glow Stretch mark cream, darker nipples, prenatal massage and more…
I’m so confused about what fish is okay to have. Can I eat shrimp? Yes you can. The seafood that pregnant women should avoid completely are the high-mercury ones, such as shark, tilefish, swordfish and king mackerel. Shrimp is safe to eat because it falls into the category of low-mercury seafood, which also includes salmon, pollack, sardines and catfish. But you should still limit your intake of these fish to no more than 12 ounces per week, says Laura Riley, MD, director of labor and delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of You & Your Baby: Pregnancy. “Go to a place where you know you’ll get well-prepared food,” says Riley. “You don’t want to get bad shrimp.” And avoid raw or undercooked shrimp, so you don’t get sick while pregnant. Which healthy beverages, other than water, can drink while pregnant? “Putting anything and everything over ice will increase the hydration that you get,” says Riley. Sure, juice and ginger ale have a lot of sugar, but if you’re not drinking a lot of them and you’re watering them down with ice, they’re perfectly acceptable. Other healthy choices include skim milk and sparkling water (we like to squeeze in fresh citrus fruit). But don’t feel guilty if you
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indulge in something you should be cutting back on. “One cup of coffee isn’t going to do any harm,” says Riley. “Just keep it to less than 200 milligrams of caffeine a day.” My nipples are getting darker. What’s up with that? No one knows why the nipples tend to darken during pregnancy. It might be that pregnancy hormones cause the cells that give our skin its pigmentation to become more active, says Myra Wick, MD, ob-gyn, medical coeditor of Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. In fact, darker nipples might have been one of the first signs of pregnancy you noticed, once those hormones started raging. Your nipples may keep darkening as you get closer to delivery (maybe that’s nature’s way of making sure baby can find them to breastfeed?). Whatever the reason, having darkened nipples is perfectly normal, and after childbirth your nips will typically fade to the pre-pregnancy shade. Are all stretch-mark products safe to use during pregnancy? If you found that stretch-mark product on an OTC drugstore shelf, it’s probably just fine to use. “For the most part, people making stretch-mark creams are thinking of safety for pregnant women,” says Riley. >
thebump.com
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1/17/14 8:02 AM