Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond: A Spiritual and Practical Guide

By Erika Gradenwitz-Koehler

Pregnancy and child birth bring about significant physical changes and challenges. Most parents, however, also have spiritual and philosophical questions which most pregnancy books don't address. Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond covers both the practical and spiritual aspects of having a child. Erika Gradenwitz-Koehler explains how diet, state of mind and the desire for a child can all affect chances of conception. She gives advice for a healthy pregnancy in body, soul and spirit and helps prepare parents for the physical and emotional experience of birthing. Chapters on infant care include advice for nurturing the spirit, as well as discussing feeding and emotional attachment. This is a comprehensive but alternative guide to all aspects of conception, pregnancy, birth and infant care.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Floris Books
• Release date: Jul 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781782501442

Book preview

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Becoming Pregnant

Conception

For conception to occur, the woman’s body needs healthy eggs and clear fallopian tubes. Regular ovulation helps. The man’s body needs sufficient healthy, mobile sperm. Then the sperm must get to the right place at the right time, and the right time is a mere two or three days in each menstrual cycle. Once the ovum and sperm have fused and travelled, the fertilised egg must implant successfully and the lining of the uterus must be in good condition. Given the chances of a problem with one of these many elements, it’s actually amazing that there are so many people walking around on this planet!

If you are already pregnant when you read this, you may still find this chapter interesting, and some of its contents – for example, the information about nutrition – are useful during, as well as before, pregnancy.

But perhaps you are not yet pregnant. There are many books about pregnancy, but few about how to conceive. Worse, there is a lot of information available about contraception, and an assumption that no one needs an explanation of how to become pregnant. Yet many people who have been trying to conceive without success experience feelings of doubt.

We tend to assume that pregnancy ‘just happens’. But this is not the case. In recent decades, infertility has increased. Nearly a quarter of all couples experience difficulties conceiving, and it is quite common for couples to need two years of trying for a baby before becoming pregnant. There are many things that can affect fertility. Your chances of conceiving are only partially in your control. After a year of attempting to get pregnant, it is a good idea to begin investigations with a gynaecologist to check whether there are any medical barriers to your fertility. However, 30 per cent of couples who seek medical help hear that there are no medical causes for them not conceiving. There are a number of possible causes beyond the medical ones: a belief that there is something preventing you having children; stress; exposure to hazardous substances; and insufficient nutrition. And then there is also the perspective of the child.

Gynaecologist and writer Bartholomeus Maris compares the experience of expecting a child to receiving a guest. It begins with an invitation. You put your house in order and ensure you have enough available time and attention. You think ahead and prepare satisfying food and drinks. But whether your guest actually shows up is outside your control.

Nutrition for Conception

Let’s begin with the ‘preparation of satisfying food and drink’: nutrition plays an important role in determining your overall health and therefore your fertility. Your diet in the months before conception has a significant influence on your first months of pregnancy. Yet dietary advice for couples wishing to have children has been limited or non-existent. As people living in the richer parts of the world, we are better fed than ever. But we also now know that we are not necessarily better off just because we can eat more food. Abundance has led to lifestyle diseases and even nutritional deficiencies.

Folic acid is now widely accepted as an important dietary supplement before and during pregnancy. As early as the 1960s, a link was established between a lack of folic acid in the diet of pregnant women and the development of spina bifida in embryos, yet this only became more widely known in the 1990s. So it may be that there are other nutritional elements that have a still-to-be-discovered function in fertility and pregnancy, and that may be deficient in our diets.

Many foods contain fewer nutrients now than they did a few decades ago. We produce enough food for seven billion people, yet it has been calculated that without fertiliser there would only be enough for two billion. Current farming practices deplete the soil and thus the nutrients in plants and then animals. In addition, food products today are altered to increase their shelf-life. And our food also often contains unhealthy substances from pesticides, artificial colourings and flavourings, and even antibiotics and hormones. These may affect fertility.

Another dietary consideration is how much or how little food we eat. Being overweight or underweight can alter or prevent ovulation and menstruation. So a healthy body weight is worth aiming for in the months before conception. You can calculate your body mass index (BMI) by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared. A healthy BMI is between 20 and 24. Consult your family doctor and midwife if you intend to become pregnant and are aware of having weight issues.

The nutritional value of a living thing is more than its chemical constituents. This is why fresh food keeps you healthier than a multivitamin pill. Eggs from a chicken that has lived outside contain energy of a different order than eggs from battery hens. For meat, too, quality depends on how the animal lived. Animals that are stressed have higher levels of adrenaline in the bloodstream. When consuming animal products, it is worth asking: was this animal able to move around freely, was it fed fresh food and did it see the sun?

Ayurvedic texts tell us of Indian knowledge and tradition concerning health that has been used for thousands of years. In an Ayervedic understanding of the body, food intake is more than just the consumption of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Nutrition is the process by which life energy passes through us. In a natural setting, sunlight strikes the earth. The qualities of fertile soil, clean air and pure water are passed into the matter we ingest and so energy is transferred to us. Through a varied diet of pure food we nourish ourselves both physically and mentally. Food grown in conditions of artificial light, depleted soil, polluted air or toxic water, cannot supply this higher energy, even though there may be just as many proteins or minerals in it.

What is health anyway? Some nutritionists take the view that ‘animals raised at organic farms have a pleasant life, but that animals at factory farms are healthier’. By this they mean that animals at factory farms contract fewer infectious diseases. In fact, these animals have little chance of succumbing to infection because they receive many vaccinations and are routinely given large doses of antibiotics in their feed.

I am not convinced by a definition of health that relates to the absence of germs. Strong, healthy animals or humans are capable of processing disease and recovering balance on their own. In understanding how your diet affects your health it really helps to ‘hold it up to the light’ and give it a thorough inspection. The British doctor and dietician Marilyn Glenville has helped many couples who have been unable to conceive. The following ‘Do’ and ‘Don’t’ lists are based in part on her advice, and in part on newer scientific findings:

Do:

Eat fresh, ripe fruits and vegetables; these contain the most nutrients. Organically grown fruits and vegetables contain no pesticides or other chemicals, including, for example, preservatives ordinarily applied to fresh produce to prevent rotting. Chemicals are often applied to non-organic fruit and vegetables with a protective layer of wax that cannot easily be removed by washing. Even in the world’s stricter regulatory regimes, there are still thousands of types of legal pesticides that are not entirely harmless. Remember organic fruit and vegetables, though free from many of these hazards, still carry bacteria, so do wash them well. Eat about 800 g (1 lb 12 oz) per day.

Use whole grains, unpeeled potatoes, legumes and vegetables as your sources of carbohydrate. Whole grains include wheat, rice, rye, oats, barley, quinoa, kamut, and millet. These foods contain energy in the form of complex carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. They also help remove the build-up of hormone residues and other harmful substances in your body. Organic cereals contain no residues of pesticides, which can act as xenoestrogens, disrupting your hormonal balance. More people in recent years have difficulties with the gluten in wheat products (also rice, rye, oats, corn). Try to vary your carbohydrate source. Eat about 300 g (10 oz) per day.

Eat the right fats. Your body needs fat to help you stay warm, insulate your nerve cells, ensure skin is supple, keep arteries free-flowing and to bring hormones into balance. ‘Light’ ‘lite’ and ‘low-fat’ products are not healthy because instead of fats they contain additional sugar or artificial sweeteners that disturb the body’s balance. We tend to take in too many omega-6 fatty acids and too little omega-3 and omega-9, which are important for maintaining hormone levels and healthy sperm. Flaxseed oil and oily fish contain omega-3 fatty acids, especially salmon, mackerel, tuna, herring and sardines. The seeds of salvia hispanica (also called ‘chia’) are also recommended. Omega-9 can be found in virgin olive oil, sesame oil and avocados. Use butter, rice oil or coconut oil for frying, as olive oil has a low oxidation termperature.

Never miss breakfast and eat every three hours for a constant energy level.

Drink at least 1.5 litres (1½ US quarts) per day, mostly water, supplemented with Rooibos tea, herbal tea, pure unsweetened fruit juice and organic milk or buttermilk.

Don’t:

Coffee and tea. Coffee contains more than 100 mg of caffeine per cup; a cup of black tea has about half that amount. Caffeine has a significant detrimental effect on fertility. Women who have a lot of coffee and tea are less likely to get pregnant; for men, the quality of sperm deteriorates. Decaffeinated products are not the solution: there are often added chemicals that affect the metabolism of minerals.

Sugars and white flour. Remember to avoid sugar in soft drinks too. Simple carbohydrates are stored as fat in your body. To digest them, your body will use vitamins and minerals, whereas this is not so for complex carbohydrates (in whole grains and vegetables). In addition, processing simple carbohydrates leads to abrupt spikes and troughs in blood-sugar levels; for fertility it’s better to have constant energy levels.

Artificial sweeteners in ‘light’ or ‘lite’ products. These are chemicals with a disruptive effect on the body. Assessments of the exact consequences are still at an early stage because these substances react with the body in a far more complex way than, for example, refined sugar.

Large quantities of meat, and hormones and antibiotics in animal products. Scientists agree that our consumption of meat, especially pork, is much too high. And there is clear agreement about the harmful influence of antibiotics and growth hormones in meat and milk. To illustrate this, growth hormones have enabled daily milk production for the average cow to reach more than 50 litres (13 gallons). 40 years ago this figure was around 10 litres (2½ gallons).

Trans-fatty acids. These are created when fat is hydrogenated or hardened. This is how margarine is produced. Trans-fatty acids are also found in manufactured biscuits, chips, soups and other processed fatty foods. Eating trans-fatty acids prevents your body absorbing the essential fatty acids it needs.

Genetically engineered products. There is ongoing scientific debate about the impact of genetic engineering on our health. What is certain is that the many potential consequences are unknown. What, for example, will be the long-term results of eating tomatoes protected against frost with a fish gene? The greatest risk is in the incorporation of ‘marker genes’, which are resistant to antibiotics, and it could be that humans may also develop similar resistance.

Artificial additives. Additives, including many E-numbers, can have all sorts of subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, effects on the body. It is known that some colourings can promote hyperactivity amongst children.

Smoking deprives your body of vitamin C.

Alcohol uses up your vitamin B reserves.

It is great, of course, if you can meet all your nutritional needs from your food alone (Part II of this book contains some healthy and easy recipes). But it is also not a bad idea to use some dietary supplements in the run-up to and during pregnancy.

In Natural Solutions to Infertility, Marilyn Glenville advises the following daily intake:

Vitamin A up to 2,500 micrograms (mcg)

Vitamin B6 up to 50 milligrams (mg)

Vitamin B12 up to 50 mcg

Vitamin C 100 mg

Vitamin E 300–400 mcg

Zinc 30 mg

Selenium 100 mcg

Flaxseed oil 1000 mg or:

Omega-6 fatty acid 150 mg

Omega-3 fatty acid 300 mg

Manganese 5 mg

Iron 14 mg

Calcium 700 mg

Folic Acid 400 mcg (for women)

L-Arginine 1000 mg (for men)

L-Carnitine 100 mg (for men)

***

Body, soul and mind

In this book I see the soul as the intermediary between body and mind. I realise I need to explain this further. There are, after all, people who only recognise the existence of matter and assign the concept of soul and spirit to the realm of fiction. And there are others, for example in Buddhist and Hindu societies, who see matter as an illusion. Here are my own humble observations of spirituality, matter and the soul.

The spiritual tradition of Vedic India can be read in texts recorded over four thousand years ago, and prior to that it was carried for thousands of years through oral culture. According to these Vedic writings, a creative, founding principle brought everything into being: first comes the creation of light, and from this a universal soul, which resulted in individual souls, and then solid matter. This idea, that light is the foundation of matter, aligns with current physics. Physicists consider light and matter to be just different forms of energy.

According to the Veda scriptures, people are born with animal instincts but a human soul. Thus humans can rise above the illusions that characterise physical and emotional experience, and discover their true nature: that of an individual soul as part of a larger whole of light and love.

Traces of these Vedic ideas are found in the current practices of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity. The mystical movements within these religions emphasise the journey of the