Nutrition for Pregnancy: 28 weeks

At 28 weeks your baby is a little under 15″ long and weighs over 2 pounds.  A very exciting event is happening this week – your baby’s brain is changing from a smooth surface to the folded and wrinkled surface that we all think of when we picture a human brain.  Brain folds are a highly evolved trait, shared only by humans, dolphins, monkeys, cats, and dogs.  Make sure your baby knows this so that when you take him to the zoo he can walk around and tell all the animals without brain folds that he’s better than them.  Brain folds are necessary because there would be no other way to fit all of those neurons in a human skull without increasing the surface area by folding unless your baby just develops a huge alien-type skull (which, for the sake of childbirth, we all pray he doesn’t).

To help assist the massive growth taking place in your baby’s brain this week, eat lots of healthy fats.  Basically any fat eaten in the unaltered state that nature made it is going to be a healthy fat, but oils (fat that has been pressed from food) are great too as long as they are not overly processed or hydrogenated.  Get a variety of healthy fats by eating plenty of grassfed meat and dairy, poultry, seafood, avocado, coconut, palm oil (non-hydrogenated of course), olives, olive oil, cold-pressed sunflower or flax oil, raw nuts, and raw seeds.