Josleen Wilson - The Pre-Pregnancy Planner

Please note that we have changed the names of all the people who were
kind enough to let me interview them in order to protect their privacy.

After You Become Pregnant: How Diet Affects
Pregnancy

How Much Weight Can You Expect to Gain
During Pregnancy?

F OR MOST WOMEN , going through pregnancy and childbirth will be the most physically and mentally grueling experience in their lives. It is amazing to me that while athletes routinely spend months and even years building up endurance and preparing their bodies and minds for competition, the majority of women are woefully underprepared for the greatest marathon they will ever run: having a baby. The Pre-Pregnancy Planner is the training manual these future expectant mothers so desperately need.

Almost every person who thinks about starting a family today is faced with staggering obstacles: emotional ambivalence, money problems, inadequate living space, uncertain marriages, career complications, concern for children from previous marriages. On top of this are health issues never dreamed of twenty years agoinfertility, environmental toxins, alcohol, smoking, and drugs.

In the past decade we doctors have acquired much new scientific information about pregnancy and its outcome. Today with technological developments we can tell within three days of conception that a pregnancy is developing; using ultrasound scans we can accurately guess the sex of the child and determine many birth defects; with other tests such as amniocentesis we can determine blood type, birth defects due to chromosome abnormalities, and other hereditary diseases.

But the one thing the medical profession has not addressed is the need for a systematic preparation before pregnancyand every day we are learning just how valuable such preparation is to future parents and their offspring.

In terms of health, numerous studies have shown that problems such as miscarriage, birth defects, and underweight newborns, as well as problems for children later in life, may have been caused not by what the mother did while she was pregnant but what she did beforehand. Even fathers come in for their share of the blame.

Every woman preparing for motherhood is a product of her total ecology systemnot only her reproductive organs, but her overall physical condition, her diet, her emotional outlook, and the environment in which she lives. The Pre-Pregnancy Planner places all of these systems together in a logical order so that prospective parents can deal with each vital issue adequately before conception.

In addition to the body of current knowledge brought together here, The Pre-Pregnancy Planner introduces new information about diet and exercise imperative for women contemplating pregnancy.

The nine months of pregnancy once adequate for incorporating a baby into marriage is no longer enough time to grapple with the many emotional, work-related, and financial concerns of parenthood in modern society. Today the physical reality of pregnancy may actually be too late to make certain decisions about how a child will fit into the scheme of things in a healthy and enjoyable way.

At the Omega Institutes, where we specialize in working with infertile couples, Ive met many couples whose most treasured goal is for the wife to become pregnant and have a baby. They are often so caught up with the quest for pregnancy that they fail to consider how their lives will change after the child is born. They havent really figured out how to take care of the child, nor have they coped with financial issues and career adjustments. Its as if childbirth is the only goal, and the baby will always be a few weeks old. They do not project the childs future across even the next five years. When the baby arrives they are overwhelmed with problems they never dreamed of and this reality turns parenting into a chaotic, stressful experience, instead of the blissful rapture they had anticipated.

In the same vein, many people prepared to spend several thousand dollars to achieve a first-class childbirth experience think that once the child arrives, the expense miraculously disappears and that three can live for the same price as two. The initial cost is probably the least expensive part of having a child. In my own personal experience of raising two boys who are now grown up, I can testify that there are expenses that one would never dream of that consistently crop up. With children, the unusual expense becomes the ordinary, everyday occurrence. Today even couples who are certain their in comes would never warrant consulting a financial planner should consider making long-term financial plans for their children.

In short, there are many factors that have to be considered beyond the simple fact of pregnancy itself. The Pre-Pregnancy Planner gives a realistic approach to what a child means in the life of a couplein terms of emotions, finances, careers, and health. So dont wait until youre pregnant to read this book.

The Pre-Pregnancy Planner is divided into four sections.

Making a Decision helps women and men resolve emotional conflicts by explaining how having a baby affects existing family relationships, career and financial planning, and it anticipates ways to cope with child care. The growing complexity of modern life, of changing male and female roles, of shifting family structures means that childbirth is no longer an automatic goal of marriage. This section spells out the emotional realities of what it means to be a parent today, so that decisions can be made thoughtfully and maturely before conception instead of afterward, when it may be too late.

Health and Fitness for Pregnancy shows what every woman considering pregnancy can do for herself and her baby by taking into account her nutrition and physical fitness. And I mean every woman contemplating pregnancyregardless of her age or current health.

A childs prenatal environment is a direct reflection of the parents environment. New environmental menaces face the modern womanjob hazards, pollution, exposure from low-dose X rays, smoking, drugs, food additives, chemicals, alcoholand all can have an impact on the childs future health. This section contains the latest scientific information on environmental hazards that might endanger your baby even before you become pregnant. It is a detox program, highlighted by the first diet ever devised to prepare the modern woman for pregnancy, as well as a special exercise shape-up that concentrates on those areas of the body placed under most stress during pregnancy. A vital Pre-Pregnancy Checklist, which lists the issues to pay attention to before pregnancy and describes a medical exam for women thinking about becoming pregnant, rounds out this section.

Section Three, Special Pre-Pregnancy Considerations, elaborates on exciting new scientific developments that can affect your plans for parenting: when genetic counseling is a must, preparing for high-risk pregnancies, helping older women becoming mothers, coping with miscarriage, inroads into infertility, and new fertility technologies.

The final section of the book, Ready for Pregnancy, answers practical questions about the early weeks of pregnancy. What can you expect in the way of maternity care in America today? How, and when, should you choose an obstetrician and hospital? What will happen when you first become pregnant, and what adjustments can you plan to make in your life?