Facts: Supplements - Red Raspberry Leaf

Red Raspberry Leaf, the staple supplement for the pregnant cat!

Known and used for many years by cat breeders, and thousands of years (no, not kidding!) by pregnant women. Red Rasberry Leaf can be found as tea (dried leaves, make your own tonic), capsules, pills and fluid extract, my personal favorite.

Red Raspberry Leaf is known to:

1. Help tone and strengthen the pelvic and uterine muscles, promoting strong contractions and thereby a swift delivery.
2. Decrease constipation (which can be a problem in the 3rd trimester)
   
3. Increase amount and quality of milk production.

The three items above are what is general knowledge, but I thought I'd go one step further and talk about what else RRL does, and WHY it works - which is something I have not found on any cat sites :).

Firstly, Red Raspberry Leaf contains a mix of vitamins and minerals in a mix which is perfect for the pregnant animal (and woman). It contains a high concentration of vitamins E and C, as well as Vitamin A and some of the B-Complex. The Red raspberry leaf also contains many essential minerals such as phosphorus, potassium, and an easily assimilated form of calcium, in just the right amounts NOT to upset your queens' delicate calcium/phosphorus balance. All of the vitamins and minerals in RRL is far more easily assimilated by your queen than a chemically created vitamin/mineral-mix would be.

Secondly, RRL contains Fragrine, an alkaloid. This is what helps tone the muscles of the pelvic region including the uterus and thereby allows the uterus to contract more powerfully and effectively during labor.

Thirdly, Red Raspberry Leaves contains a form of Oxytocin. This is interesting as Oxytocin is the very drug many cat breeders have on hand to induce labor. In high concentrations Oxytocin will cause contractions, but in low levels it will PREVENT premature delivery. Oxytocin is also one of the bodys' formost "FeelGood"-hormones and its positive effects are numerous. The list below shows some of the proven effects of Oxytocin on humans. It can be assumed that most if not all of these effects are directly translatable to your queen.

Oxytocin...

...eases pain
...lowers blood pressure
...lower the levels of stress hormones
...improves digestion and the ability to assimilate nutrients
...stimulates growth
...speeds up healing of wounds and strengthens the immune system
...induces calm and tranquility of the mind
...makes us more social and interested in our surroundings
...makes us less fearful
...improves relationships
...increases learning ability

Because of Oxytocins ability to induce contractions, in humans it is sometimes not recommended to take Red Raspberry Leaf in the first trimester. To stay on the safe side, I would recommend the same protocol in a cat. For the queen this does not pose a problem, as it will normally take 3 weeks (the first trimester) before you are sure that she is pregnant and start supplementing.

So, what about dosage? Well, this largely depends on which form you are using. At the Cyberhousehold we use the fluid extract made by Nature's Answer (if you buy an extraxt, PLEASE make sure it is alcohol-free!) which is both organic and holistically balanced.

The pregnant Cyberqueen get's 0,5 ml daily, starting at the beginning of the 4th week. At the beginning of week 7 (2 weeks before delivery) the dose is upped to 0,5 ml twice daily.

Although an age-old remedy (at least as far back as the old Greeks and Romans, Red Raspberry has been used by pregnant women), even modern medical science agrees. Medical studies have shown that red raspberry leaf can be consumed safely during pregnancy and can decrease the length of labor and decrease the number of interventions used such as artificial rupture of membranes (AROM), assisted delivery, and cesarean delivery.¹ Red raspberry leaf also seems to help prevent pregnancies from pre-or post-term gestation (delivering too early or too late).

To sum it up - This is the one supplement that will ALWAYS be a part of a pregnant Cyberqueens' diet. In fact, I'll gobble the tea myself should I ever get pregnant. No doubt about it :)
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¹ Raspberry leaf in pregnancy: its safety and efficacy in labor.
J Midwifery Womens Health. 2001 Mar-Apr;46(2):51-9.
PMID: 11370690 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Facts: Supplements - General

Supplementing a pregnant queens diet is something that should be done with care. Although in the past it might have been advisable to supplement with various vitamins and calcium, among other nutrients, these days the premium commercial cat foods contain a perfect balance of nutrients for your cat. A balance that can easily be upset, no matter how well-meaning you are in your supplementing. Take very good care not to do more harm than good!

Calcium in particular - which seems to be a popular supplement, can easily upset the very delicate phosphorus/calcium balance in your queen. Having supplemented with calcium you could easily end up being the cause of the very eclampsia you tried to prevent.

As long as the queen is gaining weight and looking healthy, and is eating a PREMIUM brand food, no nutritional supplements are necessary - in fact they can be harmful. If you feel strongly that you wish to make a change to your queens diet, if nothing else to feel that you are doing something to help her, the one thing that I can recommend is to switch her over to either a kitten food (still talking premium brands) or to a dedicated Queen - food. To my knowledge only Royal Canin produces a food specifically aimed at the pregnant and lactating queen to date.

So, no supplementing at all? Well yes, there are a few things you can give your queen that will have a very positive effect on such important areas as tonus of the womb (helps the birth process), milk production, general well being and immune system. I'll talk about these supplements in upcoming articles - keep checking back under the label "Supplements".

Fact : Pinking Up

So, you have bred your girl and now you're pacing the floor waiting to find out if she is pregnant or not. The first sign that you will be getting kittens is when the girls nipples go through the "pinking up"-stage.

Counting the first day of mating as day 1, pinking up occurs around day 21, sometimes a few days later. If the pinking up takes 22 or 23 days to occur it can be a sign that the mating on the first day did not "take" and you should probably adjust your expected delivery date forward a day or two as well.

What happens is this: 3 weeks after mating your queens hormone-levels have gotten high enough to start affecting her mammary glands. The first sign is that the nipples themselves start changing color from skin-colored to a rosy pink, thus the term "pinking up".

In the next few days the nipples themselves will also start growing in size. On a maiden queen the nipples are hardly larger than the nipples on a male. Once a girl has had at least one litter of kittens, her nipples will remain larger (though not quite as big as when she actually is pregnant and nursing) and will also never return to the exact shade of her skin that they were before her first litter.

Because of this the process of pinking up is much easier to see on a maiden queen. When you know what to look for you will also see it quite easily on an experienced queen, but without a trained eye it may take a few days extra for you to notice.

By the fourth week you will feel her nipples clearly when you rub her belly.