Pregnancy is all about wellness. Unlike any other medical condition, pregnancy is not an illness but you still go to a doctor to make sure that you remain well. So if pregnancy is wellness, why do you go to a hospital and lie just to a person who is having chemotherapy for cancer or a fracture, orthopedics patient, or some renal failure concept. So that was the concept behind starting Cloudnine, where we wanted the mother celebrating the childbirth and enjoy the happiness. When we started we realized that lot of mothers have lot of myths about their pregnancy. The commonest myth is that when we become pregnant, we need to eat for 2 and people start stuffing themselves and when you start stuffing yourselves, you put on extra weight and when you put on extra weight, then you put on weight, you are at a risk of developing gestation diabetes in pregnancy. Gestation diabetes in pregnancy happens in pregnant women because of unhealthy eating and also eating too much of carbs or carbohydrates. So you need to eat healthy and you need to eat protein foods, and need to eat not just for two , which means eating too much of sugar. One of the commonest myth in India is if you take iron, you will have a black baby. There is no truth in it. Lot of mothers in India are anemic. So if you are anemic, your babies will be pale, if you do take iron, then the babies will be pinker and not black and iron definitely does not cause blackness. There is one other myth in Indian women that if you take saffron in pregnancy, you will have a white baby. Saffron is one of the things that lot of mothers take and there is no side effects and that is the reason that myth is continuing. I have had lot of parents who are Srinlankan friends in Australia and I used to see lot of Srilankans have the same myths as Indians and they used to take saffron. Honestly I have never seen a fair complexioned Srilankan baby. In other words, saffron does not cause you to have a white baby. What does cause you a white baby is a white partner. So you need to take saffron, but don’t expect a white baby if you are dark parents. That does not happen.
Pregnant women should take best rest used to be the myth in the past but now lot of pregnant women are working. So naturally that myth has gone out of the window.
Lot of people think about papaya and pineapple causing miscarriage. If you look at the world, definitely papaya and pineapple does not cause miscarriage. In lot of countries, that is the staple diet and definitely Papua New Guinea is one of the best example in the world where papaya and pineapple are the staple diet and they have the lowest miscarriage rates. In other words, if you have been always been eating papaya and pineapple and if you eat a slice of that. Nothing will happen. But there is a saying, too much of anything is too bad so if you eat too much of papaya and pineapple, it may lead to uterine contractions, leading to miscarriage so too much of anything can cause problems, not little if you have eaten once in a while. So these are the common myths in pregnancy in women. These are some of the examples we talk in antenatal classes or prenatal classes and I’m sure you will benefit from attending these classes.
