When you are pregnant with multiples, your whole pregnancy game plan changes.  You have a whole new set of rules that you need to follow to make it through your pregnancy.  What you do or don’t do during your pregnancy can affect how for you make it before the babies are born.  I have included in the article some things that you can do to help you have a long healthy pregnancy.

First and foremost, rest is important.  The more you take it easy the better.  Your doctor should give you guidelines for resting, but as a whole you need to sit or lie down 1-2 times per day for about 15 minutes starting at 23-25 weeks for twins and triplets and around 18 weeks for quadruplets.  If your doctor suggested resting earlier or bed rest, follow his suggestion.

This is not always an easy suggestion to follow.  If you have other children at home, they demand attention.  Find an educational DVD or TV show and lie down with them while they watch it.  Have them lie next to you and read a book or color.  Children need down time too so why not get the rest you need while they are relaxing too?  If you have a helpful neighbor or friend or family member that lives close to you, see if they would be able to come over for 15-30 minutes every now and then so you can rest.  You need to find someway to fit this rest into your schedule.

Cut out any exercise programs or excessive activity.  If you are an avid jogger, you need to learn to like to stroll during your pregnancy.  Jazzercise or spin class is just not in the cards when you are expecting multiples.  It doesn’t mean you can’t get any exercise during your pregnancy, you just need to find a way to do it that will not but too much exertion on your body, such as stretches or leg lifts while you are sitting down.

Drink plenty of water during your pregnancy.  You should drink at leas 80 ounces of water per day.  I found the easiest way for me to keep track of water intake was to refill a 24 ounce water bottle 4 times everyday.  Research shows that not having enough water intake can contribute to preterm labor for women who are only pregnant with one child and the risk increases as the number of children increase.

Get proper food intake.  When you are pregnant with multiples, you need to increase your caloric intake and also increase the amount of nutrients and vitamins that your body receives.  The more healthy you eat and the more food intake you get the better because you can ensure your babies are getting the calories and nutrition they need to grow and develop properly.

Go to all your doctor’s appointments.  When you are pregnant with multiples, you will be required to go to more doctor’s visits then a mom pregnant with just one child.  These extra visits are crucial to make sure that your pregnancy is progressing properly and you and your babies are healthy.  Your doctor will do more ultrasounds, blood work and tests to ensure that everything is going the way it should.  If it isn’t, it will hopefully be detected earlier with more frequent visits.  If you don’t attend all your scheduled visits, your doctor might miss something.

By following these suggestions and anything your doctor recommends or orders, you will hopefully have a long, healthy pregnancy. If you have any questions or concerns or something just doesn’t seem right, do not hesitate to contact your OB/GYN.  Sometimes a mother’s instinct will beat out any test or exam a doctor can give.  After all, you know your body and your babies’ activity better than anyone else.  If something seems wrong do not waste any time acting on you feeling.  A little prevention and caution might be all you need to get a few more weeks out of your pregnancy before your babies come out to meet you and the world.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 11th, 2006 at 5:11 am and is filed under Multiples. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.