DR GOWRI MOTHA
Diet
If you imagine that pregnancy means waddling, puffing up stairs and being the size of a house, then you’re going to be pleased you bought this book. Because if there’s one thing that characterizes absolutely all the mothers who follow my programme, it’s this – they’re light on their feet.
At nine months, when most expectant mothers can’t get their shoes on, mine have a spring in their step. When most can’t get off the sofa, mine go off on a two-mile walk – they’ve got energy, confidence and excitement, and the only water they retain is kept in a bottle in their handbags.
You’ve heard of those women who are back in their pre-pregnancy clothes two weeks after giving birth – well, you could be one of them. I’m not advocating no weight gain during pregnancy by any means – in fact it’s crucial that mothers lay down some fat – but I do believe that mothers should control their weight gain in order to modulate the size of their baby. Babies are definitely bigger when the mother is overweight and both factors – big babies and overweight mummies – lead to a higher incidence of complicated births. My studies show that an optimum-sized baby for a mother of average build leads to a gentler birth – and less incidence of post-natal depression, because the mother doesn’t have to add getting her figure back to her ‘To Do’ list.
How can this sort of pregnancy be yours? Well, in the first instance, by following a simple diet. But before you gasp with horror at the thought of expectant mothers on diets, this is absolutely not about losing weight, deprivation or hunger. Yes, it does involve excluding certain foods – I ask all my mothers to cut out wheat, refined carbohydrates (puddings, chocolate, bread, biscuits and so on) and, in the last month, gluten – but here’s why.
When I was working as an obstetrician in an NHS hospital, the same thing happened every night when I was on call: I would be woken from my sleep to attend a mother with complications. The midwives would tell me, ‘this lady has been in labour for 24 hours, she’s now been pushing for two hours and the baby’s stuck’. I would do a vaginal examination and find that the tissues were congested and swollen around the baby’s head, the baby’s head was squashed and moulding, and all around it was oedema (water retention creating an obstruction). It was ghastly and the only option was to apply forceps and drag the babies out. I think I was quite a skilled operator and tried to be as gentle as I could, but this situation necessitates an episiotomy and I despaired of having to carry out this procedure on women night after night.
Birth Story: Pasha
It was a Sunday morning when I awoke with the knowledge that Maya – my first daughter – was coming. It was a wonderful sensation of just knowing. I paced the house beaming ‘my baby is coming’. I called Gowri and she came over at 11am. She examined me – I was 3cm dilated and purring like a fat, happy cat. Gowri talked me through a relaxation process, helping me to access the knowledge that I was safe and well, that my body knew exactly what to do; that I would just be opening, slowly and gently, ready to give birth at the hospital that afternoon.
My husband went ahead and prepared the birthing pool at the hospital, and we followed him when I was about 6cm dilated. On arrival, the midwife asked me how dilated I thought I was. I told her 6cm or so, but she laughed and said she would be very surprised – that I looked far too relaxed to be that far dilated.
To her surprise I was 9cm and my daughter was born within eight hours of the first contraction. She was a very relaxed baby, only crying when hungry. Her first months were spent arms spread out, palms up, completely relaxed, open and trusting in everything. I feel sure this is because of her peaceful birth.
I came to the conclusion that the underlying problem for a lot of these women was the mechanical fit. If you had a smaller baby, and a fit mother with an uncongested pelvis, it would be easier for the baby to pass through the birth passages. I was aware that in China, for example, women working in the paddy fields commonly squatted down and delivered their babies within the hour. Why? The reasons are simple enough. By squatting and rising as they work all day, they naturally encourage their baby into the optimal foetal position, and this exercise also aids lymphatic drainage within the pelvis and increases their pelvic mobility. But crucially, they also eat a wholefood diet of rice and vegetables, so their bodies are clear of toxins and supple. The importance of diet in the equation is highlighted by the fact that in developing countries that have adopted western diets and lifestyles, the number of caesareans and medically-assisted births has risen. Diet is the deciding factor.
However, it was 15 years ago that I came to this conclusion and voiced my concern that we were over-feeding mothers here. Not surprisingly, everyone thought I was crazy at the time and I met with a lot of hostility. There was a huge fear that babies would be born small. However, such scepticism proved unfounded – over the years my mothers have delivered babies of very healthy weights, usually 7lb plus. My emphasis was, and is, simply on having babies in keeping with the mother’s frame. Today the ‘eating for two’ mindset is becoming redundant, as people are much more aware that a pregnant woman only needs an extra 200 calories per day – that’s only an extra bowl of cereal per day.
I remember very clearly one mother who was admitted to the delivery suite in labour. She was a Filipino lady who was naturally petite – she can’t have been any taller than 5ft – but she was grossly overweight. She had been in labour for 18 hours and was still only 3-4cm dilated. The baby’s head was high up, her whole uterus was like a mound and the labour was clearly not progressing any further. I enquired about her diet and learnt that, since coming to England, she had started eating food that was alien to her native diet – such as bread, sausages and pâté – and she’d been eating too much of it. The result? She had to have a caesarean to deliver an 11lb baby when, according to her frame, she should have had a 6-7lb baby.
Invariably, whenever I was presented with mothers with huge abdomens and cervixes that wouldn’t open and I asked about their diet, they would list their preference for comfort foods: ‘Oh I had nausea and couldn’t eat anything but toast’, or ‘I was addicted to chocolate’. This led me to think about dietary deficiencies, such as magnesium or chromium, which can lead to cravings. Soon I was beginning to think like a nutritionist.
What effects do certain foods have on our bodies? Wheat, for example, is known to create water retention. The first thing most nutritionists advise when presented with a patient complaining of neck tension and headaches, is to eliminate wheat from their diets. Eight times out of ten, the headaches disappear. Given that pelvic oedema is very often the underlying cause for inconsistent labours, I reasoned that wheat could be the culprit, congesting the vaginal tissues and restricting the cervix from gently opening and widening. I became even more convinced when I started asking about the birth experiences of women diagnosed with coeliac disease. These women simply cannot eat wheat or gluten and although there has been no formal study into this, my own interviews with some of these women revealed that they enjoy incredibly short labours.
Sugar is problematic too. Sugar is metabolized via the Krebs cycle – the name given to the biochemical process that releases energy from the molecules of sugar. Studies have shown that a large number of free radicals are released during this process. The body finds it hard to neutralize these and they attack connective tissues like muscles, tendons and ligaments. When you are pregnant, you need your pelvic ligaments to be extremely supple and flexible, so avoiding sugar and sugary foods can prevent toxins being deposited in your uterus, cervix and pelvic structures.
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