The Daily “To Do” List for Pregnancy

The most comprehensive list you’ll ever read of things you should try to do everyday when pregnant. Want a clean, printer-friendly version of this list? We’ve got it here!

1. Exercise. Daily. Really. Even if you only do some light stretching. Feel awful? Do it anyway. Your goal is to make the act of caring for your physical health and well being an ingrained habit that even illness and discomfort cannot shake. You will come to rely on this habit in the first three months after you have your baby. Cultivate it now. Need tips or instructional videos on how to stretch, do yoga, do pilates? Visit YouTube.com and search for “how to stretch” or “how to do yoga”. It is completely free, and you will be amazed and amused at what you can find there. Have concerns about maintaining your already vigorous exercise habits? Ignore those old wives tales to the contrary, because most all exercise is considered safe for pregnancy these days. Do talk to your OB/GYN* about what you propose just to make sure, and avoid lying on your back or holding your breath after the first trimester.

2. Find a High Quality Prenatal Multivitamin. Prenatal vitamins come in all sizes, prices, and packaging. There are, however, only two things that really matter for a pregnant woman. 1) Does it have the right ingredients? 2) Does it make you feel bad when you take it? Some people get a prescription for their prenatal vitamins from their doctor*; I found a brand that I liked off Amazon and stuck with it because I was able to digest it so easily and it made me feel good. The most important thing: do not be happily ignorant about what it is in the prenatal vitamin. Copy the amounts of each ingredient down or get them off the company’s internet site, take it to your OB/GYN* and make sure it meets current ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: http://www.acog.org) standards, which are ever-changing, which is why I don’t include them here. Do not be dissuaded by the fact that the standards often change. Medicine and science evolve at such rapid rates now that it is worth keeping up with those evolutions. Would you ask your doctor to use cancer treatment protocols from five years ago if you had cancer? Make sure you know the latest, and if you have to take a combination of supplements (I had to take extra calcium) to hit the right amounts, do so.


3. Consider Taking a DHA Supplement. Docosahexaenoic acid, commonly known as DHA, is an omega-3 essential fatty acid. Consider taking one specifically for pregnancy, such as Expecta Lipil, in addition to your prenatal vitamin. Research on the effects of DHA indicates that these supplements can potentially make the kid smarter in utero, and they are good for you as well. My OB/GYN recommended this to me*, and I am glad I made the effort. The supplement is a little pricey at just under 50 cents a pill, but so is college tuition. Check the company’s website (http://www.expectalipil.com) for coupons; they frequently include additional coupons in the box.

4. Exercise Some More. Take a walk. Lift some light weights.


5. Put the Right Things in Your Body. By this I mean avoid processed foods, increase your intake of water, fruits and, if you like that sort of thing – vegetables, cut out as much caffeine as you can bear, and then some more. Get the right amounts of folic acid (at least 400-600 mcg a day), calcium (1,000+ mg), and iron (about 30mg a day); you can work with your OB/GYN* to determine what iron levels and supplements are right for you. Use this as a chance to reform your diet. It almost goes without saying that if you have not done so already, you should ditch the alcohol and especially any smoking or recreational drugs now. Immediately. Use caution with over-the-counter medications as well. Some can seriously damage your baby’s health. I found it incredibly hard to get good information about what over-the-counter medications you can and cannot take while pregnant or nursing, especially since the rules are different for the two conditions and even different for the various trimesters of pregnancy. My strong recommendation? Invest the $20-30 in a nurse’s drug guide from amazon.com or a local bookstore. Make sure you get the most recent edition, and one that has recommendations for safety during pregnancy and nursing. I found that I only needed to know if a drug was safe at about 2am, when I was on my 1000th tissue and ready to go insane from lack of sleep and the inability to breathe. The first time this happened, I waited to take anything until my doctor’s office opened the next morning, only for them to put me on hold while they went and looked up the effects of benadryl in their copy of the nurse’s drug guide. The bottom line? What goes into your body – be it stress, food, drink, or medicine – affects your baby in some way, large or small. Make wise and balanced choices.

6. Keep a Daily Health Journal. If your personality can tolerate it, record what you eat, how much you exercised that day, what symptoms you are feeling, your weight gain and girth, any fetal movement, and what your waking body temperature was that morning. Even if this information is not rocket science, it makes you more aware of your body and helps you catch problems early on in the pregnancy. It also serves as a health record in case complications develop later on in the pregnancy; your doctor can use your chart to see when the problem might have first appeared.  My favorite two pregnancy books ever have some great tools for this: Taking Charge of Your Fertility and Essential Pregnancy Organizer.


7. Learn to Live With Morning Sickness. When crackers, small meals, fresh air, ginger candies, and a bland diet did nothing to alleviate my morning sickness, I adopted the Go Ahead and Throw Up philosophy. I found that it rid my system of the hormones that made me feel like throwing up in the first place. Also, by giving into the urge to throw up on an empty stomach, I avoided the far more disgusting situation of actually throwing up food. I tried for the first month to stave it off, but by month 5, when I still had morning sickness long after it was supposed to have faded, I would just get up, pee, flush, puke, flush, and brush my teeth. It just got it over and out of the way. Throwing up is something we mentally link to being sick. By making the morning sickness part of my normal routine, it helped me stop thinking of myself and my pregnancy as something associated with illness and let me mentally move on to my regular life. This may not work for everyone, but if the other remedies do not do the trick, I suggest mentally conquering the morning sickness and making it part of your routine rather than a major disruption in your day.

8. Get Sleep. Everyone tell you this, but it matters, so I repeat it here.  Decide early on where your spouse will start to sleep when you can no longer tolerate their existence in the bed with you. In the second trimester, invest in a pregnancy pillow of some sort. If you can, test them out first before you buy.


9. Take Care of Your Teeth. Throwing up, acid reflux and indigestion, and eating larger quantities of food is hard on your teeth, and all of these things happen throughout pregnancy. Before you get pregnant, have your teeth thoroughly checked and x-rayed. Splurge for an extra cleaning during your second trimester of even a water pick. If you are not a regular flosser, try to start flossing two to three times a week. Investing in your teeth now will not only save you time and money, it is always easier to make a visit to the dentist less one little child. I speak from painful personal experience on this one; my lack of proactive tooth care during pregnancy eventually cost me more than three thousand dollars for two root canals and two crowns. A little time and effort early on will save you pain, both physical and financial, later on.

10.  Seriously? Keep Exercising. To the bitter end. Walk/waddle. Stretch. It makes a huge difference in labor and in recovery.  Don’t forget to build up arm strength as well – you will need it for breastfeeding and lifting the baby up and down all day.

*All recommendations to “ask your doctor” are important and are not there for my health but for yours! So do it! Ask your doctor. That’s what you are paying them for.

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