hi everyone in today's video i wanted to cover an important topic and that is how
to best prepare for pregnancy and lactation so stay tuned to the end of the video for
all my tips on how to get yourself ready for a healthy pregnancy and to optimize your lactation
my name is cassie reyes i am a registered nurse and a board-certified lactation consultant
also one of the co-founders of people's lactation based in washington dc if you're new
here i upload a new video each week so if you want to subscribe down below and hit the bell
you're going to be notified each week when i post a new video okay so first let's talk about some
things that you can do to prepare for a healthy pregnancy before you can see ideally you want to
start to get healthy and into an optimal level of health prior to conceiving so that may look like
getting close to your healthy bmi starting to have a more active lifestyle once you're
pregnant it's going to be a little bit harder to start to introduce more exercise it's better
if you start off with a healthy activity level and just continue that throughout your pregnancy
during pregnancy you may need to modify some of those activities for example you don't want to
do a lot of high impact sports unless unless your body has been used to doing those in which case
as long as your doctor's okay with it you may be okay continuing those activities you want to
also have a good idea of what foods you may or may not need to avoid if you're trying to conceive so
foods like fish that may be high in mercury you may need to start limiting some of that
you may need to cut back on if you're a smoker definitely try to find a program that can help you
cut back on smoking if you even if you have the occasional drink you may need to consider cutting
back on that and this may not only improve your health outcomes but also improve your fertility
it's really important before conceiving once you are thinking about trying to conceive to take a
good prenatal vitamin you want to make sure that your body is ready to nourish a baby it's really
important to take a vitamin that has folic acid in it this helps with healthy spinal development
for your baby and also make sure that you are up to date on your vaccines so some vaccines
you can't receive during pregnancy so talk to your doctor and make sure you're up to date
on everything you need to be up to date on prior to conceiving and given the current state of the
world if any of you are considering getting the covid19 vaccine it has been recommended recently
during pregnancy but if you'd rather take it prior to pregnancy and if you're eligible to get it i
would recommend getting it prior to conceiving so you don't have to make that decision of whether
or not you want to get it when you're pregnant if you have any medical conditions that are ongoing
you may want to talk to your doctor about this ahead of time and learn about ways to manage
that condition during pregnancy make sure if you're on any medications that they're
safe to be on if you are trying to conceive and make sure that they're safe to continue once you
find out that you are pregnant third thing i would recommend is getting familiar with your own cycle
so if you have regular periods or not if you're ovulating regularly or not you could buy
an ovulation kit there are so many options on amazon buy an ovulation kit make sure that you're
ovulating regularly every month if you're not or if your periods are really irregular make sure
you talk to your doctor about it find out if there's anything you can do to get your cycles
more regular find out if you have any conditions like pcos that may affect your fertility things
like pcos or hormonal imbalances can also affect your milk supply when you're getting ready
for lactation so now we're going to switch over to things that you can do to prepare for lactation
we already talked about prenatal vitamins you will continue taking your prenatal vitamin
throughout your pregnancy and throughout your lactation journey
your body is always going to take from you to give to baby first so it's important that you
take vitamins and have good nutrition to replace what your body is putting out in your milk supply
the number one thing that i would recommend to prepare you for lactation is to take a class
so many people get ready for labor they learn all about a healthy pregnancy and how to have
a natural labor and they don't even think about preparing for lactation and so many of my clients
tell me afterwards i never thought that lactation would be the hardest part of this whole process
as you can see from this channel there's so much to learn about lactation so i would recommend
taking a class another thing that i would recommend is getting a prenatal lactation consult
that way you can have a lactation consultant work with you one-on-one learn about your goals
they can take a look at your anatomy let you know if there's anything
concerning about your anatomy that might give you some challenges during lactation
and how to best prepare for those challenges and how to overcome them i do want to bust
a myth here that you have to do anything to prepare your nipples
i know my mom has told me that back in when she was pregnant with me they used to tell you to
prepare your nipples to toughen them up that you should scrub them with like a washcloth or
various other things that sound really really uncomfortable
to get your nipples ready for lactation and breast or chest feeding and that
just isn't the case as we've discussed in other videos like this deep latch video
if you have a proper and deep latch lactation latching should not hurt so you don't have to do
anything to prepare your nipples to toughen them up and get ready for this process and finally one
thing that you might not have thought about we talked about medications we talked about foods
actually two things uh supplements if you're on any supplements like melatonin or any vitamins
um you may think that they're natural but they might not be safe for pregnancy and
lactation so make sure you check with your provider and the other thing is skin care
anything that you're putting on your skin make sure that it doesn't have
something in it that isn't safe for pregnancy or lactation so for example if you use products
with retinol in them you may want to consider or you should consider holding off on those
during pregnancy so make sure whatever products that you are putting in and on your body are safe
i hope you found that helpful please let me know down below if you have any questions
or if you thought of anything else that i didn't mention to prepare for lactation and pregnancy
the one thing another thing that you don't need to prepare is to buy all the things for
lactation all the pillows all the nipple shields all the creams
you don't need all of that right away if you need any of it you can get it afterwards but
don't spend all your money on every lactation pillow and every lactation tool available because
you're probably not going to need it all i hope you guys found the video helpful let me
know if there is anything i missed let me know if you did anything else that i didn't mention
to prepare for pregnancy and lactation i would love to hear from you exciting news we are going
to start offering an online class for lactation to teach you the basics of what you need to know
to get ready for your little one to arrive and we will probably also have that go hand in hand
with some q a sessions um possible support groups so stay tuned i'm gonna leave information down
below for that when it becomes available if you're new here please subscribe down below hit the bell
and i will see you guys next week when i post a new video have a great day you