Meet the Dietician

My first meeting with my obstetrician, I asked about diet, as I'm concerned about (well, in THIS case):
1. Gaining too much weight
2. High blood pressure
3. Gestational diabetes

I really want to try and have a good diet to avoid as many pregnancy complications as possible. So, he set me up with a dietician.

I had my appointment with her today which was really good. She said what I'm eating in general is pretty good but that I should limit the amount of milk I drink to 700 millileters per day.... did I mention I'm craving milk? Too much milk isn't good because of the sugar in milk, apparently! Her basic thing for me was for me to try and avoid or limit sugars. She wants me to eat 2 portions of red meat a week, which I usually don't do, but she felt the iron intake was important... so I'll try. I have her number so I can ring her when I need to, which is nice.

What I really liked, was her confidence in her knowledge. As you know, a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and I found myself asking her about unpasturized honey, eggs, mayonaise, peanuts and Ribena. She said that she's annoyed with those who hear something and then go and write a huge article about it, scaring people and giving them wrong information.

Like honey, I read to avoid unpasturized honey. Where the hell do you find that? Ok, here's the fact as per my dietician. For the first year to 2 years of a babies life, they do not have enough acid in their stomach to eat up the bits of botulism in honey, but an adults stomach does. So you don't give honey to a baby, but to eat it while pregnant is fine. Yippie!

Or peanuts: The research they've done on peanuts is inconclusive because those in the study already had a history of peanut allergy in their family. So maybe you should avoid eating peanuts if there are people in your family that have allergies.

So, I have to say, I'm a fan of my dietician. She even put up with my bitch that it took me 30 mintues to find a parking space and that it's a saftey hazard as you're waiting in the middle of the road to pull into their parking lot and if you were hit by a car waiting, the hospital could technically be liable...etc.