whole minimally processed foods high in nutritents and fiber.

Okay, this may not be popular, but...I would sit down and do some real research on this in detail. And take whatever your doctor says with a grain of salt. A really BIG grain of salt.

For this reason.
1. How much weight you should gain when pregnant? That is not a known thing.

The medical community doesn't know. The ideas of how much weight you should gain has changed every 5-10 years or so, for decades, now. And I don't mean the amount, I mean the actual CONCEPT of how much you should gain. You should only gain a limited amount, or you should gain a really large amount, or you should gain a moderate amount, or you should eat what you like, or only eat certain foods. Seriously, there is no consensus that stands the test of time, and the 'ideal' weight gain for pregnancy tends to cycle through from very little to quite a lot because, best I can tell, the medical community keeps pushing things to the extreme, causes problems with too many women's pregnancies, and starts heading back the other way.

Your doctor's thoughts on this are likely going to be one of three things: what is most popular now, what was most popular when he/she was in medical school, or what he/she thinks sounds reasonable. And what sounds reasonable is going to be their own guesstimate, because again, this is not a known thing.

2. Right now, the trend is low weight gain, even for women who are not heavily overweight (obesity, or being too skinny, have different risks, so I'm only referring here to someone coming into pregnancy in average health). Low weight gain is, IMHO, beyond stupid.

Here's why: you do not know how much food you need for your pregnancy, and neither do the doctors. It is very individual. You do not know how many calories you are using, you don't know how much amniotic fluid you are making, how big the placenta is, and most importantly, you do not know how big your BABY is. The bigger the baby, the bigger your uterus is getting, the more amniotic fluid you will have, and the heavier you are going to be.

If you look at the calculations that are out there (for the weight of amniotic fluid, baby, placenta, and so on) and then look at how much calculations are for a woman to weigh? Some of them or so close to the exact weight of baby/fluid/etc... that if your baby is above some 'ideal' weight, then you can be literally starving yourself or the baby.

And ultrasounds don't help - they have a standard deviation of about +/- 2 POUNDS. So if an ultrasound tells you that your baby is 8 pounds, it could be anywhere from 6-10 pounds (which is also why having a doctor tell you that your baby is too big to be born normally, based on ultrasound reports, is ridiculous. I've got a couple ultrasound technician acquaintances who have complained about this stupidity for a while, now).



I'll just pass on what my last midwife told me - she was on the verge of retiring when I knew her, had trained in Scotland and spent a good chunk of her life traveling the Appalachians as a nurse and delivering babies. She'd delivered hundreds of them, and because she was in smaller towns, she often delivered all of a woman's children. When I asked her about food, she told me to eat when I was hungry - because that is your body telling you that it needs something, whether that's calories or nutrients - and stop when I was not, and try to eat healthy foods. That's it (there's a few nutrients that seem more important during pregnancy - check out prenatal vitamins and compare them to the regular multi-vitamins. The nutrients that are increased? That's what you need more of)

And then my midwife said that in her experience, most mothers she knew gained about the same weight with each pregnancy, but not the same weight as each other. So some mothers gained around 30 pounds each pregnancy, some nearly twice that (I gained 50 pounds, and it all disappeared within a year of breastfeeding).

So...take from that what you will. I know my own perspective is highly colored by having some folks in my family who buck the curve, so often, 'standard' medical advice doesn't end up doing so well with them.


Just as an addition, as to why, when pregnant, it really helps to listen to your body. My midwife's advice? Probably saved my baby's life. I found out later that I'd had celiac disease when I was pregnant, but wasn't diagnosed (I had no real symptoms at that point). This disease robs your body of nutrients, which many times can result in miscarrying your baby. But if you eat a LOT, like more calories than you need, you can sometimes get enough excess nutrients that you can absorb enough to live off of. Which is what I believe happened for me - I was so starving, all the time, so I ate. And my baby made it.

I'm not saying that this is something that's going to happen to every woman, obviously, but it's just an example of why it's so important not to just go with the generalities on this one, and work more on what is good for YOUR body and your baby, you know?


...and that said, just for fun and labor stuff? I would highly recommend checking out some home birth websites to learn a bit about labor and delivery - even thought you're having your baby in the hospital. People having a home birth have to learn about what to do if the baby happens to come before the midwife gets there, and there are sites now that help just show you the basics, so you and yours would have an idea of what to do, if you couldn't get to the hospital on time. There is even a home kit you buy for having a baby at home (clamp for umbilical cord, gloves, some clean sterile pads, that sort of thing) - it's like $30 or so.

And I have to say, going to the hospital or not, it is tremendously more relaxing to go into labor when you have this extra knowledge about what's going on, what to look for, and that, if you misjudge the time on getting to the hospital, you'll know what to do until help arrives. I can't even describe the difference in having that vs. not (I tried both. Didn't feel like I knew much more about what was going on the second time, either, until I looked up the info).

Take care, and I hope you have just an amazing pregnancy and birth, hon.