Don't Just Conceive: Preconceive! Part 2

Before Your Pregnancy: A 90 Day Guide for Couples on How to Prepare for a Healthy Conception
by Amy Ogle, Lisa Mazzullo, M.D.

(Page 2 of 2)

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF OUR BOOK

Are you planning your pregnancy several months to a year in advance, or have you already started trying? How you use this book largely depends on your personal time frame for conception. As mentioned earlier, we recommend following these guidelines for at least ninety days before trying to conceive. This time frame is ultimately best for all involved in most situations, but may not be practical or necessary in all situations; we'll make a point of noting when something should be heeded earlier or later than the ninety-day time line. Depending on what you discover from this book about your current state of preconception readiness, you may come to the conclusion that it is in your interest to postpone your plans for a few months. In the grand scheme of things, a relatively short delay is a small price to pay for improving your odds for a healthier outcome.

We've organized this book according to how you might naturally approach preparing for pregnancy. Long before you and your partner discuss preconception readiness with a health care professional, you'll determine whether you're mentally and financially ready to welcome a new being into your life. At the same time, you may start looking at your lifestyle habits (e. g., smoking, drinking)and your home and away-from-home environments with questions of wholesomeness and safety in mind. After these initial considerations, we get to the heart of preconception medicine, nutrition, and fitness for women and men. Finally, the last chapter, "Romancing the Egg," can be referred to when you're both ready to start trying.

Before Your Pregnancy is meant to be an interactive book. We encourage you to write in the blank spaces, margins, and charts. Highlight pertinent advice with a pen or colored marker. Approach this as you would a delectable barbecue dinner: you cannot thoroughly enjoy the meal if you and your napkin remain spotless.

To further encourage you to participate in the learning process we feature exercises called Practical Applications. As the term suggests, these typically take the topic under discussion into your own specific circumstances. For example, in the section on women's medical issues, one Practical Application is to look in your medicine cabinet and write down all the medications, herbs, and supplements you find, familiarize yourself with what we recommend about them, and note which ones you should ask your physician about.

Some of the recommendations for prepregnancy are also applicable later on, often for completely different reasons. When that is the case, you will see boxes titled For Future Reference with symbols such as when the reference is to pregnancy, when the reference is to infant care, and for family life with children. These are for all of you information packrats to tuck in the back of your mind for future use during the pregnancy and postpartum period. If you are the type who was driven crazy in school by a teacher who periodically went off on tangents, feel free to ignore these little factoids!

This book will also help you become a more active participant in your health care. It will assist you in organizing any questions you may have for your doctor and help to clarify what he or she is telling you. That way you can make the best use of your appointment time and will be less likely to walk out of the office saying, "Oh, I wish I had asked her about x, y, and z."

SETTING A NEW PRECEDENT

As you put our guidelines into action remember that the practice of preconception care is much newer than the well-established practice of prenatal (during pregnancy)care -so new, in fact, that you may periodically be faced with skepticism from your family, friends, and even some health care workers. Your partner may question the necessity of it. Don't be swayed or discouraged if people say that couples have been having healthy babies for hundreds of thousands of years, and very few of them did anything to plan ahead for conception. Or if they point out that there are women who abuse their body with drugs and an unhealthy lifestyle and then have healthy babies despite it all. It's true that women give birth to healthy babies under less than ideal circumstances -thank goodness for this general resiliency! Even so, preconception planning does improve one's overall odds for giving a baby a head start from the very moment of conception. The particulars of how and how much it helps will vary among individuals.

Occasionally we encounter a prospective parent who finds the thought of planning for pregnancy unappealing because of religious or cultural beliefs. Or you and your partner may prefer to be spontaneous and just see what happens. However, the words "planning" and "spontaneity" are not diametrically opposed. Although some couples will meticulously plan to "start trying," true preconception readiness is a lifestyle practice in case pregnancy should occur. Considering that almost half of all pregnancies are unplanned, this type of general prepregnancy readiness is a good idea for any couple of childbearing age. Following these guidelines will mean that you and your partners body will be optimally ready to create a baby at any time, whether you intend to become pregnant or not.

Over the course of our careers we have counseled thousands of couples who, like you, are planning to start trying to get pregnant. Their experiences have inspired the many scenarios we have created to illustrate the information in this book. In addition, many experts outside our respective fields - psychologists, social workers, financial planners, public health advocates, geneticists, urologists/male infertility specialists, and herbal researchers - have generously shared their knowledge with us to make this book as complete a resource as possible. We extend our gratitude to all who have contributed to our understanding of what it means to want a child and to selflessly act in his or her favor before conception. We thank you, too, for caring enough to learn, as we have.

Excerpted from Before Your Pregnancy by Amy Ogle, M.S., R.D., and Lisa Mazzullo, M.D. Copyright © 2002 by Amy Ogle, M.S., R.D., and Lisa Mazzullo, M.D.. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Amy Ogle, M.S., R.D., is a registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, and ACE-certified personal trainer who gives preconception workshops. She has produced a popular video, which has been used in medical practices, university courses, and corporate wellness programs, on which this book is based.

Lisa Mazzullo, M.D., is a practicing OB-GYN and assistant professor of OB-GYN at Northwestern University Medical School.