The Right Way to Get Pregnant

By William Grigg

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now requires that rice and flour products be fortified with folate. It is difficult to get enough from an ordinary diet otherwise. Even with the fortification, government experts and others advise all women of child-bearing age – that is, girls and women from puberty through menopause – to take an ordinary, folate-containing multiple vitamin pill each day. Taking folate after pregnancy starts is not as effective.

In other ways, too, good nutrition when you make your baby may be more important than we generally think. Studies of women giving birth during World War II show that women who conceived when near starvation were more likely to have babies with malformations than women at near-starvation when they delivered.

The idea that a pregnant woman is eating for two is true. In some cases, nature may favor the child. The mother's bones and general health suffer. In other situations, the baby or both mother and child are affected. Talk to your doctor or nurse-midwife about a good pregnancy diet. "Eating for two" does not mean eating twice as much but getting the appropriate amount of nutrition for both you and your unborn child.

A: You can both be fine parents of fine children – especially if you make sure your environment is free of harmful exposures.

Remarkably, each tiny, one-celled egg or ovum that you produce every month or so has actually been within your body since you yourself were born! As a result, some scientists speculate that environmental influences might impact on those ova atany time over the years they are being carried – in other words, at any time over your lifetime.

Want to see more?

• Safeguard Your Fertility: 6 Simple Steps
• Too Toxic to Conceive: Is Your Lifestyle to Blame?
• Private Suffering: The Issue of DES Daughters
• Talk about it!