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Part I -- Pregnancy
* The sense of amazement and disbelief
Yes, we all know about the birds and the bees, we all took biology classes and saw enough documentaries on the Discovery Channel to know how it could "technically" happen. But no matter how much you know about the machanics of things and whether the pregnancy is fitting perfectly in your schedule and plans, when it does happen, you will still experience an overwhelming sense of amazement and disbelief, and asking yourself, "how did it happen?" Maybe it's like what my accountant said, "daddy took a trip and fell on mummy". I remember the day I found out about the pregnancy, I had this feeling for a couple of weeks that I should test, but just couldn't find the guts to do so. When I did, actually at work, in the bathroom, how very romatic, I was in shock. I laughed and cried all at the same time, and just stood there staring at the second line on the pregnancy test in totaly disbelief. All of a sudden the world just changed and priorities rearranged themselves. I had an uni exam that night, and as usual, I hadn't studied. After I got the pregnancy test results, I actually just couldn't be bothered to study (lucky I did good enough during the semester to still get through the subject with a Credit even though I only completed half of the exam paper).
* Your body is NEVER the same again
It's just one of those things, nature allows your body to "create", nurture and grow a human being from a single cell to over 6,000 billion cells in a short 10 months, something has to give. Most likely it is your body that is doing most of the giving. It doesn't matter how little weight you put on, how fit you keep yourself throughout the pregnancy or if you gave birth the 'old fashion way" or c-section, your body will NOT be the same again after the pregnancy and birth. It may not be all bad. You just may find yourself needing to buy new clothes even when you've gotten rid off all the pregnancy weight.
* You have NO control
For a control freak like me, this is one of the hardest thing to come to terms with about the pregnancy. From very early on in the pregnancy, you just have to learn, you have NO control.
- You have NO control over your bodily functions (when you pee, how often you pee, when you sleep, how much you sleep, when or where you may throw up etc.),
- you have NO control over what you eat and drink (what you used to love to eat may all of sudden become disgusting to you and things you never ate before may all of sudden become very appealing),
- you have NO control over your mental faculties (you will have temporary memories losses, lapses of time, and simply spend hours perhaps staring out the window and not knowing you've been doing it)
- you have NO control over how much weight you'd put on (you can eat healthy, but as you have no control over what you eat or drink this gets a bit difficult. And you should NEVER try to go on a diet while pregnant as it is harmful to the fetus)
* On sleeping
- You will sleep A LOT during the first trimester as you will be constantly tired and drowsy. Sleep as much as you can while you can.
- You won't get much sleep during the last trimester because your tummy's gotten so big you can't get comfortable, and your baby kicks and moves a lot as soon as you do get comfortable and drift off.
- Get lots of pillows of different sizes and shapes. Mix and match till you are comfortable. I was surrounded by 6 pillows of various sizes and shape when I was pregnant. I love the smalle wedge (bought at Kmart for 9 dollars), and the vshape pillow (also at Kmart for about 20 dollars).
- Invest in a good comfortable rocking chair with high back, arm rests and foot stool. You may find towards the end of your pregnancy, you could only sleep if you are sitting in your rocking chair.
* On maternity clothes
Maternity clothes are expensive, so here are some tips to minimise the need for them
- buy a belly belt. It's pretty much a wide cotton belt that you can put over the top of your normal pants/jeans/skirts and holds them up without you having to button/zip up the pants. An example of this is the BellaBand (http://www.ingridandisabel.com/bellaband.html). I actually bought mine from Target for 15 dollars each. It'd help you get more wears out of your maternity clothes (if you bought any) after the birth too.
- If you must buy maternity clothes, buy dresses. Buying pants means you are likely to have to buy a few different sizes. buying dresses means you can wear it for the entire pregnancy.
* On the ever expanding busts
Not sure if this is a blessing or curse of pregnancy, but your boobs will expand.
- They will be sore, very sore, especially at the beginning of the pregnancy
- Get good comfortable bras WITHOUGH underwires.
- Until the last trimester, your good comfortable sports bras would work just as well as a maternity bra
- Best to get your maternity bras fitted during the last few weeks of the pregnancy, so you don't have to get new ones when your milk comes in
- put whatever stretchmark creams you are using on your boobs as well, you just may get stretchmarks there too
* The much dreaded stretchmarks
Well, the brutal truth is, unless you are the 10% of all female population that is genetically immuned to stretchmarks, AND you are young (I am saying under 20/25?) AND you have exceptionally good skin to begin with, you WILL get stretchmarks. Maybe not till the last few weeks, maybe not very many of them, but you WILL get them. If you are unsure of your genes on stretchmarks, ask your mother, or a sister that has given birth. If they had them, most likely you WILL get them. I didn't get any till the week 35! /sighs
So, now the doom and gloom is out of the way, does that mean you won't use any creams and potions? Heck no. You still use them, even if it's just for the placebo effect or to help you sleep a bit better at night because it reduces the itchness of your tummy. As to which ones to use, it's totally up to you.
I have been told by Been There Done That mothers to wear mine proud as badges of honour to having carried a child from single cell to full term. It's a lot easier said than done. You will get depressed over the ruining of your pre-pregnancy body. But in the end, you get a healthy baby, it's not THAT bad a deal really.
* Thump-Thump (the controversy)
I unashamedly admit that I used "The BabyPlus Education System" throughout the pregnancy. See:http://www.babyplus.com/ It's a plastic box that you wear on your belly, which has 16 different "lessons" you play to your baby for 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night from 18 weeks to full term. The lessons are rythmic beats, starting simple and slow, to quite fast and complex toward the end. We call it the Thump-thump as it does make rather loud thumping sounds. I even wore it on the train a few times to work, it's funny to see people looking around to trying to figure out where the thumping is coming from.
So, is it worth my time and did it help the baby?
During the pregnancy, baby reacts to the thumping quite consistently. She will move around more when thump-thump was on, sometimes even tapping with the beats. It's a good excuse for me to spend some quiet quality time with my belly/baby. Some people read to their belly, some people play music, I guess I just chose to use thump-thump. Baby had a very predictable schedule while in my belly of wake and sleeping.
Kaitlyn was born at 38.5 weeks (full term is 40 weeks). At birth, Kaitlyn was alert, with eyes wide open and a very loud cry that didn't sound like a new born cry (you know the ones that sounds like a injured kitten meowing). She scored 9/10 and 9/10 for her APGAR (score based on 1 minute and 5 minutes after birth, on skin colour, Heartrate, reflex, muscle tone and breathing). She was alert when she was awake. She nursed like a champ the first time we put her to breast. Personally I believe if not for the tongue-tie, we would've had a much easier time with breastfeeding from the start.
Developmentally (keep in mind I am biased as I am her mother), she was socially smiling from week 3, able to hold her head up from about week 6, started to grab/reach for things around week 9, held her own bottle at feeding at week 10. I believe she's at least a bit ahead of the normal developmental curve, and I can only hope this trend continues.
So, how much of it do i contribute to using thump-thump? I don't know exactly. But I know enough that I will use it for my second baby if I have one. I bought my BabyPlus from eBay for 1/3 the original price. Would I buy it at full price? I will tell you when Kaitlyn's a couple of years old :D
That's all I can think of right now. Stay tuned for Part II -- Birth, coming soon to the LiveBlog near you.
