• Do remember that the appropriate level of exercise will depend on how fit you were before becoming pregnant.
• Do wear loose, comfortable clothes. Drink plenty of fluids and don’t allow yourself to get overheated as this can be harmful to the baby.
• Do take a gentle approach to exercises that put strain on joints and ligaments. During pregnancy women are more vulnerable to joint and ligament injury because the body produces relaxin, a hormone which loosens joints and ligaments in preparation for childbirth.
• Do listen to your body. Dizziness and fatigue is not uncommon in the first trimester and some women lose their balance more easily in the second and third trimesters as the baby grows and their centre of gravity shifts. Stop and consult your health care provider if you experience vaginal bleeding, shortness of breath, palpitations or pain in the back or pelvis.
• Do avoid contact sports and any activity with a potential for hard falls, such as horse riding.
• Don’t exercise in order to lose weight during pregnancy as this may harm your baby.
• Don’t exercise flat on your back as this can restrict the flow of blood to the womb.
• Don’t use saunas or steam rooms. They can make you too hot, which can be harmful to the baby.

Are you giving a baby shower during the Christmas holiday? This is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the baby and use Christmas decorations as your backdrop.

You could decorate a small tabletop tree with little lambs, little cherub ornaments, little baby bottles, tiny angels or anything with a baby theme. Use ribbons and bows in blue, white, pink, or yellow.

Decorate a Christmas wreath for the front door. By using little teddy bears or dolls on your wreath, you can greet your guests with a “Merry Christmas” while celebrating the new baby as well.

Intermingle greenery and gold and white glittery pinecones along with candles to make a Christmassy display on your buffet table. A baby shower during the Christmas holiday is a beautiful and exciting time to celebrate Christmas while celebrating the arrival of a precious new baby for a very happy and fortunate family.

Merry Christmas and congratulations to the new parents!

Like almost every strange but harmless episode during pregnancy – from tingling hands to a snuffly nose – changes in your sense of taste and your eatings habits can be put down to your hormones.

Why do tastes change in pregnancy?

Hormones The balance of hormones changes during pregnancy, because your body suddenly has to prepare for a new era – channeling nutrition to new parts of the body, loosening up your body’s physiological structure to enable your bump to grow and your lower half to prepare for birth, and so on. And one of the side effects of these hormonal changes is that it can affect your sense of taste.
For some, this might mean they go off certain foods or drinks that they enjoyed before.

Neccessary changes to your diet As well as the hormonal changes, being pregnant usually means enforced changes in our diet. Obvious factors like cutting out alcohol, certain fish, raw meats and fish, and unpasteurised cheeses, might mean that your daily or weekly intake has changed quite a bit since you realised you were having a baby. This shift can cause new habits to form – rediscovering a food you used to love or one you haven’t tried before, as you adapt your diet.

Needing to re-fuel You need to eat well during pregnancy and again this can cause a change in what you eat. If you were the kind of person who used to skip breakfast or have a light lunch, will you find now that you simple cannot get away with it. Instead, you will need to have small snacks through the day as well as your regular meals. You therefore might surprise yourself in how often you are grazing on nuts, fruit etc.

With a little bit of planning, a vegetarian diet can provide all the nutrients you need for a healthy pregnancy.

Your body requires a little more protein during pregnancy, and this is easily provided by a healthy varied vegetarian diet. However, take extra care to ensure you have an adequate intake of two nutrients that are particularly important during pregnancy – iron and calcium. Here are some tasty vegetarian recipes to inspire you.

Spaghetti with butternut squash and pine nuts

This recipe makes an easy vegetarian supper. Pine nuts are a fantastic source of vitamin E, and the squash contains lots of vitamin A. The easiest way to cook squash with minimal preparation is to cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and bake it in the oven or cook in the microwave. No peeling required!

Serves three

Ingredients
1 medium butternut squash, washed, halved lengthwise and seeds removed
40g rocket leaves
75g – 100g wholemeal spaghetti per person
75g pine nuts
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Black pepper
Grated Parmesan cheese, to serve

Method
Place the squash in a microwave oven and cook on high for about 10 minutes until the flesh is soft (800W microwave, lower powered models will need longer cooking time).

Meanwhile cook the spaghetti according to the instructions on the packet. Mix the rocket, garlic and olive oil together in a bowl.

Lightly toast the pine nuts until just browned. When the squash is cooked, scoop out the flesh with a spoon and mix into the rocket and garlic.

Drain the pasta and stir in the squash mixture, sprinkle over the toasted pine nuts and serve at once with grated Parmesan.
Variation: non-vegetarian friends might like a little chopped crispy bacon sprinkled on top.

There are, unbelievably, men who continue to live life as if they’re in a 1970s sitcom, slipping out of the house and disappearing to the pub when their child starts crying. The truth is that there are plenty of things all fathers can do that are of huge help to a shattered partner and a helpless child. In terms of basic things to do with the baby, these might include:

• changing nappies

• burping the baby (it’s easy, and it can be the start of an important bonding session between you)

• rocking baby to sleep (important because, unlike your breastfeeding partner, you won’t smell of milk and so won’t have a fully-fed baby demanding more)

• reading stories (baby won’t understand a thing, but it’s important to introduce the concept early)

• keeping baby occupied through play (you’re the FUN parent, remember)

• talking to baby (they can’t talk back but it gets her familiar with grammar and vocabulary).

Even if the whole baby thing is getting you down, the following easy tasks might provide light relief:

• doing the washing up

• cooking food for your partner and child

• loading up the washing machine and hanging the clean clothes out

• tidying the house now and then

• doing the shopping

• waiting on your partner, hand and foot.

You can’t give birth and you can’t breastfeed. There, you’ve lost the two key trump cards in any argument with your wife. You can, however, change nappies. This is truly a man’s realm.

Finally, a warning…

“Nobody will ever tell you this,” a new father friend whispered to me, shortly before the birth of my first child. “But just remember – the first few weeks are ABSOLUTE HELL. Prepare yourself for total madness and it won’t seem so bad.”

It was the best advice any expectant father could have. The truth is that those first few weeks and months are hell. Your home will look like a bomb site. You’ll be surrounded by piles of dirty nappies, filthy clothes and mountains of washing up. You’ll be woken up throughout the night by ear-splitting baby cries. You feel as if you’ll never get a decent night’s sleep again. Suddenly, the boring job that you’ve wanted to quit for years seems like bliss!!