At the beginning of the year I went to see a Chinese acupuncturist called Bill. Bill's philosophy on conception was simple - you gotta get the oven hot enough. Traditional Chinese Medicine has a term known as Cold Uterus, and Bill explained it to me like this - preparing our uterus for growing a baby is like getting an oven ready to make bread. If the oven isn't hot enough and you put the dough in it won't rise. Dough needs the oven to be pre-heated so that it can start to cook immediately. Apparently that's what babies like too.
If you're prone to a cold uterus (and there's plenty of ways you can tell) one way you can combat it is by eating cooked foods. Bill explained the logic behind this. TCM is all focused around Chi, or energy in our body and if we consume raw foods it causes our digestive system to use more energy to digest the food. By eating cooked foods we can take the pressure off our digestive system and allow the Chi to flow down into our uterus, keeping it nice and warm. Naturally, putting warm, cooked foods into your body is going to keep your body temperature up which helps the uterus too.
Bill had a handful of foods that he suggested avoiding while trying to conceive and during pregnancy. Pineapple's on the top of the list as it does a great job at cooling our body down - perfect if you're overdue and baby doesn't want to come out!
Ginger was high on the list of great things to warm the system which also doubles as a stomach calmer for nausea during pregnancy.
So when Mum told me I needed to keep my kidney's warm as a kid she was onto something! All those years of tucking my singlet in might finally start to pay off.
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