Shanta Islam, a 19-year-old, is going to be a mother within one year of her marriage.
But the seven-month pregnant, who hails from Brahmmansakhua village in Chandpur Sadar upazila, has no routine on diet and no knowledge about nutrition.
A new life is growing inside Shanta, but she does not know how to groom it befitting with the earth.
Shanta is not alone, many expecting mothers like her do not aware of their proper food and nutrition.
While talking to this reporter, Chief Dietician of Azgar Ali Hospital at Gendaria in old Dhaka Selina Begum said it is undeniable that a mother has to go through endless miseries to see her child to the light of the earth. After giving birth to a child, the mother’s miseries does not end, rather it increases.
“We know that after birth, a child needs proper care. But care and grow up of a healthy baby depend on proper care and nutrition of the mother,” she said.
Selina said after giving birth to a child, adequate care is a must for every mother. All give their most of the attention to the child at that time, forgetting her mother.
But at this time, the new mother needs additional care and nutritious foods to overcome the physical weakness due to giving birth to a child, she said.
Besides, the newborn baby remains dependent on the breast milk of his/her mother and his/her physical nutrition also depends on the breast milk.
A new mother has to take more food than other women, even than a pregnant mother. She needs additional food to overcome her physical loss and feed breast milk to her child.
Than the normal food, she needs 26 grammes of more protein with additional 750 calories of food and for this she will have to take more proteins like fish, meat, milk and pulses. Apart from this, she will have to eat more boiled food.
The importance of carbohydrates is endless to increase work power and regain the lost physical strength of the new mother. There are huge carbohydrates in rice, wheat, potato and sugar which play a significant role in growth of the mother and her child.
All kinds of pulses, beans, small fishes, dried fishes and egg have huge proteins which help meeting decay of the body of the mother and growing up the body of the baby.
Foods with high fibre are not digested easily and new mothers often suffer from constipation problem. So they should consume foods with more fibre. There are huge fibres in arum spinach, ladies finger, cabbage, cauliflower, turnip, beans, brinjal, cowpea, spearmint, spinach, gourd spinach and pumpkin spinach and reddish. Besides, they can drink cumin water as it helps increase lectin and digest food.
Any type of green vegetables is beneficial for the new mother as there are huge quantities of vitamins in the vegetables. Spinach and Arum spinach are one of the vegetables which have huge amount of vitamins like Vitamin A and folic acid. These create new blood cells. Eating of spinach is necessary for those mothers who had bleeding during childbirth.
