5 Habits Women Should Avoid During Pregnancy

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle and staying away from bad habits is important for everyone. But when you’re pregnant, it’s not just about your health, it’s also about your baby’s health, and your bad habits can put your baby’s health at risk.

Many women continue to make unhealthy lifestyle choices during pregnancy, despite guidelines that recommend healthy behaviors, according to a 2015 study published in the British Journal of Midwifery.

* Drinking Alcohol

As soon as you find out you’re pregnant, stop drinking any kind of alcoholic beverages.Any amount of alcohol you drink reaches your baby in the womb through your bloodstream and the placenta.Alcohol can affect your baby’s development and growth in the womb as well as your baby’s health at birth.

* Smoking

Smoking is a big “NO” for pregnant women.Nicotine, carbon monoxide and other chemicals in cigarette smoke can affect the development of your baby’s lungs and cause various health complications during birth, and physically and mentally later in their life.

* Eating Junk Food

While you may have weird food cravings during pregnancy, it is important to stick to a healthy diet. The food you eat has a direct influence on your unborn baby’s health.A healthy and well-balanced diet supports normal birth weight, improves fetal brain development, and lowers the risk of many birth defects.

* Consuming Excess Caffeine

As a general rule, consuming 1 to 2 cups of coffee a day is not expected to be a concern for pregnant women. But if you drink a lot of coffee, you need to cut back.Consuming too much caffeine during pregnancy can be harmful for your health as well as your baby’s.Caffeine works as a stimulant and a diuretic. The stimulant effects include increasing your blood pressure and heart rate, both of which are harmful during pregnancy.

* Taking Medicine on Your Own

Be it a headache or a little cold, many people rely on over-the-counter medicines for fast relief. But during pregnancy, use of any medicine should be carefully monitored.Anything you ingest, including medication, can reach the fetus and potentially harm your unborn baby.