If you are not yourself pregnant, be sure to offer this advice to anyone you see who is. Pregnant women love receiving advice.

1. Consume plenty of calcium (absolutely necessary for the baby), but not too much (can cause the baby’s cranium to fuse prematurely), but avoid dairy products (have been linked to allergies in the baby), but in lieu of taking medication for your heartburn (you never know what effect medication might have), just drink milk. It’s much harder to absorb calcium from non-dairy sources, so study the lists of vegetables carefully to make sure you still might get enough every day. The minimum recommended amount of calcium per day is 1800 mg. The maximum recommended amount of calcium per day is… 1800 mg.

2. Take large prenatal vitamins. Take them twice a day, but actually, take them more often than that since they contain more calcium at one shot than your body can absorb. They contain 1200 mg of calcium in the daily total, so be careful not to get more than another 600 mg from the food you are eating, or be sure to get a minimum of another 600 mg from the food you are eating.

3. Get enough iron. Most pregnant women are anemic. Take your prenatal vitamin, plus an iron supplement if it is prescribed, and plenty of iron-rich foods. But too much iron is dangerous, so be sure you don’t get too much. Actually, most vitamins are dangerous if you have too much of them, especially to babies. You can’t eat liver, for example, since although it contains a lot of iron, it also contains too much vitamin A, which can cause birth defects.

4. Be sure you are getting enough Omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential to brain development. You had better take these as a supplement unless you are eating salmon every day. However, some fish oil supplements have too much vitamin A (see #3).

5. Every day, eat 4 servings of protein, 4 servings of calcium (but no dairy unless as a heartburn treatment, see #1), 2 servings of dark greens, 1 serving of other vegetables, 3 servings of grains (whole grains only), 1 serving of citrus, and 1 serving of other fruit, but remember that you’re not really “eating for two” and if you gain too much weight you won’t lose it after the baby is born.

6. Not gaining enough weight in pregnancy is cause for alarm. You’d better see your doctor.

7. Eat your sources of iron at the same time as your sources of vitamin C – the vitamin C helps the iron absorb. Do not eat your sources of calcium at the same time as your dark green vegetables, animal protein sources (meat, eggs, or dairy), or grain, however, since they can interfere with the absorption of calcium. Caffeine and carbonated beverages also interfere with calcium absorption, but you shouldn’t have any anyway. If you are trying to consume dairy or green vegetables for calcium, you are apparently screwed.

8. If you do drink milk (#1), drink low-fat only (#5).

9. If you are trying to get your vitamin C from juice instead of from whole, fresh fruit, dilute it. For some reason. Something to do with too many calories (see #5).

10. Drink 1 quart of uterus-toning pregnancy tea every day. It is not sufficient to create an infusion by steeping it in boiling water for 15-20 minutes as recommended by all other herbal medicine books. Steep it overnight.

11. Drink 2 quarts of water per day. This is in addition to your milk (for heartburn only), diluted fruit juice, and quart of pregnancy tea. The water content of those does not count. For some reason.

12. If you feel like you have to pee a lot, try to train yourself to hold it and tolerate it better, because it will only get worse. Or, it might be a sign of a bladder infection. You had better go to the doctor and have it checked out.

13. No safe level of alcohol has been established, so, if you eat anything that was cooked with alcohol, since 100% of it doesn’t cook out, you are running the risk of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, even though in actual studies of FAS, it’s been found only to occur when the mother is an alcoholic.

14. Don’t eat soft cheeses, due to the risk of listeria, which can be fatal to the baby. Even though there is no risk of listeria in cheese made with pasteurized milk, as American-made cheeses often are, everyone knows you definitely shouldn’t have any soft cheeses. In fact, you shouldn’t have hard cheese either (see #1).

15. If you don’t follow these instructions to the letter, you are an irresponsible person, and anything that goes wrong in your labor or the entire life of your unborn child is your fault.