Taking care of yourself and your fetus baby during pregnancy is very critical and important, and this chapter will help you to make sure that you and your baby stay healthy. In the old age, mothers and their babies were in bigger risks of surviving pregnancy and childbirth. The situation has changed remarkably thanks to the modern medicine especially the modern prenatal care that improves pregnant mothers’ health conditions and outcomes of both mother and baby.

Besides those prenatal cares that will be done during your visits to your obstetrician, this chapter will help you to understand what you should do and should not do during your 9-½ months of pregnancy, to keep your IQ intelligent baby as healthy as possible. You will live your life as usual but paying more attentions to your diets and exercises. The only additional thing is that you need to go visiting your obstetrician regularly to ensure the safety and health conditions.

It will also discuss those factors that will have impact on your womb safety, and how emotional and stress factors influent your womb health. Memory is one of the topics beyond emotional and stress factors that you will definitely sense it while pregnant, and it will be discussed with helpful suggestions and solutions. In addition, environmental factors and pollutions are currently hot topic of pregnancy, which will have impact on important features of pregnant process, like health, diseases, and even sex. How chemicals and pollutions play roles in pregnancy and how you can avoid and prevent them will be also discussed in this chapter.

It will start with Dos and Don’ts because these are your main concerns.

7.1 - Dos

During your pregnancy, it is important to understand what you need to do and what you can do. Those you have to do will be listed as titles bold, and those you had better do will be listed as titles underlined for your references. If you want a baby with healthy and higher IQ intelligent qualities, you will need to follow all of these suggestions and recommendations.

Eat right. First of all is drinking more fluids than the time before pregnancy, especially pure water, because now you have one more living body in you that is living in an environment surrounded with fluid. You should only drink fluids when you are thirsty, and extra water than what you need is unnecessary. You will want to avoid sodas or fluids with sugar or non-sugar sweetens. Natural fluid or water is always the best choice for you.

Second of all is having low fat diet including low fat dairy products like low fat milk, yogurt and ice cream, low fat meats like chicken, fishes, and fewer amounts of low fat lean meats, in order to take in more calcium, proteins, minerals, but without too much fat. Proteins are important and required for your baby growth of the body and the brain, sugar and fat should be there too but with limited amounts.

Third of all is having home-made meals, whole grains, fresh foods and juices other than junk foods, refined or processed foods, and coffee and tea. You may want to eat lots of various nuts, fresh veggies, plenty of fruits, sprouts, and those natural foods Page 90 with rare and special colors because they contain some rare nutrients that you will hardly get from foods with regular colors.

The requirements of nutrition normally increase tremendously due to the rapid growth of fetus, and the development of placenta and the increase of blood flow in your body will require you to have a rich and particular pattern of diet. When you reach the second and the third trimesters, it is essential to have increased nutrient diets to supply sufficient nutrition of vitamins, calcium, iron, proteins to the growth and developments of teeth, bones; and special nutrition like minerals, proteins and fat will be necessary for the development of brain and nervous system of higher intelligence.

The needs of vitamins like A, B, C, D and folic acid are increased, for instance, the requirement of vitamin A will increased by 25% that will mostly come from yellow or orange color veggies, egg yolk and butter. Vitamin B-complex and folic acid will come from green leafy veggies, nuts, dairy products and lean meats. Zinc, as an important but rare mineral, will come from purple color veggies, seafood and meats. Under suitable nutrition, your weight gain should be 1 pound weekly from the month 4, but not more than that.

Rest right. Pregnant women like you need a lot more sleep, and the extra sleep time will help your baby growth. Scientific studies show that the growth of our bodies with organs and tissues happens mostly during our sleeps, but not during our daily activities or while we are eating. And thus you should understand that how important your sleep is for the fast and appropriate growth of your baby. The growth of the brain of the baby is also occurs during sleeping while the brain and nervous system are resting, but not when they are actively working.

You will want to consider taking more breaks while working, either at home or at work. Whenever you feel tired, you need to take a break. Listen to the need of your body, and avoid over pushing or over exert. Don’t hesitate to ask for help when you need it, because over loaded or too much effort may not be good for you and your baby. You also want to be relaxed while standing, sitting or lying down, try to relax your whole body whenever possible especially your back and your shoulders. Muscle relaxation will help you to reduce the use of energy and the loading to your bones and muscles. Mental relaxation can help you to build up your confidence and to have a peaceful mind. A warm shower or a massage can also help to relax your body and your muscles.

If you feel exhausted, arrange for a massage or facial service is a good idea to help you to go back to relaxation. It will be also nice to arrange a short trip with your partner to visit a park or a mountain to inhale fresh air with smells of green forest and wild plants. Any other outdoor activity that can help you to be relaxed will be a good one. The only thing you want to avoid is going to environments with too many people around, because this may increase the possibilities of contacting sources of infections like cold, flu, and other bacteria and viruses.

Some smaller tricks can be very helpful for your pregnant life. While you are sleeping or lying down, keep a pillow between your legs, especially when you sleep on your side or during the third trimester, because the pillow will make you feel more comfortable, and will reduce the pressure loading on your belly and your womb. When you feel your ring is getting tighter, you need to remove it to prevent it from the case of pain or inconvenience.

Dress right. After month 3 or 4, you will need to choose some loose dresses, not only for better looking in shape, but for better developments of your body and your baby. Lower heeled and comfortable footwear will be highly recommended, and it will be wise to choose a well fit bra. You may want to upgrade all of your clothing and footwear regularly to match your growing body and baby. Tighter dress, bra and footwear may limit the needs of growing and may be also unsafe.



Visit prenatal doctors regularly. A regular visit to your prenatal doctor will ensure the safety and health conditions of your baby, and the suggestions and recommendations will help you to fully understand your current situation, and to prospect your future months correctly. It is important not to miss any check-up date, or you may loss the chance to learn about your pregnancy and what you need to do to follow up.

It is also a good idea to join a prenatal program or group education that will offer you with advanced knowledge of suitable diets, exercises for yourself; and clothing, breastfeeding and fetus education methods for your baby. These programs will also help to answer your questions, prepare you for childbirth and parenting, remove your fears, and offer you chances to learn from other’s lessons and experiences.

Quit smoking and drinking absolutely. If you are looking forward to having a baby with IQ intelligence, you have to quit any smoking and drinking not just Page 92 completely, but absolutely. It means you also need to avoid second hand or third hand smoking as well, and your partner should also follow this suggestion to quit his smoking and drinking, if you want the results to be the best.

Why smoking is bad for fetus babies? The cigarette smoke you inhale contains 4,000 chemicals like nicotine, cyanide, lead, and more than 60 different cancer inducing chemicals. These toxic compounds will go into your blood while smoking and will be directly transfer to your baby, because blood stream is the only way that your fetus baby receives nutrition and oxygen. Besides none of the 4,000 chemicals is good, two of them are extremely harmful to your baby, nicotine and carbon monoxide (CO). They are actually toxins to the baby and cause premature delivery, lower birth weight, and premature developments of organs, because these toxins induce narrower blood vessels and reduce the supply of oxygen, the most important factor to the body and the brain of your baby.

Alcohol related drinking may cause “fetal alcohol spectrum disorder” (FASD) because of the brain and spinal cord damages due to the transfer of alcohol from the mother’s blood directly to the fetus’ blood. These damages will cause defective facial features like small head, flat face and narrow eye openings; growth problem like smaller body size; and learning and behavior problems.



The results of smoking and drinking on fetus baby will be completely the opposite of healthy and intelligent, and it will be absolutely not what you want.

Raise your hygiene level. Several useful tips are as follows: wash your hands and clothes more frequently because you tend to have more secretions than normal; brush and clean your teeth more often because of increased swelling and sensitivity of the gums; wash and clean your genital area more often to prevent infections especially in the third trimester; and wear cotton underwear to prevent allergy and to feel comfortable.

Take medications following obstetrician’s suggestions. If you have cold, flu or any other smaller health problems, avoid the over-counter medications. Try to use home-made remedies for minor symptoms, or consult your prenatal doctor for appropriate recommendations, since most of the regular cold or flu medication may not be good or may be harmful to your baby, and some of them may have direct impact on the brain and intelligence.

Pregnancy related exercises. Most of the exercises should be taken moderately, and intensive exercises should be avoided. Some moderate exercises, like walking, swimming, yoga, static cycling, are highly recommended. Under pregnancy related gym expert’s instruction, you can also consider receiving delivery special muscle training to reduce your labor efforts, to well protect your body and organ from delivery, and to minimize the damages.



Listen to music and read books that make you happy. Refer to Chapter 6 for this content to get instructions in more details.

Acceptable postures and body positions. You will not want to lift any heavy object, and your prenatal doctor will let you know the limit of acceptable weight lifted, because exertion can be harmful for pregnancy. You will also want to avoid sitting without sufficient support to your back or with uncomfortable position or seat, to keep your feet flat on floor, and to avoid crossed knees, because these positions may cause uncomfortable feelings. If you need to pick up things on the floor or any lower place, the best position is to bend your knees or to squat down, but not to bend your waist. If you need to reach something on higher place or shelves, make sure you use a safe step tool or a safe pick-up tool.

Sex guide. The second trimester, but not the first and the third ones, is the safest time to get involved in sex, and you will need to change to a safer position to prevent loading pressure on your belly. If you think there is abstention reason, you should consult your prenatal doctor.

Travel guide. The second trimester is also the best and safest time for traveling if you are willing to. It will be wise to carry your prenatal paper work with you while traveling and to avoid going to somewhere without medical service.

Move around in your house or at home safely.

Handle stress and emotion well. Refer to later section in this Chapter.

Visit your dentist on schedules.

Choose a good hospital.

7.2 - Don’ts

There are things to be avoided to protect you and your baby during pregnancy, and things you may or may not aware of. Getting familiar with these “Don’t” will be selfprotective and enabling better safety for your pregnant life. Once you keep these items in mind, it is simple and easy to avoid them as listed as follows.

Don’t eat these: Uncooked or undercooked foods like meat and egg should be avoided, as well as junk foods. Spicy foods or foods with strong tastes will not be welcome by your baby, and foods with contaminated chemicals and pesticides will harm your baby obviously. And thus organic foods are more recommended if they are affordable.

Don’t drink these: Coffee, tea, colas and soda are drinks with caffeine, bubble, sugar and sweeten, and should be avoided because they don’t do good to your baby, and your baby does not need them either.

Don’t do these: X-ray, UV light, over-heated temperature are harmful to fetus babies, and you should avoid them including any X-ray examination if it is not necessary or if replacement is available; tans related to intensive UV light; hot baths and saunas related to extra heat, and so on.

A chart as follows summarizes the Dos and Don’ts for your convenience.

7.3 - Womb Safety

Did you know how safe your womb is for your baby? Your womb is also called uterus, and is a natural gift to your baby. It is specialized and functional carrier perfectly for fetus baby’s living and protecting with multiple supportive organs and tissues like placenta, umbilical cord, muscles and bones that work together to offer nutrition, oxygen, blood and a solid but elastic wall and the perfect physical protection to your baby. Besides connecting the blood systems between the mother and the baby, placenta is also a natural barrier to protect the baby, because it can block and filter out most of the harmful microorganisms like fungi, bacteria and viruses from the mother’s blood to the baby. And a mucous plug in the cervix seals the main entrance of the womb, and prevents infection factors from going into the womb from the external genital area. In addition, the amniotic fluid forms a pool with constant temperature to protect your baby from temperature and pressure changes outside of your body.

But certain types of toxins and chemicals can get through the placenta barrier and reach your baby, and thus these substances should be avoided by you to stop them from reaching the baby. As mentioned above, alcohol and smoke related chemical toxins are part of them, and thus you should quit and stop smoking and drinking. Other toxic sources include some seafood like king mackerel, swordfish and shark that are rich in mercury and will be harmful to the nervous system. Unwashed fruits and veggies contain toxic chemicals and pesticides and should be cleaned carefully before eating. Infectious factors should be avoided too because some of them can also pass through placenta and reach your baby, like hepatitis viruses, AIDS viruses and others.

7.4 - Emotion and Stress Solutions during Pregnancy

Emotion and stress before, during and after pregnancy are all related to your baby’s life and intelligence. Your emotional status will have direct impact on your baby that will influent the brain and nervous system development, or may be even the characteristics and personalities in later life. So if you are looking forward to a healthy and intelligent baby, there are many things you can do to avoid the adverse or negative impact.

To avoid negative emotion and stress before pregnancy, you need to have a plan and an agreement with your partner about a coming baby, and wait until both of you are physically, psychologically and financially ready for a pregnancy. An event of pregnancy and a baby is related to both of you, but not just you yourself, and it will be part of your and your partner’s lives. It is worth to be considerable, thoughtful and well-planned.

When both of you are completely ready, you are in pregnancy. Now the pregnancy related hormones in your body will cause emotional problems in you and from you to your partner, especially in the first 3 months and sometimes it extends to 4 ~ 5 months. If you cannot handle these emotional issues well, they will also have adverse impact on your baby.

You need to pay attention to these symptoms originating from you, and try your best to get them under your full control, because you understand that they come from your hormones and can be handled only by you. The symptoms include sudden changes of mood from joy to tears; hypersensitivity and irritation; insecurity and fragility; feeling fatty and ugly; and so on. You should share the causes of these symptoms with your partner and ask for his understandings and assistances to get them under both of your controls. In case these symptoms are too strong to be controlled, you can also ask for helps from your prenatal doctor.

Scientific researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that stress can be transmitted through the placenta and change a protein that has impact on the brain development of fetus babies. It can lower the IQ intelligence by causing autism and schizophrenia, especially in male babies because the protein has been affected more in their placentas.

Other reports show that intense stress can induce premature and underweight babies because stress can reduce blood supply to the placenta, and thus reduce the growth of the babies. Stress occurs in the early stage of pregnancy has adverse impact on brain development, and induce abnormally lower intellectual and language learning skills in children. A British study of 14,000 pregnant women shows that anxiety during pregnancy results in increased impassivity and decreased IQ in adolescence.

TThese scientific reports indicate that it is worth your efforts to avoid emotional stress to protect your baby’s IQ intelligence.

7.5 - Memory Loss during Pregnancy

You may forget your keys or appointments during pregnancy, and it is a normal phenomenon. It happens because the hormone levels and hormone combinations have been changed in your body due to pregnancy. Neuroscientists found that pregnancy related hormone changes cause changes to memory storage ways that may reduce memory functions of the brain. For example, more progesterone production in pregnant women will induce sedative impact on nervous system that cause more sleepy feeling and less memory function.

This type of partial memory loss is vary between individual women, and those women who use their memories more at work tend to have less memory losses compared to those women who do not use too much of their memory at work. And those pregnant women who have sleep problems or are under stress tend to have more obvious memory losses.

These facts simply tell us that if you can manage your emotional situation and reduce your stress or anxiety during pregnancy, you will have better sleep and better memory. You may also try to do more readings before and during your pregnancy, because it will help to increase your brain work and memory, and to shift your attention to reduce your emotional stress. This will improve your health condition, and the health and intelligent conditions of your baby.

Now we learn that your emotion, stress, sleep and memory are all related to the brain development and IQ intelligence of your baby, and you need to make your efforts to keep all of these factors under normal levels. In case you cannot manage it by yourself, you can always ask for help from your obstetrician.

7.6 - Environmental Pollution and Pregnancy

After all of the above discussions of most common factors that have effects on health and intelligence development of your fetus baby, and how to manage them in a correct way, there are other less obvious factors that are playing their roles in pregnancy, even though with less frequency. One of the examples is environmental pollutions, and most recent reports show that pollutions with toxic chemicals have definitely changed many different aspects of pregnancy situations of animals and human beings in nature.

Scientific evidence is growing to show that longer term exposure to some chemicals, like pesticides, dioxins, PCBs and others, may cause reproduction problems, and even sexual fusion in animals. However, the speculation that human being reproduction can also be affected under frequent exposures to toxic chemicals is still under investigations.

Researchers found that alligators living in highly polluted lake full of DDT and other chemicals in Florida have much lower levels of a male hormone – testosterone, and other hormones related to growth and reproduction are also found to be abnormal levels. Other reports also show that the recovering gators in polluted lakes in Florida had fewer babies, and have smaller penis sizes and lower rates of egg hatchings. “It’s a red flag” said a zoology professor of University of Florida who led one of the studies. Other researchers said that further studies are needed to confirm and reveal the exact causes.

In addition, seagulls in highly polluted area of the Great Lakes area of Canada and in Southern California are affected by pesticides like DDT, and some female seagulls developed two oviducts instead of one as usual. And some male seagulls had female cells in their testes that normally only found in ovaries of female birds. “Gay gulls” have been observed, and because of that, female seagulls were pairing with each other instead of pairing with male seagulls.

A study on endangered wild salmons found that 80% of the spawning female salmons began their lives as males, because most of the female fish carried X and Y chromosomes that normally found only in male salmon. Some researchers pointed out that the cause could be pollutants, while other researchers disagreed. But the fact is that this phenomenon has never been observed in wild salmons before, and it must be related to something that unique to current environmental changes.

An additional study shows that lack of oxygen works with pollutions especially of birth control hormone like estrogen, and can cause gender alter in fish. And a well designed scientific test in 2005 fully confirmed that this is true, because it only took seven days for those male minnows to become feminized when living in estrogen contaminated water, but it did not happen to those minnows living in upstream clean water. This test is clear enough to strongly offer direct evidence that it is the contaminated chemicals that cause the sex changes in fish.

The direct results will be definitely less wild salmons and other fishes on earth. But evidence from human is not enough to confirm that the same impact is happening on us. A report from chemical industry indicates that higher doses of certain chemicals can interfere with human reproduction, and more evidence is needed to show that smaller doses of similar chemicals can induce the same effects in human.

The bad news is that in the same area where seagulls show abnormal sex changes, reports on human baby gender shifts show significant changes among human populations living in the heavy polluted Great Lakes area. Data show that the numbers of male babies reduced remarkably in the area. As one of the Great Lakes areas, the First Nation area in Ontario of Canada, shows that the local male baby rate sank sharply as only 34.8% in 1999 ~ 2003 compared to the expected male baby rate of 51.2% in populations of Canada, and the worldwide male baby rate of 50.4– 51.9% in general. We do have some reasons to be alert and to worry about the impact of pollutions on human babies.

The point of this section is that we should try our bests to stay away from polluted foods and environments. We don’t want to wait until one day the clear scientific confirmation comes out, because that will be too late, especially if you are hoping for an IQ active baby.

7.7 - Other Factors

There are many other factors in our lives that can have effects on fetus developments, and the brain with its nervous system is the most sensitive one. Some of the factors are related to the mother’s age and health conditions, and other factors can be personal life related or living environment related. Going through these factors will give you some knowledge and information to build up your selfconfidence.

As a common sense, the mother’s age is an important factor that related closely to the IQ intelligence of the baby. The risky ages of lower IQ baby are younger than 15 years old and older than 35 years old. When the mother is too young, the reproductive system is still developing and immature, and thus it is unlikely for her to have enough internal physical condition for a baby to develop better intelligence. Furthermore, as a young teenage girl, she will not have enough experiences to take care of her fetus baby either. When a mother of first pregnancy is older than 35 years, her reproductive system is over-mature and will not be considered ideal for the first baby. But it is still much better than a younger teenage mother, since an older mother can use her living experiences and well-trained intelligence to compensate the defects.

In case the prospective mom is unhealthy and has medical conditions like heart disease, hypertension, asthma, diabetes and bleeding, these health problems will influent the intelligent development of the fetus significantly. You may want to wait until the healthy problem is resolved by your physician, or reaches a relatively stable stage. You can also consult your physician and obstetricians together in order to make a decision that fits your situations.

One of the factors you should not ignore is to receive necessary immunizations. As a pregnant woman, you are highly subject to many different infectious microorganisms compared to other women and even to you yourself before pregnancy. These infections may cause you and your baby’s lives, or result in significant drawbacks that you don’t want to have. The only way to protect you and your baby from infections is suitable and on time immunization.

If your job is radiation or other toxic chemicals related, you need to talk with your supervisors and inform them about your pregnancy. Because of your and your baby’s safety, you should stay away from any type of radiation and toxic chemicals with any dose from the first day of your pregnant period. It is considered unsafe for anyone while pregnant to contact directly or indirectly any source of radiation.

Summary ● It offers you with useful advises about what you should do and should not do during your pregnancy. ● These advices are based on the current and up-to-date understandings of pregnancy from experienced obstetricians and nutritionists. ● The ideas of assisting the developments of a healthy and IQ intelligent baby. ● Emotional stress and memory from the mother have impact on the baby’s brain growth, and relative advises and instructions are offered in this Chapter for your references. ● Environmental pollutions and their effects on newborn animals and human beings are attracting attentions from prospective moms recently, and are also discussed as your additional information.