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Although anemia is caused by an iron deficiency in your body, you will not need to worry too much about your baby, since he will be sure to get as much iron from you as he needs. Your baby will only be in danger of suffering from anemia if the situation is completely ignored.
How will I be able to tell if I am anemic?
Anemia should be easily identifiable in the blood tests that you take frequently throughout your pregnancy. The baby will start drawing on your iron reserves much more heavily around week 20, so you may develop anemia later in your pregnancy.
Common symptoms of anemia during pregnancy include:
Who is most at risk?
Pregnant women who have poor nutrition, due to nausea and vomiting or simply bad habits, are more at risk of developing anemia. Also, women who are carrying multiple fetuses may be at a higher risk, as two babies will deplete iron stores twice as much. Women who have two or more pregnancies relatively close together may be at risk for similar reasons.
How much iron should I be getting?
The recommended daily allowance of iron is around 15mg for women trying to conceive. Pregnant women will need to consume about twice that much each day. Your healthcare provider may advise you to start taking an iron supplement, although these are known to cause constipation, nausea, and vomiting. It may be wise to simply try and include many iron rich foods such as spinach, dried fruits, or liver in your diet.
Keep in mind that your choice of beverages and other foods will affect your rate of iron absorption. Consuming foods rich in vitamin C along with the iron rich foods will facilitate absorption, while consuming caffeine will hinder it.
Acupuncture is the ancient Chinese method of using tiny needles to stimulate specific areas or "meridians" of the body and to rebalance the body's energy, or chi. Because acupuncture is especially effective for chronic conditions, many pregnant women are turning to acupuncture to provide drug-free relief from many of the unpleasant symptoms of pregnancy.
An Australian study showed that women who received acupuncture treatments regularly before their 14th week of pregnancy had less nausea and shorter bouts of morning sickness than women who did not receive the treatment. Acupuncture has also been used to treat the more serious condition hyperemesis gravidarum, which causes serious vomiting that persists throughout pregnancy.
During the second trimester, acupuncture has been used to successfully treat heartburn and hemorrhoids. In the third trimester, acupuncture can provide relief from sciatica, joint pain and carpal tunnel syndrome, which many women develop late in pregnancy. Acupuncture has even been used to relieve pain during labor and delivery.
Pregnant women seeking to use acupuncture to treat conditions developed during pregnancy should be sure to visit a licensed and experienced acupuncturist. For example, although acupuncture can be used to treat edema, or swelling of the ankles, edema can be an indicator of a serious problem. An acupuncturist experienced in treating pregnant women would be more likely to recognize this problem and refer the patient back to her obstetrician.
The most serious risk of using acupuncture during pregnancy is that it may stimulate labor if it is improperly applied. Choosing an experienced practitioner reduces this risk to almost negligible levels. In fact, many women have turned to acupuncture to purposefully stimulate labor when their baby is overdue. Some women have found that labor induced by acupuncture is gentler than labor induced by drugs such as Pitocin.
In addition to benefits during pregnancy, labor and delivery, acupuncture has been used to promote fertility and to treat infertility. In a small German study, women who used acupuncture in conjunction with in vitro fertilization had a 42.5% success rate compared to 26.3% in women who used in vitro fertilization alone. Fertility specialists attribute this to the overall improvement of health that comes from receiving regular acupuncture treatments.
Finally, acupuncture may have some benefits in treating post-partum depression. Although no research has been done to support the efficacy of acupuncture treatments on post-partum depression, anecdotal evidence shows that some women do benefit from its use. Because acupuncture does not cause harmful drug interactions, it can be a useful complimentary therapy.