May 20th, 2008 | Diet, Health, Pregnancy | No comments
Sushi
Kind of unfair to single out sushi as the main cuisine to have raw meat and fish I admit. Sickness contracted from uncooked food can be especially harmful to pregnant women. Food poisoning can cause diarrhoea which reduces your body’s ability to absorb nutrient. On the other end, it can cause severe complications and lead to foetal abnormalities.
Cold cuts
Make sure to put pre-packed lunch meat in the microwave before eating them. Pre-packed lunch meat usually sold at supermarket deli counter are known to carry the risk of containing listeria. Listeria can survive despite being heated before you buy them.
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April 19th, 2008 | Health, Pregnancy | 2 Comments
Pregnant and suffering from bowel irregularity? Tell me about it. It’s a fairly common condition that many women face during pregnancy.
When you’re pregnant, your hormones relaxes your bowel muscles. Slowing down your bowel muscles also hampers intestinal movements. Hence, limiting your muscles’ ability to push food and waste down your intestines.
Here are some tips to keep your bowel movement moving along:
- Fluids, and lots of them. Drink more water regularly.
- Keep your feet up in an elevated position whenever possible. Preferrably when you’re lying down because sitting down too much is unadvisable.
- Supplement your daily cup of hot cereal with a dash of molasses or grounded flaxseed. Adding them to hot drinks if much preferrable to drinking it straight with a warm cup of plain water.
- Being pregnant doesn’t mean you are banned from exercising. Regular, gentle exercise like walking, swimming, stationary cycling, yog a or pilates (watched by a professional trainer of course) improves bowel stimulation. You’ll find your body able to digest food better. Kegels (floor exercises for pelvic) also benefit bowel movements by improving blood flow to the bowel area.
- Go whenever you feel the urge to pass motion. Don’t wait or you’ll risk having your stool become dry and hard.
- Certain fruits and nuts contain natural laxatives. Go with olive oil, watercress, soybeans, apricots, almonds, mangos and perhaps best of all: prunes.
April 11th, 2008 | Babies, Children, Health, Parenting | No comments
Travelling with a baby tagging along is always a challenge. More so when it’s the first trip for you and your baby.
With a little careful planning, even air travel can be organised into a manageable logistical mess. The word is manageable at the very best because frankly, you’d never know what to expect.
Before embarking on your overseas trip, have your baby checked for vaccinations that might be needed in the country you’re visiting, particularly third world and developing countries. A visit to the doctor a few weeks beforehand is advised as some vaccinations require separate doses over several weeks.
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April 7th, 2008 | Health, Pregnancy | No comments
“Sleep on your left side” is one of the many advices I took with me on my the day I left my OB’s clinic after finding out I was pregnant. Getting into the habit of sleeping on the left side of your body while you’re pregnant is one common advice but why?
By sleeping on your left side, you’re allowing the highest amount of blood flow to your baby. At the same time, you’re helping your kidney to function more efficiently which in turn helps to reduce swelling. One of the more important organs at the right side of your body is the liver which regulates many important functions while you’re pregnant. Sleeping on your left would alleviate putting unnecessary pressure on your liver.
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April 3rd, 2008 | Breast Feeding, Diet, Health, Pregnancy | 2 Comments
Pregnant women demand adequate amount of the right vitamins and minerals before, during and after pregnancy. Consuming enough vitamins and following a nutritional diet is also very important to enable your body to keep up with the demands of breastfeeding. Below are some common types of vitamins likely to be prescribed to you by your doctor.
FOLIC ACID
Also referred to as folate, folic acid is one of the very first and widely prescribed supplement to pregnant woman. It is also given to women who intend to conceive and should be taken one month before conception until the end of first trimester of pregnancy. In fact, I was adviced to start taking folic acid when I wanted to start conceiving. A whole six months before I managed to conceive baby Clarisse.
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March 15th, 2008 | Babies, Breast Feeding, Health, Personal | 1 Comment
Baby Clarisse had problems with constipation last week. Her stool was very hard and dry she cried when passing motion. There are two things which led to this I suspect. First of all, since I’m breastfeeding her, it could be that I’ve been avoiding fruits and vegetables when I had a cough last week. That could’ve caused my breastmilk to contain less fibre. Secondly, two days before baby Clarisse’s had constipation, I switched from Bellamy’s Oats Cereal to another brand. For several months, I’ve fed her Bellamy’s Oats Cereal every morning. So I quickly bought a box of Bellamy’s Oats Cereal and fed her in the evening. The next morning, her stool was back to normal.
Having seen the immediate effect of lack of fibre, I’ve got to make sure she gets her daily dose of fibre to promote healthy bowel movements.
January 24th, 2008 | Babies, Diet, Health | 4 Comments
Having gone through difficulties of bringing up a colicky baby, I’m always scouring for information and remedies to ease the symptoms of colic. I understand that doctors have yet to determine what exactly causes colic in babies so I accept the fact that a cure is still far from being discovered.
Recent studies show that giving your colicky infant Probiotics might help relieve colic symptoms as well as several related conditions such as lactose intolerance, necrotizing enterocolitis, and gastric inflammation.
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January 22nd, 2008 | Health, Parenting, Personal | No comments
It was in major newspapers a few days ago, if you missed it.
Read how Beijing’s first smoke-free restaurant chain, Meizhou Dongpo, is losing so many customers, it is close to going out of business. As much as I attest to ban smoking in restaurants, Meizhou Dongpo’s noble decision to go at it alone is indeed suicidal. Goes to show it takes a radical anti-smoking enforcement by the government to make a dent in the number of smokers in any country.
To all you health conscious folks out there, read and weep …
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January 19th, 2008 | Babies, Health | No comments
When my baby Clarisse was 5 months old, I noticed a tiny patch of whitish substance on the top of her gums. It had me wondering whether or not she’s starting to teeth. Teething at 5 months is considered pretty early for babies. On average, babies start to teeth around 7 months.
I made a note to mention this to baby Clarisse’s paeditrician on her next appointment. Turned out, it was just gum cyst according to him.
Now that I think about it, baby Clarisse didn’t show much teething symptoms at that time. I was wrong to assume she’s teething.
Below are some common symptoms associated with babies who are starting to teeth. Bear in mind though, symptoms of teething varies from infant to infant. And opinions too vary among paeditricians on what symptoms to look for or how painful it is for your teething infant. For some babies, it will be a long and painful experience while others feel only slight discomfort.
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January 12th, 2008 | Health, Parenting | No comments
When I found out I was pregnant, I started to avoid second-hand smoke as much as I could. Until now, I would get up and move to another table if someone close by lits up a ciggarette. Call me a health freak, I don’t care. I just don’t want my baby inhaling ciggarette smokes. She’ll have plenty of time to deal with second-hand smoke when she grows up. Until then, I’ll gladly be responsible for the air she breathe now.
My husband and I went out for breakfast this morning. We took our baby Clarisse along. It’s a Saturday morning and the food court was thronged with people out for a morning meal. We sat down and 5 minutes later, two men sitting on tables beside ours lit their ciggarettes. We have not ordered our food, so we left for another table and hoped no one around us would smoke.
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