Pregnancy Tips

Bringing a new baby into your home is always a big deal and a big adjustment for everybody involved. Whether it is your first baby or your 5th, this tiny little being is wholly dependent on you, so naturally changes do take place. Here are some tips for making the transition as smooth as possible.

Other than congratulatory notes from your friends and family, you’ve also probably been to the doctor a lot lately—emerging with a list of dos and don’ts during your term. Usually, these reminders have a lot to do with your diet and physical activities, but it also heavily involves the products that you’re not allowed to use on the skin. Some ingredients may cause harm to you or your unborn child when applied, and as an expecting mom, it’s never wrong to be too careful! Expecting moms should take care of their skin, too. It’s time to review all the products you’ve been using and carefully read their ingredients label. Here’s a list of what you should avoid and why.

We all know (or can at least imagine) the toll that being pregnant takes on a woman’s body – you can be affected quite literally from head to toe. This is especially true during the last trimester, when the list of symptoms and issues just keeps on growing. Read on to find out how to help one pesky symptom.

Depending on who you ask, it can be a blessing or a curse to live far from family when you have a baby. I spent an entire post outlining the pros and cons of having a baby when you live far from family. However, it may be the situation you find yourself in. Here are tips for labor, delivery and postpartum when you live far from your family.

Maybe you love where you grew up and couldn’t imagine living far from the place you have always called home. Maybe you are on the other end and spent high school counting down the years until you could escape to somewhere more exciting. Either way, as a responsible adult you are now considering having kids and are wondering if you are better off raising your children near family or farther away.

When you are pregnant, comfort is key. However, flying and comfort don’t often belong in the same sentence. If you find yourself flying while pregnant, make sure to avoid these 5 mistakes that I learned about the hard way.

I see questions regarding vaccinations during pregnancy all the time. I’m also a pharmacist trained to provide all standard immunizations. From both my role as a pharmacist and as a mom, I know that doctors recommend vaccinations but often provide very little information. There is also a lot of misinformation floating around about the safety of vaccinations.

So, this pregnancy has been 180% different from my first! Let me explain… My first was, for the most part, perfect. No food aversions, no serious mood issues, nothing crazy. I could tell my first baby had a schedule after a bit of time. She would be up and about by 10 a.m., and a few other active times during the day. She would move around of course, but not enough to stop me in my tracks or anything like that. I worked at my job up until a month before her due date, and everything went well during delivery. See? Surely the second one will be just as easy. Right? Not exactly! One year and seven months later, I was pregnant with my second child. Now, as far as the secrets go…

It may be for work or to visit family or to take a pre-baby vacation. Whatever the reason, you are likely to find yourself on an airplane at some point while pregnant. Before you fly, keep reading to grab 9 tips for flying when pregnant.

Breast pumps – do you need one, how do you decide which one, do you have to pay for it yourself? These are all questions that soon-to-be-moms will be asking at some point. Looking back, I made a lot of mistakes selecting a breast pump. But hindsight is 20/20, and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes. Therefore, read on for my complete guide to selecting the perfect breast pump for you.

Coming home with a baby is like waking up in an alternate reality. You are in the same place, but everything has changed. You will adjust and learn to love this life, but it’s going to take some figuring out, and to add to all the new you have the physical scars to show for growing and giving birth to a tiny human. Taking care of you is important but it can take a backseat to taking care of your new tiny human. Therefore, it’s important to make sure you are prepared with everything you need to take care of you when you come home from the hospital. The following list covers what to have on hand at home before you head to the hospital.

When you are getting ready for a baby there are a bunch of different stores to register at and they will provide you with a helpful checklist of everything you should register for. Which store to pick is beyond the scope of this article. However, my husband and I wanted a store we could actually go to because we had a very limited knowledge of baby stuff, so the thought of bumbling through setting up a registry online seemed way too difficult. When we went to register, we were handed a list of everything we should register for. The list plus both of us having no idea what we really needed resulted in a confusing 4 hours of selecting a bunch of items with little reason behind out selections. Some things we ended up with are great, and some are pointless. What follows is my review of what items are worth having and which are a waste. If you want to skip my narrative, you can get the checklist here. Well-wishers want to gift you with the items you want for your new baby. They rely on your registry to see what you like and want. Therefore, when you build your registry decide what you really want. I also found it helpful to use my registry as a shopping list, so after my showers I could remember everything else I needed to get. Below is a list of items with my thoughts on each. There is also a PDF checklist here without all the added details.

Let me guess – you have reached the point where it’s becoming a reality that your baby is going to have to come out eventually, you don’t want to forget anything you might need for the hospital, pregnancy brain has taken over, and you are the one that needs to make sure everything is packed and ready to go to the hospital. I’ve been there. I’m the person who would much rather over pack than under pack. I obsessively searched the internet for hospital packing lists during my third trimester and none of them seemed to cover everything. In the end I took a lot of stuff but used almost all of it. Below I’ll go through everything that went on my packing list and why I recommend taking it. There is also a downloadable PDF packing list that you can print to check off items.