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Melissa Evans, AAHCC |
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Resources—Household and Nutrition |
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Household: Taking care of the home can be really overwhelming. FlyLady is a great motivator and has amazing tools for making it doable. Meal Planning: Eating well is important for growing a healthy baby and taking care of one when s/he gets here. I found Saving Diner really helpful for dinner planning. The best part is there are the weekly grocery lists too. All you have to do is print out the list, make sure you have everything on it, and you’ll have dinner for the week. She has a book you can buy (or students can borrow from my library) that has recipes that serve six; or, you can get the e-mail version for that has the recipes for two or six, vegetarian and kosher options, and low-carb (not for pregnant mommies though!) There are also Mega Menu Mailers for stocking your freezer with a month’s worth of food – what a help when a new baby’s going to be arriving! Supper Solutions or Diner ‘n Dash are other helpers for filling that freezer. You go in and prep 14 or so meals, and go home with them in baggies and such; a baby shower there could be a real life saver! For the more health conscious, there is Door to Door Organics and Town and Country Foods. The latter’s main focus is natural meat, but they also have frozen organic veggies. Tell them I sent you! Also, The Organic Dish offers meal kits that you can buy, have delivered, or shipped. Pregnancy Nutrition: Blue Ribbon Baby has a great article on pregnancy nutrition. Dr. Brewer recently passed away, but his work has saved so many moms and babies. The dreaded disease of pregnancy – Toxemia/pre-eclampsia – is commonly a disease of malnutrition. There are some other factors, but eating well (lots of protein without limiting salt, a balanced diet with plenty of water) can drastically reduce a mother’s chance of developing it. Watching her nutrition is probably the most important thing a mother can do for her baby. Recipes: There are some great recipes at Food Network, and specifically for eggs at My Egg Recipes (Dr. Brewer recommends 2 eggs every day!). Nutrients: Very important to mom’s diet are essential fatty acids. If you want to avoid stretch marks, forget the cream and get your fish oil instead! Look for “molecularly distilled” to make sure it’s free of pollution; enteric coated helps avoid the nasty after-flavor. Savings: A great tool for using coupons is The Grocery Game. They track what’s on sale, what coupons are out there, and set you up for amazing savings. It costs $10/8 weeks for the first store, $5/8 weeks for additional stores. They do King Soopers, Albertsons, and Safeway. There’s also Coupon Mom which is free. The Safeway on Smokey Hill doubles coupons; as far as I know all King Soopers do too, and no Albertsons. King Soopers also has online coupons that are associated with your card. The hard part about this is seeing how cheap non-nutritious food is – remember, just because it didn’t cost the wallet very much doesn’t mean it isn’t taking its toll on your family’s health. A book I have has a great title: “If It’s Not Food, Don’t Eat It!” Body Care: I love the Skin Deep database for looking up the toxicity of cosmetics and personal care products. Our skin is our largest organ, sometimes called a “third lung” because of how much it absorbs.
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Bradley Method® Childbirth Educator |
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Families start here |