Full Circle Midwifery

If a woman is not looking to get pregnant right now, but eventually would like to, how should she prepare her body?

It’s pretty easy for a lot of people to get pregnant, but to really optimize your baby’s health and to optimize your own health while you’re pregnant and after, I really encourage women to spend about six months at least before they get pregnant to treating themselves special.

For women who have fertility problems, I often advise heavy metals testing because we know that some of these metals are passed down to the baby. I have them do not what I would call a full on detox, but I have them live a little bit more of the detox lifestyle than the average woman would. If you have medical problems, then you definitely want to engage in a full-on detox, but you don’t want to do that within the three months before you get pregnant, ideally, because then if you’re liberating all these toxins and then get pregnant, then you can still pass them on to the baby. That’s why I say six months. Do it for three months and then have a really healthy living time, then try to get pregnant.

When it comes to foods for fertility, it’s just about having an optimal nutritional diet. You want to make sure you’re getting a really good array of all phytonutrients, all your plant nutrients, antioxidants, lots of greens, lots of rainbows vegetables, and eating organic as much as possible so that you’re not getting pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics.

Then what we do know, is that women who have more inflammation have a harder time getting pregnant. The diet that has been shown to be most likely to help women get pregnant is a sort-of Mediterranean-style diet, which is lots of fruits and vegetables. If you have trouble with sugar, aim for less fruit and more vegetables, small amounts of grains, a good quality plant-based protein, nuts and seeds and a really good quality oil.

I usually recommend women also add in an essential fatty acids because we know that most babies are deficient and you get it from the mom when you’re pregnant. Plus a probiotic because we know that a mom’s flora during pregnancy not only can prevent the baby from being premature, but we can help the baby with allergies and asthma and eczema after. I have women start all this stuff before they get pregnant.

I also make sure that their thyroid is normal. That’s a really big one because so many women have undiagnosed thyroid problems that can affect them whether they’re trying to get pregnant or not. It can also increase their risk of miscarriage, pregnancy problems, and problems for the baby and postpartum depression.