Sunday, December 26, 2010

Chocolate Love!

I haven't really posted much the last two months. It's been quite busy between attempting to prepare for our bambino, the holidays, and just keeping up with normal everyday things. I will hopefully post an overview of our fun last couple of months! 

I have been reading a book my folks got me for Christmas called Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Share the rest of our Lives by Annie Murphey Paul. It's very interesting. I think most of us know instinctively that what we do during our pregnancy affects our unborn babes. That's why we have them listen to Mozart and things like Baby Plus. We want to give our little ones the best start. The book so far has been pretty interesting. I'm actually more interested in the research than the author's journey through her pregnancy but the side stories about it definitely help break up the research making it easier to read. The research is still up and coming and requires more follow-up research but I like it.

But back to the chocolate and leaving my tangent. In the book it mentions a study done at Yale University in 2008 that shows pregnant women who eat 5 servings or more of chocolate a week during the 3rd trimester have a 40% lower risk of developing preeclampsia compared those who comsume less than 1 serving of chocolate a week. Hooray!!! And there's more good news for all you chocolates pregos out there! Another study mentioned in the book found that mothers who eat chocolate every day during pregnancy reported their infants showed less fear and smiled/laughed more at 6 months of age! So I say bring on the chocolate!!!

5 comments:

  1. Heck yeah! What a wonderful excuse to indulge! Is it a specific chocolate that is beneficial or just any plain milk chocolate?

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  2. I love those facts!!! Hooray for chocolate!!!!!

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  3. Yay chocolate! How about too much sugar? I've been on a sugar kick this last week! YIKES!!!

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  4. It didn't say what kind of chocolate they ate in the study. I do prefer dark chocolate though. Didn't say anything about sugar. I've only read about 1/3 of the book.

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  5. I think dark chocolate is the one with the health benefits. It may help reduce blood pressure which is usually the first symptom of Pre-E. The only bad thing about Chocolate is that some people forget to count the caffeine content against their total for the day. For example, if you are still drinking caffeine and are trying to stay under the 200mg recommended by the March of Dimes- you may stay under with the beverages but forget to count the chocolate :) I actually had an aversion to it while pregnant- I was hoping I'd have ice cream cravings but I just wanted wasabi and anything with spice :)

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