Providing Your Unborn Baby a Safe, HealthyBeing pregnant and delivering a healthy baby evokes mixed emotions and can be very stressful. The best way to relieve your tension is to get enough rest, mild exercise, eat healthy and stay positive.
In this toxic world, it is good news to know that you can start to protect your child as early as during pregnancy. You can not eliminate every chemical, carcinogen or toxin out of your life but you can significantly lower your exposure to them. This will in return give your baby a healthier start to life and teach them to live a non-toxic lifestyle.
The womb is an amazing place but cannot protect an unborn baby from everything. Providing the best possible environment for your precious baby to grow in is crucial. This is the perfect time to turn green and lead an eco-friendly, non-toxic lifestyle. This will improve your life, your new family's life, the future and the environment.
Green Pregnancy Tips/Ideas:
1) Wash your hands often to cut down on germs.
2) Eat organic food when ever deemed possible. Organic foods have the least amount of pesticides in them and the meats and milk products are free of growth hormones. Cut down on high mercury fish like tuna, swordfish, wild bass and canned albacore. Low-mercury fish that you can eat to get your Omega-3 fatty acids are salmon, pollock and tilapia. Eat as little canned food as achievable as the lining contains bisphenol A (BPA). Processed and packaged food are good to stay away from also because they have a great deal of additives, preservatives and artificial sugars your baby does not need. Use ionized salt while pregnant and/or take a prenatal vitamin that contains iodine as it buffers against chemicals like perchlorate. Eat fresh, local and organic food to avoid the vast amount of chemicals that food have in them. You can also grow your own fruits, veggies and herbs totally free of any chemicals; pure, fresh and wholesome. It is not a rightous idea to eat a lot of junk food while you are expecting and cut corners with nutrtion just becausre you are pregnant. You are feeding your baby and their development with everything you put in your body. Eat a well balanced diet with a variety of foods from all food groups and follow the Canada's Food Guide for the best nutrition.
3) Teflon non-stick pans are no no as they they can emit toxic gases after just heating up a few minutes. Cast iron, ceramic and stainless steel pans are a much better choice to replace your Teflon pans with.
4) Make sure that your re-usable water is BPA free as BPA is a hormone disruptor to you and your unborn baby and has also been linked to cancer. Aluminum water bottles, cheap plastic water bottles that are marked #7 or PC and any water bottle that has a liner are not good for you. A sure bet to prevent, stop leaching or toxins into your water is a solid stainless steel water bottle. At home it is best to drink from real glasses and stainless steel water bottles when you are out. Bottled water is high in salt content so it not a great idea to drink a lot of them. Filter your home water with reverse osmosis or a carbon filter pitcher to reduce your exposure to impurities like nitrates (in you live in a rural area), chlorine and lead.
5) Vacuum often and keep your home dust free. Toxins from the air get trapped in dust. It is good to clean out your air returns, vents and baseboards weekly. A HEPA-filter vacuum captures the widest range of particles and get rid of allergens.
6) Plants are a natural way to filter the air in your home. Indoor air quality in our homes is getting worse over time and is more toxic than outside air. Houseplants that can actually help remove toxins like formaldehyde, ammonia and benzene. Bamboo palm, English ivy and peace lily (though mildly toxic itself to babies and pets if ingested). Gerbera daisies, mums, spider plants, aloe vera and Chinese evergreens are also great filtering plants. It is a really good idea to put at least one of these plants in your bedroom where spend so much time.
7) Clean your home green and naturally. Have you ever wondered why the ingredients are not listed on conventional cleaners? They do not want us to know what is them and there is absolutely no regulations monitoring what they put in them. Clean green, safe and simple by using baking soda and vinegar. Wonderful unscented all natural plant based cleaners on the market that superior are from EcoDiscoveries. They are receiving great reviews. These will clean your entire home with out the use of extremely harmful chemicals or any strong scents.
8) Wear and use organic or all natural quality skin and hair care products is unquestionably an important thing to change and start doing. Your skin is your largest organ on your body and absorbs much of what is placed on it. Conventional skin care products are loaded with dyes, phthalates, perfumes and hundreds of different chemicals for your skin to absorb. No thanks! Being naturally beautiful is a more stunning beautiful also. Just because a store product is labelled "gentle", "pure" or even "organic ingredients" does not mean it is any safer at all. Those can just be tricky marketing words to get your attention. There are some spectacular skin and hair products that work wonderful, feel and smell great and are very good for your body and the environment on the market today.
9) Switch to wearing some certified organic clothing, a mix of organic cotton and bamboo or simply silky soft bamboo. They are much softer, more comfortable to wear, smell great and last longer if taken care of. Pajamas, underclothes, socks and shirts are a really good start to purchasing organic clothing. They are right up against your skin and of course traditional cotton clothing is filled with pesticides, fertilizers, dyes and several other other harmful chemicals.
10) Washing your clothes in all natural laundry soap keeps your clothes and airway clear of all the nasty chemicals laundry soap has in them. This laundry soap is also much better for the waterways and the environment.
11) It is also good to use all natural and/or organic bedding to sleep in. Organic bed sheets ensures that you are resting on and breathing less chemicals. These harsh chemicals never wash out of bedding, towels, wash cloths or clothing either.
12) It is strongly advised that you do participate, have any remodelling or renovations done while you are expecting as this will stir up and produce harmful toxins into the air for you to breathe.
13) It is really exciting to get the nursery set up, done and ready for the arrival of your precious new addition but this can be harmful to the baby. New carpet is highly toxic and if you are choosing to put new down, it is extremely important that you do not help with that, do it early in the pregnancy, stay clear of the room and air the room daily with windows open for months before baby goes in there also. Paint the nursery with a no VOC paint that is a less toxic and non-lead based. Better yet, get someone else to paint the room for you to be safer.
14) Do not pump gas while you are pregnant because the strong toxic fumes it emits can harm your unborn child.
15) Mild to moderate exercise should be part of your pregnancy routine. Toxins are stored in your fat cells so the less fat cells there are to attach to, the less possibility for toxins to be stored in your body. A simple walk three or four times a week is a great way to achieve this if the other excercises are just too difficult to do right now. This will all help make for an easier delivery also.
16) Stay clear of smokey areas, smokers and smokey businesses. Please know that what you breathe, your baby breathes! Cigarette smoke is filled with a multiple of toxins already proven to be harmful to adults and babies developing nervous systems as well as they are more likely to get allergies as they grow up.
17) Burn 100% pure beeswax candles if you enjoy the wonderful scent and glow of candle light. Beeswax are natural, healthy alternatives to parrafin wax which is utterly the sludge at the bottom of crude oil barrels and a by product of refined petroleum. It is not even used for gasoline it is so bad. Natural honey candles have no additives, smell like warm honey when burning and are a beatiful natural colour.
18) Open your windows often to let the clean, fresh air come in. This will allow for the trapped toxins in your home to escape and lessen which improves your indoor air quality. Clean air is best to breathe for you and your new unborn baby.
19) Replace everything you recycle or throw away with a safer replacement that is good for you and the environment. It is a good practice also from this point on to buy organic, natural and eco-friendly products so this will carry over to purchasing safer, healthier items for your new precious bundle of joy.
20) Love your baby! Rub your tummy lots, talk and read to your baby and take each day in stride.
Here is a great book: Complete Organic Pregnancy that explains in a clear and concise manner what the risks are associated with various chemical exposure and product use. It also contains several personal essays from experienced parents.
Pollutants Put Fetus at Risk is another informative article about the harmful effects of toxins to an unborn child.
I know this was a lot to take in but if you simply start off with one change at a time you will be on your way to a happy, healthy and safe pregnancy. You are taking the first right step by stopping by to read this article.
Wishing you a memorable, positive and healthy pregnancy with an uneventful speedy delivery. Enjoy every minute with your new miracle of life and addition to your family!
Take care from Trees and Tots!
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