Pregnancy Favorites

So, here I am, halfway through the third trimester of my pregnancy and happily enjoying the remaining few weeks of this journey.  But no matter how euphoric a woman is about carrying her own child, truth be told, not every day of it comes easy.  As I go along this wonderful miraculous experience I've found a few things/products/habits that help make things better for me and I'm gladly sharing them here hoping it could make things better for you or someone you know too.

Since this is my first pregnancy, I've used the internet in gathering as much information as possible about it, from how my body would change to how my little one will be developing on a daily and weekly basis.  Here are my favorite online sources:

https://www.familyeducation.com - For daily baby and mommy updates plus very helpful tips.

http://www.pregmed.org/ - For weekly pregnancy updates with detailed illustrations, list of pregnancy symptoms and list of signs when to contact your doctor to stay on the safe side.

http://www.mom365.com - Another weekly pregnancy updates with videos and helpful tips to help you with the whole process.

Youtube - consumer health digest - a short video of weekly pregnancy updates

I never thought, but I found out that pregnancy can be lonely at times too especially when we're far from our family and best friends.  Pregnancy vlogs have been really helpful and inspiring, they make me feel less lonely and it feels good hearing someone talk about the same things you're experiencing.  Here are my two favorite pregnancy vlog channels:

Aaryn Williams  - I like her honestly and her personality and the products that she share are interesting as well.

Anna Saccone - I like her bubbly personality and I found her pregnancy updates entertaining until she started doing them with her husband, I'm not a fan of her husband's so I end up skipping some parts of her videos.

Despite the overwhelming joy that I feel about my pregnancy, I remember how awkward I felt when I had to start changing the sizes of my clothes (especially my underclothes).  A part of me was astounded and a little bit scared when I had to drastically switch from size S to L but since I was most importantly joyous of the fact that I am carrying our child (at last!) the uncomfortable feeling came and faded just like that.  With God's blessings, the pregnancy has been doing great so far. As the weeks and months pass I tried to continue keeping myself as active as possible until I reached the end of my second trimester when I could hardly walk due to a really bad pelvic pain.  Thankfully, in France all maternity related check-ups, medical exams and medications are 100% covered.  I just gave a call to my OB-GYN and she asked me to drop by her clinic and get a prescription for a maternity lumbar supporting belt and a prescription for ten sessions of kinetic physical therapy.  The lumbar supporting belt worked wonders! The moment the pharmacist put it on me I already felt the relief and it has been helping me whenever I feel the slightest pelvic pain and discomfort due to the baby's increasing weight.  However, it was the therapy which really fixed the problem, the belt is like a "band aid" solution but it's still worth sharing because if you can't go to a therapist immediately, at least you know that there is something that could help you manage the pain.  My doctor prescribed me the Gibaud Lombogib Maternity Lumbar Support Belt.  It's very easy to use, not bulky and gives amazing support.

As our baby gets bigger, so as our belly (of course!) and it's a wonderful feeling but not as comfortable though especially when it's time to hit the sack.  Sleeping can sometimes be challenging and this little thing has been helping me a lot!  It's the Boppy pregnancy wedge.  We were doing grocery shopping when we bumped into this product by chance and oh boy do I thank God for that day! I love how small the wedge is and the material is not somethings that makes your already warm body even feel warmer.  With the island weather that we have here, I couldn't have supported something too warm on my skin.

It is a known fact that pregnancy often comes with stretch marks and we mamas would want to "prevent" them so we could still use that two-piece bikini we put aside for the mean time.  There are a lot of products sprouting like mushrooms bearing a promise that they are the most effective blah blah blah...but none of these products are really proven effective.  I've read many articles stating that stretch marks are actually genetic, so if our mother has them then we're most likely gonna go the same path.  My mother has very minimal stretch marks but I am not that 100% confident I won't have them, though I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  Despite knowing that anti-stretch mark products aren't effective, I still opted to use a couple of them and they are both oils because even if they might not be true to their promise there is nothing wrong with keeping the stretching skin hydrated.  Here are the two items I've been using:

Bio-Oil - I prefer how light it feels on the skin and the smell is pleasant too.

Weleda Stretch Mark massage oil - I like using this one when I'm just at home because the smell is a bit stronger than Bio-Oil and the texture is thicker too.

When I started my child birth classes my midwife showed me how to use an exercise ball to relieve back pain and told me how this could help during labor too so my husband and I decided to buy one and that's without any regret because I've been using it every so often. And who knows, it might be able to help me lose weight after I deliver our little love too! ^_^

There you have it for my favorite pregnancy products! Now let's talk a bit about habits, I've been eating lots of fruits and drinking lots of water.  During the first and second trimester I couldn't stomach any dessert other than fruits, they made me sick but when I reached the third trimester I started eating a few but I'm not really a sugar person so there's no big deal and besides I need to make sure my baby don't get too big.  When it comes to physical activities, I love swimming or merely being in the water, it takes away the weight and makes me feel so relaxed and refreshed and I've been walking short distances too, well, it has become waddling by now, less graceful but hey, I can only do so much with my bulging tummy! lol

Pregnancy, with all it's discomforts, has been a wonderful experience and I'm constantly praying that I can say the same thing up until my baby is out in the world.  The delivery is another story, and I am starting to have a few apprehensions but I trust my body's capacity.  May God bless all of us expectant moms and our baby loves.  Happy new year!!

First Conception After Three Years Of Trying

So, I decided to create this blog on the verge of my frustrations about not conceiving as quickly as the 30 percent of women who conceive within the first cycle of trying, nor part of the 85 percent who get pregnant within 12 months of trying.  It did help me during those rough weeks but the stress slowly subsided as I browsed through self-help materials online on how to deal with TTC (trying to conceive) frustrations and later on it dawned on me that writing down my frustrations actually make me dwell on them rather than help me get through them, so I stopped updating this blog but didn't want to take it down either, in case I'd feel the need to want to write about it again.  Weeks passed by until they became months and months became years and the need to write down my frustrations didn't come to me anymore.  There were still moments that I felt down but as time went by I just somehow got used to the "monthly" disappointments of us still not conceiving our baby.

Then came September 2014, when I had to pay my family a visit back in the Philippines after being away for two years, it was supposed to be a vacation of both my husband and I but we had a short notice that we're gonna have to move to French Polynesia for his job.  So, we weren't together until two months later when I finally joined him in Tahiti.  For some reason, we were thinking that since we've been away from each other for too long it'll result to a beautiful conception on our reunion.  A month later my menses started to get delayed (and I'm very regular) so we were almost sure we finally hit the jackpot...at about 5 days delay we did a home pregnancy test and it turned out negative and then I had my period in the afternoon of that same day, I was so sad I literally wept on my husband's arms.  I guess the delay was just due to my recent travels back then, I mean I was continent hopping so my body got a bit crazy.  We let it pass, he comforted me and after a good cry I felt better and the adventure continued.  Until it came to a point when I actually didn't even think I'll be pregnant this month or next month.  I totally dropped the expectations to a very low point and the only times I got reminded that we've been trying to conceive is seeing someone's pregnancy announcement on social media or better yet, when someone blatantly asked "when is the baby?" (like it's their concern) but I/we even hardly get affected by these kind of questions either.  We were in the phase of just totally enjoying our moments together and the blessings and opportunities that we have been given, we traveled around the beautiful French Polynesian islands, we did our first cruise and we just marveled about the beauty of life and love.  Though, there were a few times when we seriously sat down and talked about perhaps needing to see a fertility specialist, one moment we'd say we're gonna do it, mostly we'd say "we'll do it after this vacation" then after the vacation we'd say nuh..let's continue waiting, one day it's gonna work!  I'm in my early thirties while he's in his late thirties so yeah, though we don't keep thinking about it anymore sometimes the reality of "time" would just hit us but we don't let the stress linger, it won't make time stop, it'll only make us feel bad and pressured..not good at all!

While we were doing well and enjoying our continued "honeymoon stage", last year some really sad things happened.  At the beginning of the second quarter we lost my husband's aunt who was very close to us and at the last quarter we lost my beloved father.  It was devastating and of course when we ended up not conceiving last year it was just normal considering all the stress and losses that we had to deal with but we didn't even think about it, it was only this year that we thought about it and we tried to rationalize things but just on a passing conversation not on a really serious stressful way. 

When we woke up on the 18th of June, my husband was like "today is an anniversary of something, but it's sad, so..never mind" and right away I understood what he meant.  It was on this same day three years ago that we decided "we're up for a baby!" and it still hasn't happened so yeah, it's kind of sad, especially with all the questions and worries around the corner that we don't really wanna bring out and deal with just yet.  By the way this was a party-hard weekend, well, the party mood actually started since the 16th (Thursday), when I did my French language exam -which my husband was sure I passed so it was a call for celebration (thankfully I really did pass! lol) and then on Friday and Saturday we went to a back-to-back reggae concert and it was about the same time my period would come and I was feeling all the premenstrual symptoms (or what I thought to be PMS) so I was like, ok, let's party on (without passing out or anything, just a few glasses of alcohol, with my small body build up I can't support so much alcohol and I know my limits, when I start to feel the spirit of the booze I stop).  Then came Sunday and still no sign of my period but still feeling the PMS symptoms, I was thinking it'll come in the next few days and when it didn't I started panicking...thinking about the glasses of beer and margarita and a few cigarettes...at about 5 days late I private messaged my best friend and my younger brother (a nurse) who are back in the Philippines and they did a good job calming me down.  At 7 days late we bought an HPT kit but my husband wanted us to still wait a couple more days out of fear of getting a false negative and so I tried my best to keep my hands off that kit despite my urge to pee on that stick, I figured he's right and my impulsiveness won't really make things better, if any, it could even cost us another pregnancy kit (which isn't cheap by the way).  At 9 days late, we woke up really early together but he did it for work while I did it for the test, well, I barely slept that night so it wasn't really hard getting up, I was so stressed and anxious but at the same time I was telling myself to be strong if ever we were wrong again though this is really the first time I've been this late.  I did what I had to do and when I dipped the tester into my morning urine the two red lines instantaneously appeared...God I am SO PREGNANT!!  But all those reactions I imagined I would have didn't happen at all, I was just shocked and I was asking myself can I really be happy now? Is this true?  And my husband shared the same feeling, of course we were happy right there and then but looking at each other's eyes we saw a little fear of being disappointed again so, we said we'll hold off to that kind of happiness for now and wait for the doctor's confirmation first.  By the end of that week we went to see an OB-GYN and she did a transvaginal ultrasound and YES, IT'S CONFIRMED! Yayyyyyy!!! We got out of the doctor's office really happy but still wanting to keep it a secret as much as possible until at least after the first trimester.  Now, we're halfway through it and we're continuing to have our fingers crossed.  Well, it's really hard to keep it a secret so we ended up telling our family and very few close friends little by little, perhaps by the end of the first trimester everyone will already have been made aware..haha

It is just so amazing, we were feeling sad on the third anniversary of our TTC adventure not knowing that the work of miracle was already on going, life has already started growing inside of me...thinking about this makes my heart skip a beat..it's moving..could be the pregnancy hormones too!  It turned out I'm one of the 91 percent who get pregnant within 36 cycles (about three years).  It is so hard to contain such joy!  Can't wait til my next ultrasound and until I eventually start showing...

To whoever is reading this, you probably stumbled into this blog because you're in about the same situation.  I hope this gives you hope.  This experience made me so much more sensitive, this opened my eyes to a lot of things.  If we had been blessed with a child almost immediately like a lot of women I know, the experience would have been totally different and perhaps I wouldn't feel this much sympathy to those women and couples who are having trouble conceiving.  You are all included in my prayers.

The Ranting of the Childless Mother

I already had a sign that it'll be a NO again for this month, I had spotting two days ago and it was concluded this morning.  I was awaken by a pounding headache and a cramping lower back and abdomen.  Instead of getting up to take a medicine, clean up and get drowned with my frustration, I went back to sleep.  I didn't want to entertain my frustration immediately.  It was already past lunch time when I finally got off of bed and head on with my day.  I had breakfast at lunch and did some chores yet I was still feeling a little sour.  It's our 8th month trying to conceive so the process is already quite familiar to me but it just does not get any less disappointing.  Before, I would try to ignore the feeling of disappointment and try to pretend that everything's okay when deep inside my heart is actually aching.  Ignoring it didn't help at all, on the contrary it even made things bad because I end up being so irritable and my husband would take it against him since he didn't have any idea what I was going through emotionally.

Luckily, whenever I don't feel so good there are a few people that I can bug: my husband, my younger brother and a few good friends.  Since my husband is at work then I jumped to the next option.  My younger brother and I have always been close and yes, I can talk to him about anything and everything.  I was fortunate he was available today since he's actually been busy lately with his job as a private nurse.  I let out a few sighs of disappointment and just released my frustrations.  One thing I love about talking to him is that most of the time he really knows the best thing to say to make me feel better.  By the time my husband phoned from work I was already feeling a lot better but I still told him how sorry I was that we still didn't make it this month.  He doesn't like it when I say that and then he'd end up saying perhaps the problem is in him which would turn out to be my turn to ask him not to say such things either.  I know that we shouldn't be speculating and I realize now that there are actually quite a number of women or couples who are going through the same situation.

When I went to see my OB-Gyn before even planning to get pregnant she told me that I am very healthy and that it won't be so hard for me to conceive a baby.  I banked on this idea too much which is why I feel so frustrated whenever I get my period.  I never really thought nor imagined the possibility of a long wait and yes, I agree that it's a mistake on my part.  But I can't really blame myself for thinking positive and expecting for positive things.

It's already a little sad when we don't get what we hope and pray for but what makes it even worse are the people around us who unhesitatingly tell us to "just relax and it will happen".  Don't they think that we were relaxed and hopeful and so damn positive in the beginning until it didn't work for months?  The stress and the frustration actually came in when month after month we never get the result that we prayed and worked so hard for.  What makes it more hurtful is that most women who ask you to "just relax" are those who can get pregnant with even just their boyfriend's or husband's toothbrush!  I actually think it's a little insensitive and yes I do hate it when a friend or an acquaintance asks me why we still don't have a baby assuming it's really that easy to have one.  Well, perhaps it was so easy for them but they fail to recognize the fact that not all couples are actually as lucky.  It's not a funny feeling when you seem to notice that everyone else is getting pregnant except you but you just have to deal with it.  This is where prayer comes in too.  When I feel that it's a bit too much, I pray for more patience and yes it helps a lot.

Well, I have maximized "expressing" my frustrations today.  So, to you who is reading this, if we are in the same situation then let's continue to be hopeful, enjoy baby dancing and do as Bon Jovi said "keep the faith".  If you are on the other side of the story, I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

One Hopeful Woman Here

I am a twenty-nine year old healthy woman and a wife to an amazing husband.  In 2012 I left my job as a bank advisor because I had to leave my country to be with my other half.  Now my current focus is taking care of my beloved husband and our home.  We got married in 2011 and in June last year (2013) we have agreed that it's time to try conceiving our first baby but it still hasn't happened yet, and yes, we also wonder why!

So, this blog is dedicated to all the other Eves out there who had been longing so much to become mothers and things just don't happen as quickly as they thought and hoped.  I'm gonna share with you my own adventures.  I am hoping that writing about my frustrations will help me and reading about them will help you.

Baby dust to us all! シ