Posts Tagged ‘pregnant’
Pregnancy weight gain
Posted on: April 7, 2010
Pregnancy weight gain
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that women gain somewhere between 25 and 35 pounds during pregnancy. Of course, this poundage depends on the woman’s starting weight. If she is overweight, then she should gain less and if she is underweight, then she should gain more.
Easy enough. Now, let’s assume that your gal starts her pregnancy at a healthy and sexy weight. What the heck will she look like with thirty more pounds? Don’t worry! It gets evenly distributed throughout her body and doesn’t all go to her ass. Here’s a general breakdown of where the weight goes……
* Baby : 7.5 pounds
* Placenta : 1.5 pounds
* Amniotic fluid : 2 pounds
* Increase in uterus : 2 pounds
* Larger boob size : 2 pounds
* More blood : 4 pounds
* Fluid retention : 4 pounds
* Maternal fat stores : 7 pounds
So, Total Average Gain is : 30 pounds
To help keep the weight gain on track, your partner should aim to gain 3-5 pounds during her first trimester, which averages out to 1-1.5 pounds per month. During her second trimester, she should gain about 0.5 pounds per week, and she should gain an average of 1 pound per week throughout her third trimester. Again, this is just a guideline, so don’t freak out (and don’t let her freak out) if she gains 2 pounds one week and nothing another. For the most part, her body is doing its own thing. Just relax and enjoy the ride.
Trying for a baby? Being healthy before, during and after pregnancy involves so many different aspects of your life. So, hear is another compiled a quick list to help you stay on the healthy side.
1. See your practitioner before becoming pregnant.
2. Start changing your food habits to include a healthy variety of foods.
3. Exercise! Starting now will help you stay in shape during pregnancy, can lower your risk of miscarriage, and has been proven to help reduce labor complications and length.
4. Educate yourself about pregnancy!
5. Eat a new vegetable you’ve never tried.
6. Figure out what to do about chemical birth control, like the birth control pill.
7. Stop smoking. There are many programs to help you.
8. Take a prenatal vitamin. They can be prescribed by your practitioner or you can buy them over the counter. Ensure it contains0.4 mg of folic acid.
9. Ask your partner to join you on your new healthy habit changes.
10. Track your cycles. Learning what you can about your cycles will help determine when you ovulate and when you conceived. These make for more accurate due dates.
11. If you need anew practitioner, interview before you become pregnant.
Ask your friends about pregnancy and parenthood.
12. Avoid chemicals that could possibly harm your baby. You can find these at work, in your home, and just about anywhere, be environmentally sensitive.
13. See your dentist before you get pregnant and brush your teeth daily.
14. Tell any medical professional that you may be pregnant if you are trying to get pregnant. This can prevent exposure to harmful tests and chemicals if you are pregnant and don’t know it yet.
15. Stop changing cat litter.
16. Remember, it can take up to a year to become pregnant. If you have been actively trying for a year or more than six months if you are over 35, see your practitioner.
17. Act pregnant. This includes not drinking alcohol, even while trying to conceive. There is no known safe level during pregnancy and alcohol can cause birth defects.
18. Announce your pregnancy when you are ready.
19. Talk to your parents, what do you want to take from their experiences? How do you want to be different?
20. Rest when you can. Nap!
21. Drink 6 to 8 ounce glasses of water a day.
22. Join a prenatal yoga or exercise class.
23. Keep your prenatal appointments with your midwife or doctor. This will help ensure that if you have any problems that they are caught early and kept to a minimum.
24. Take an early pregnancy class.
25. Remember to add 300 – 500 calories a day while pregnant.
26. Tour your selection of birth facilities before making a choice if you are not having a home birth.
27. Review the signs of premature labor and warnings signs for when to call your practitioner.
28. Keep a food diary to ensure that you are keeping up with your daily requirements.
29. If you are decorating your house or a nursery remember to avoid fumes often associated with paint and wall paper. Perhaps have friends do the heavy work while you help make snacks for them. Keep the windows open!
30. Baby sits a friend’s baby and learns a bit about caring for a newborn.
31. Swimming is great in late pregnancy. It can help relieve a lot of aches and pains and makes you feel weightless.
32. Take abreast feeding class to help prepare you for the realities of breastfeeding.
33. Stretch before bed to help prevent leg cramps.
34. Continue to exercise, even if you have to slow down. This will help you recover more quickly.
35. Write a birth plan. Something to help you clarify what you want or need for your birth experience. Share this with your practitioners and those you have invited to your birth.
36. Have film and cameras ready!
37. Practice relaxation whenever you can. Try for at least once a day.
38. Do pelvic tilts to help with late pregnancy back pain. It will help relieve your pain and even encourage the baby to assume a good birth position.
39. Pack your bags if you are going to a birth center or hospital. Don’t forget your insurance cards, pregnant registration forms, camera, birth plan, etc.
40. Review the signs of labor and warning signs.
41. Take a picture of yourself before the baby comes!
42. Kiss the baby!
Getting Pregnant
Posted on: March 29, 2010
If you’re eager to get pregnant, read on! Find out how to prepare your body for being pregnant, chart your menstrual cycle, read your cervical mucus, and pinpoint ovulation, and learn ways to have sex that boost your chances of conception. Plus, read about pregnancy tests, dealing with fertility problems, and the top ten early pregnancy symptoms.
Top ten signs you might be pregnant Reviewed by the Baby Center Medical Adviser.
A positive home pregnancy test Could you be pregnant? Most likely you won’t notice any symptoms until about the time you’ve missed a period — or a week or two later. If you’re not keeping track of your menstrual cycle or if it varies widely from one month to the next, you may not be sure when to expect your period. But if you start to experience some of the symptoms below — not all women get them all — and you haven’t had a period for a while, you may very well be pregnant. Take a home pregnancy test to find out for sure….
10. Tender, swollen breasts one of the early signs of pregnancy insensitive, sore breasts caused by increasing levels of hormones. The soreness may feel like an exaggerated version of how your breasts feel before your period. Your discomfort should diminish significantly after the first trimester, as your body adjusts to the hormonal changes.
9. Fatigue Feeling tired all of a sudden? No, make that exhausted. No one knows for sure what causes early pregnancy fatigue, but it’s possible that rapidly increasing levels of the hormone progesterone are contributing to your sleepiness. You should start to feel more energetic once you hit your second trimester, although fatigue usually returns late in pregnancy when you’re carrying around a lot more weight and some of the common discomforts of pregnancy make it more difficult to get a good night’s sleep.
8. Implantation bleeding Some women have a small amount of vaginal bleeding around 11 or 12 days after conception (close to the time you might notice a missed period). The bleeding may be caused by the fertilized egg burrowing into the blood-rich lining of your uterus — a process that starts just six days after fertilization — but no one knows for sure. The bleeding is very light (appearing as red spotting or pink or reddish-brown staining) and lasts only a day or two. (Let your practitioner know if you notice any bleeding or spotting, particularly if it’s accompanied by pain, since this can be a sign of anectopicpregnancy.)
7. Nausea or vomiting If you’re like most women, morning sickness won’t hit until about a month after conception. (A lucky few escape it altogether.) But some women do start to feel queasy a bit earlier. And not just in the morning, either — pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting can be a problem morning, noon, or night. About half of women with nausea feel complete relief by the beginning of the second trimester. For most others it takes another month or so for the queasiness to ease up.
6. Increased sensitivity to odors If you’re newly pregnant, it’s not uncommon to feel repelled by the smell of a bologna sandwich or cup of coffee and for certain aromas to trigger your gag reflex. Though no one knows for sure, this may be a side effect of rapidly increasing amounts of estrogen in your system. You may also find that certain foods you used to enjoy are suddenly completely repulsive to you.
5. Abdominal bloating Hormonal changes in early pregnancy may leave you feeling bloated, similar to the feeling some women have just before their period arrives. That’s why your clothes may feel snugger than usual at the waistline, even early on when your uterus is still quite small.
4. Frequent urination shortly after you become pregnant, you may find yourself hurrying to the bathroom all the time. Why? Mostly because during pregnancy the amount of blood and other fluids in your body increases, which leads to extra fluid being processed by your kidneys and ending up in your bladder. This symptom may start as early as six weeks into your first trimester and continue or worsen as your pregnancy progresses and your growing baby exerts more pressure on your bladder.
3. A missed period If you’re usually pretty regular and your period doesn’t arrive on time, you’ll probably take a pregnancy test long before you notice any of the above symptoms. But if you’re not regular or you’re not keeping track of your cycle, nausea and breast tenderness and extra trips to the bathroom may signal pregnancy before you realize you didn’t get your period.
2. Your basal body temperature stays high If you’ve been charting your basal body temperature and you see that your temperature has stayed elevated for 18 days in a row, you’re probably pregnant. And finally….
1. The proof: A positive home pregnancy testing spite of what you might read on the box, many home pregnancy tests are not sensitive enough to detect most pregnancies until about a week after a missed period. So if you decide to take one earlier than that and get a negative result, try again in a few days. Once you’ve gotten a positive result, make an appointment with your practitioner.
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