I’m not going to lie, when I was asked if I would review Eat Yourself Pregnant by Zita West I was a little hesitant, because to be honest I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to broadcast on my blog that we are trying to get pregnant, but then I thought why not because it’s not exactly a secret, even if I don’t talk about it that much. The reality is that my husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for the last 3 years and are dealing with Secondary Infertility. I’m not going to get into all of the specifics with you but it’s a long, emotional and very difficult journey that we never saw coming and so I will take any advice I can (within reason!), so considering that I love food, cooking and cookbooks and I am trying to get pregnant I decided why not?!
Zita West is
a fertility expert and midwife based in the UK. During her career she has also
worked as a nutritional advisor and then as an acupuncturist so she is more
than qualified to be writing this book! The recipes however come courtesy of
Christine Bailey an award-winning nutritionist, food and health consultant,
chef and cookery teacher.
The 160
paged paperback is packed with information about getting your body ready for
pregnancy as well as 65 healthy recipes to ensure you get all of the vital
nutrients required for conception in your diet. There are questions to help you
assess your overall health such as ‘How healthy is your digestion?’ ‘How toxic
are you?’ and ‘How stable is your blood sugar?’ and a recommended fertility
cleanse if you think you need it. As it turned out everything seemed good for
us so I skipped the fertility cleanse and opted to pick and choose my own
recipes from the book (the fertility detox is just a detailed meal plan with
all recipes taken from the book).
The recipes
are divided into chapters including ‘Boosters & Breakfasts’, ‘Light Meals’
and ‘Main Meals’ and the majority are accompanied by beautiful photographs.
They literally all sounded so good so I really had a hard time narrowing down
which ones to test and in the end have so far managed to test 6 recipes (with
more made outside of the testing and more to come!). Since I did test so many
I’m keeping the information about the recipes shorter so that I don’t have a
novel on my hands!
