Maternal Nutrition

Key thought: The mother’s body is the manufacturing unit for a new child; it does need all the right raw materials for the best product!

Brief: It was a fourth baby in the five years since her marriage. Although her husband would come for only two months each year, she would conceive and be ready for the next child. That all the four were girls was another reason for her repeated pregnancies.

This one in particular was born very weak. Just 1500 grams. Bare bones with skin stuck on them, dark and weak. Unable to suck her mother’s milk for two reasons. The mother’s breast itself was shriveled and dry and the baby had no strength to suck from them. Her fate written in stone, she had minimal chance of survival.

Women, particularly of childbearing age, are often too willing to sacrifice their diet and health. The fact that their nutritional status and health is so vital for the entire family goes unthought-of. Every mother-in-waiting has this amazing new person formed within her body; the heart, little hands and fingers, little feet and toes, many organs formed as early as 6 to 8 weeks following conception. What follows in the next 7 months is finer development of tissues and plenty of growth of the human embryo.

All from a single cell.

What then contributes to this amazing development and growth? There is one answer to this important question. Food. Maternal Nutrition.

What the mother eats during her pregnancy (and even before that) becomes the building blocks of the child’s organs, tissues, cells and even abstract things like intelligence, memories and skills.
It is important that each of us think this way, for our next generation to be strong and productive; to have Nobel laureates, and poets and scientists, to make discoveries and climb mountains, we need to be sure every mother is fed well. Fed with all the variety of foods she needs, in the right periods in the right quantities.  

Points to ponder: Does every family need to think about and provide for good food during the different periods of a woman life from adolescence to pre-pregnancy to pregnancy to lactation? What if in one of these periods the mother is ill fed? Does maternal nutrition impact future generations?
Action: Determine the variety and quantity of food consumed by pregnant women in your area.

Resources:

http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/313667/Good-maternal-nutrition-The-best-start-in-life.pdf?ua=1

http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/food/8F043e/8F043E0a.htm




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