Kim Saam, Vitamin Angels Communications Manager & Executive Assistant, shares a few thoughts as she prepares for her new baby:

One day soon there’s going to be a new man in my life. Though I’ve been waiting around for 9 months for the big day to arrive, it’s nonetheless really hard to wrap my head around the idea that soon there will be a completely new little person in the world and he’ll be calling me ‘mom.’

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to share my first pregnancy with the Vitamin Angels team (and our extended family), which has been a truly amazing experience. I’m so grateful to get to spend my days working to help mothers and children in need, and going through this process myself has only increased my level of gratitude and appreciation for being able to do something so meaningful every day. Not to mention it’s been awesome to share in the sheer excitement and enthusiasm of the VA team throughout the whole process.

Working at VA I’m privy to a lot of information about the importance of health and nutrition during pregnancy after birth and through those first few formative years. This is great, but at least for me, also gave me plenty of opportunity to worry that I wasn’t doing it well enough. I was taking my prenatal vitamins (of course!), but I wanted to be as informed as possible, and read a bunch of books trying to make sure I did everything ‘right.’ Looking at the lists of foods I was meant to consume everyday was overwhelming. How was it was remotely possible to eat:

6-11 servings of whole grains, 4 servings of protein, 3 servings of green leafy vegetables, 2 servings of other fruits & veggies, 2 servings of vitamin C foods, 4 servings of calcium foods, iron rich foods, and 4 servings of high-fat foods – every day?! Not to mention that being a vegetarian came with special requirements for 5 servings of complex proteins, one serving of which, for example, might be: 1 cup of beans + 1 1/3 cups of rice… and I was supposed to eat 5 a day!? (These recommendations are actually out of a well-known book!)

Wouldn’t all of those servings combined equal something like 5,000 calories? And wasn’t gaining excess weight also a big no-no? Not to mention I had decided to inform myself of all of the nutritional do’s and don’ts during my first trimester when a queasy stomach made wanting to eat at all a challenge. The whole thing was laughable. Yet I will admit I did actually have a small panic attack or two worrying that I was going to let my baby down and mess up his health forever. After all, nutritional intake from conception to age 2 can irreversibly affect a child’s health… for their whole life.

My personal nutritional drama was starkly juxtaposed to the images and stories I encountered at work each day. Stories of moms who couldn’t make ends meet or who couldn’t get the nutrition they needed for themselves or their children because they couldn’t afford it. Severe rains washed out their crops, farming was too dangerous due to unexploded bombs littering their land, droughts, and on and on. It was hard to think of these women who wanted the same healthy beginnings for their children without the means to provide it. Meanwhile I was sitting at home feeling guilty that I should have eaten a whole grain bagel instead of that blueberry muffin. Or that I felt too nauseous to eat my 5 servings of veggies that day and could only manage to get down some cottage cheese and crackers.

I remember hitting about 25 weeks (full term is 40 weeks) and my little week-by-week chart telling me that my baby was 1.5-2lbs and realizing that this was the size that many of the babies that we are reaching are when they are born. I went back and looked at the pictures of Howard’s trip to Kenya and the tiny babies in the NICU. And looking at little baby Jenny in Haiti who was only the size of Howard’s hand, and feeling just crushed. The world was so unfair. And yet the stories of strength and perseverance of these mothers and children were amazing. Looking at their faces you could see the determination to make the most of their circumstances and succeed.

I already love my job, and motivation to go everyday has never been a problem. But going through this process has made me all the more enthusiastic to do my best to help those moms who are so strong but don’t have access to the nutrition they need. The least I can do is work to get them a bottle of vitamins, which as we’ve seen time and again with moms like Asha in India, can make a world of difference. Seeing the gratitude on the faces of moms like Esperanza in Guatemala, saying thank you for caring and for something as simple as a bottle of vitamins speaks volumes. Seems like the least I could do.

I’m off to share some special time with my new little guy, but I look forward to coming back to the Vitamin Angels team refreshed and ready to keep helping those moms and babies get a healthy start.