The Importance of Nutrition in Parenthood
Andrew Middlin (B.Pharm)
Starting a family can be one of the most rewarding and exciting times of your life. Unfortunately, many parents also find this time extremely challenging and are constantly battling illness and lack of energy because of being rundown and sleep deprived. As a father of two young children and being in a circle of friends with young families, I am all too familiar with this scenario.
From pre-conception through to the stages of infancy, optimal health is important for both parents. By optimising their health through personalised nutrition in parenthood, parents can help increase energy levels and boost their immune system to help ward off the constant bugs coming home from childcare.
Everyone should thrive and live optimally at every stage of life. This means that supplementation is important not only before you have the baby, but also after, so that all caregivers are supported. Optimising health in this time allows parents not only to tackle life’s greatest challenge, but also enjoy every moment of it.
Pre-natal support
When you decide to start trying, the sheer volume of information available can be overwhelming and this leads to many parents questioning if they are making the right decisions.
To ensure everything from a micro nutritional level is being addressed, parents can have individualised products prepared based on pathology testing. Not only is optimal nutrition important for the baby throughout gestation, but personalised supplements are also vital for both parents themselves. Mums and Dads, need to ensure they are healthy and energised while trying to conceive and throughout the pregnancy.
Post-natal support for birth mother
There is no doubt that pre-natal vitamins are highly important, but what about after you have the baby? The mother has just gone through a significant physical trauma, she is then expected to “recover” by having minimal sleep and often draining the little nutrients she has left directly through her breastmilk to give to the baby.
This can leave mothers utterly exhausted and depleted which can take years to recover from. It’s often said that “you can just get what you need from your diet” – whoever says that clearly has never looked after a new-born. At the beginning you barely know what day it is, so very few people have the mental capacity or will power to ensure they eat a perfectly balanced diet, despite their best intentions!
Proactively supporting your health can be one of the most beneficial ways to start your parenting journey on the right foot. There are several vitamins that are known to be depleted during childbirth, so there is no need to wait until several months down the track, when you are completely depleted and exhausted, to start supplementation.
Personalised post-natal support vitamins provide evidence-based treatments at a therapeutic dose, with breastfeeding safety confirmed if needed. By educating themselves on the world of personalised vitamins parents can discover ways to boost energy and their immune system while reducing brain fog and muscle fatigue.
Personalised Nutrition for Dads and non-birthing parents
When that bundle of joy arrives there is a huge focus on the mother and the baby…and rightly so, they are the stars of the show! The dads and non-birthing mums play a vital role in supporting the mother and child and are just as susceptible to sleep deprivation and exhaustion.
The reality of modern life is that many parents return to work soon after the birth of their child. Today’s workplace is high paced and demanding, and your workload doesn’t stop to wait for you to catch up on sleep! Your diet may suffer and food shortcuts are taken. This high-pressure environment at work, and at home, can put a lot of new parents under stress and leave them run down and vulnerable to illness.
Personalised nutrition can be designed to focus on the areas that you need to boost the most, typically enhancing energy and the immune system. In the case of non-birthing parents, the dosages can be increased to higher levels if needed, as we don’t need to allow for potential breastfeeding or account for the physical trauma related to birth.
Becoming a parent can be tiring and stressful – but it can also be the most exciting, fun, and rewarding experience of your life! The aim of individualised supplements is to target the areas that cause the most stress, so that they can be reduced as much as possible.
That way you can enjoy their cute little giggle during peek-a-boo, the excitement and wonder of their first steps and those special cuddles before bed…because these are the moments that make being a parent the most amazing job of all!
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