Living through an hour without running to the bathroom and a few other pleasures you will have to do without until after pregnancy. You should consume no more than one cup of coffee or caffeinated soda a day and if you can skip that one, do so. You should avoid drinking alcohol entirely because higher rates of miscarriage, mental retardation, and low birth weights have all been blamed on alcohol consumption. Skip the artificial sweeteners, too, just to stay on the safe side. You should also plan to avoid all potentially contaminated foods.
Contamination can occur naturally or come from pollution.
Lead contamination can be avoided by storing acidic foods in glass or plastic instead of crystal or ceramic. Test the lead content of your tap water if you live in an older home. Large fish can be contaminated with mercury, so avoid swordfish and shark and eat no more than one half pound of tuna a week. Fresh fish can be contaminated with pesticides and PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, so avoid wild freshwater carp, catfish, lake trout, whitefish, bluefish, mackerel, and striped bass, and make sure to stick to low fat fish and trim the fat, since PCBs accumulate in fat. You can avoid bacterial contamination by skipping soft cheeses and skipping anything uncooked and unboiled while in a foreign country.