Need Nutrition Advice From Celiac Moms To Be

[angel42]

Hi!

I just found out I am pregnant! While I am thrilled I am also concerned about getting a balanced diet while I am pregnant. I seem to be suffering from all day "morning sickness" but I want to make sure I am eating right. (When I can actually eat ) Since everyone has been so helpful with all my other non-pregnancy celiac related questions, I figured I would ask you guys. Does anyone have any advice? Even advice in general about things to do and not do now that I am pregnant. Any advice you offer would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!!!!

[Guest j_mommy]

I'm lending support with this post! I was the same way while prego......The only thing I could eat for the first month was Hot Tamales...the candy! My son loves them!LOL

Take you prenatal vitamins....make sure they're gluten-free and get a balanced diet! I did good after that first month..although I still craved hot tamaled occassionally!

Good luck~!

[blueeyedmanda]

Angel,

I cannot offer any help since I have never been pregnant. I just wanted to say congrats!!!!

[angel42]

Thank you guys so much!! So I got the book "What to expect when you are expecting" and it has a whole nutrition section. So I 'm reading through it and I figure, hey, this isn't that difficult, until I get to the whole grain section. According to the book you need 6 servings a day of grain. Now if you don't have celiac it actually seems pretty easy to follow, put some wheat germ or granola in your yogurt , have a few slices of wheat bread (you see where I am going with this ) So now I am panicking. I eat rice but honestly, how much rice can I eat? I guess I could try and get gluten-free bread but most of the bread I have tried is vile and really expensive. Any thoughts?

[alamaz]

if you can tolerate whole grains like rice and quinoa etc. then try to eat those once a day but i wouldn't worry about that many servings. most celiacs don't get that amount normally. remember though that eating crackers would count as whole grain so i don't think it would be all that hard to get atleast 3 or 4 servings a day. also, you need to make sure you get enough folic acid. i'm ttc and my nutritionist has me on 1mg of folic acid a day. that's 800 mcg in my vitamin and a sep. 800 mcg. supplement. a good prenatal should have 1mg but if it doesn't consider getting an additonal supplement. good luck and congrats!

[ElizabethN]

I too was really worried about nutrition, I have had horrible nausea the entire time and felt my diet wasn't measuring up to what I should be eating. My doctor reassures me that the baby will get what they need regardless and a lot of the advice given to pregnant women ends up scaring them more than helping. She said the biggest thing is to make SURE that your prenatal has plenty of folic acid since you will not get as much from grains in your diet.

I did go see a nutritionist in the first trimester and she had a lot of good advice:

For grains, she recommended using the replacement brown rice and white rice pastas "tinkyada" and eating that at least once a week, can also make it into pasta salad for a cold lunch.

Mighty Tasty Gluten Free Hot Cereal by Bob's Red Mill has a lot of grains and is good for breakfast.

As was already mentioned, Quinoa is a great coucous substitute.

She said trying to eat wild and brown rice over white rice would be good.

Also recommended peanut butter on gluten-free crackers, guacomole on corn tortilla chips, corn enchilladas, etc. But in the end she told me not to sweat it, that the celiac diet is a very healthy diet and that women all around the world have been having healthy babies for millions of years without eating 6 servings of wheat a day! I was still really worried the first trimester with as much as I was throwing up, but sure enough at 25 weeks the baby is growing just fine and is even ahead of schedule. The hardest thing is actually just all of the cravings for bread products (what I wouldn't do for a cinnabon) !! I am sure you will do great and best wishes for a healthy pregnancy! Congrats!!

[pinkgirl]

Take you prenatal vitamins....make sure they're gluten-free and get a balanced diet! I did good after that first month..although I still craved hot tamaled occassionally!

I recently posted a discussion but have not received any feed back yet, what brand of prenatal vitamins do you suggest? The NOW gluten free brand has a dangerous level of Vitamin A, do you have any suggestions?

Thank you!