Frozen Meals for Post Partum

As you can soon expect, you will have your hands very full with your new little one! That being said, there isn't much time for cooking & meal preparation. Frozen meals come in especially handy for new parents!

Frozen Section at the Grocery Store
The next time you're strolling through the grocery store, look at the frozen food section. You can find all sorts of meals frozen and just ready to throw in the oven or microwave. However, because they're frozen, they have a higher sodium content so they'll keep--but they're cheap, easy and accessible. I like foods like Voila Chicken Alfredo! All you do is put the package in a skillet with some water, add the alfredo sauce and let it cook. This meal can go quite aways if served atop rice. Also, many veggies are available to steam in your microwaves and even with buttery and herb sauces, yum!

Homemade Frozen Foods
Ever frozen lasagna? Works well doesn't it? All you have to do is throw that baby in the oven with some tin foil and voila, a delicious, home made meal! Lasagna is probably is the easiest to make, but there are others as well. Any type of casserole would work well too (I like green bean casserole! YUM!)

Here is a good lasagna recipe, sure looks yummy! Lasagna Recipe

Pelvic Girdle Pain...is it keeping you up at night?

You have three pelvic joints in your body: two sacroilliac joints and a pubic symphasis. During pregnancy, a hormone called Relaxin will help all of your joints loosen in preparation to childbirth (especially the pubic symphasis, directly in the middle of where the hips join). Relaxin is also the culprit of your new found clumsiness... you must be wondering by now, "Why the heck can't I hold on to things anymore and drop everything?!?", Relaxin!

Something that pains some women during pregnancy is known as Pelvic Girdle Pain. PGP often presents symptoms like a chronic back ache, lower pelvis ache on one or both sides and radiating pain down the bum and the legs. Other symptoms include:

* Present swelling and/or inflammation over joint.
* Difficulty lifting leg.
* Pain pulling legs apart.
* Unable to stand on one leg.
* Unable to transfer weight through pelvis and legs.
* Pain in hips and/or restriction of hip movement.
* Transferred nerve pain down leg.
* Can be associated with bladder and/or bowel dysfunction.
* A feeling of symphysis pubis giving way.
* Stand with a stooped over back.
* Malalignment of pelvic and/or back joints.
* Struggle to sit or stand.
* Pain may also radiate down the inner thighs.
* You may waddle or shuffle.
* Aware of an audible ‘clicking’ sound coming from the pelvis.

The cause of PGP is unknown for the most part, but there are several theories that can be found here.

How can PGP be treated? I can imagine how uncomfortable you must be at the end of your pregnancies and having to deal with this. Some women even experience it by 14 weeks! (ugh, can you imagine?!) But, it can be dealt with! Here are some self-help tips for PGP:

* When getting into bed sit on the edge keeping knees close together, lie down on your side, lifting both legs at the same time. Reverse this to get up.
* Try not to attempt to pull yourself up from lying on your back.
* Keep knees together when rolling over in bed.
* Sleep with a pillow between the legs; add more in other areas for support.
* When getting into a car: Sit down first and then swing legs keeping them together.
* Avoid sofas and chairs that are too low or too soft.
* Try to reduce the stress on the joint.
* Avoid any movement with your knees apart.
* Take smaller steps when walking.
* Avoid stairs if possible.
* Take breaks.
* Move within the limits of pain.
* Avoid twisting, bending or squatting.

Also, your doctor or midwife may suggest seeing a Physical Therapist that can help you tone the pelvic and abdominal muscles to releive some of the pressure on your pelvic joints. (Also, a little Tylenol can't hurt ladies! It's completely safe during pregnancy!).

Breast Milk Sugars Give Infants a Protective Coat

Interesting article in the NY Times today (Saw it through ACNM's facebook site on breast milk sugar's effect on an infant's GI tract. Here's the article:

A large part of human milk cannot be digested by babies and seems to have a purpose quite different from infant nutrition — that of influencing the composition of the bacteria in the infant’s gut.

The details of this three-way relationship between mother, child and gut microbes are being worked out by three researchers at the University of California, Davis — Bruce German, Carlito Lebrilla and David Mills. They and colleagues have found that a particular strain of bacterium, a subspecies of Bifidobacterium longum, possesses a special suite of genes that enable it to thrive on the indigestible component of milk.

This subspecies is commonly found in the feces of breast-fed infants. It coats the lining of the infant’s intestine, protecting it from noxious bacteria.

Infants presumably acquire the special strain of bifido from their mothers, but strangely, it has not yet been detected in adults. “We’re all wondering where it hides out,” Dr. Mills said.

The indigestible substance that favors the bifido bacterium is a slew of complex sugars derived from lactose, the principal component of milk. The complex sugars consist of a lactose molecule on to which chains of other sugar units have been added. The human genome does not contain the necessary genes to break down the complex sugars, but the bifido subspecies does, the researchers say in a review of their progress in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The complex sugars were long thought to have no biological significance, even though they constitute up to 21 percent of milk. Besides promoting growth of the bifido strain, they also serve as decoys for noxious bacteria that might attack the infant’s intestines. The sugars are very similar to those found on the surface of human cells, and are constructed in the breast by the same enzymes. Many toxic bacteria and viruses bind to human cells by docking with the surface sugars. But they will bind to the complex sugars in milk instead. “We think mothers have evolved to let this stuff flush through the infant,” Dr. Mills said.

Dr. German sees milk as “an astonishing product of evolution,” one which has been vigorously shaped by natural selection because it is so critical to the survival of both mother and child. “Everything in milk costs the mother — she is literally dissolving her own tissues to make it,” he said. From the infant’s perspective, it is born into a world full of hostile microbes, with an untrained immune system and lacking the caustic stomach acid which in adults kills most bacteria. Any element in milk that protects the infant will be heavily favored by natural selection.

“We were astonished that milk had so much material that the infant couldn’t digest,” Dr. German said. “Finding that it selectively stimulates the growth of specific bacteria, which are in turn protective of the infant, let us see the genius of the strategy — mothers are recruiting another life-form to baby-sit their baby.”

Dr. German and his colleagues are trying to “deconstruct” milk, on the theory that the fluid has been shaped by 200 million years of mammalian evolution and holds a wealth of information about how best to feed and defend the human body. Though milk itself is designed for infants, its lessons may apply to adults.

The complex sugars, for instance, are evidently a way of influencing the gut microflora, so they might in principle be used to help premature babies, or those born by caesarean, who do not immediately acquire the bifido strain. It has long been thought there was no source of the sugars other than human milk, but they have recently been detected in whey, a waste byproduct of cheesemaking. The three researchers plan to test the complex sugars for benefit in premature infants and in the elderly.

The proteins in milk also have special roles. One, called Alpha-lactalbumin, can attack tumor cells and those infected by viruses by restoring their lost ability to commit cell suicide. The protein, which accumulates when an infant is weaned, is also the signal for the breast to remodel itself back to normal state.

Such findings have made the three researchers keenly aware that every component of milk probably has a special role. “It’s all there for a purpose, though we’re still figuring out what that purpose is,” Dr. Mills said. “So for God’s sake, please breast-feed.”

Yet another positive outcome of breastfeeding! Very interesting article!