Leg cramps.

Until you have experienced a pregnancy caused leg cramp then you have not experienced a leg cramp I say. Pregnancy leg cramps are a whole new experience and boy do they hurt. It feels like your whole muscle is being ripped in half. Worst still it always felt like the cramp would never end. I always thought I would just have to learn to live with the agonising pain of a muscle being torn in two. There was nothing to do but cry and moan until thankfully it did eventually subside. The next morning I would wake and my muscle would be really sore, as though I'd done some heavy exercise the night before.

Happily I found that taking Magnesium supplements helped me. While I still got the leg cramps they occured less frequently and with less force.

For any subsequent pregnancies I plan on taking Magnesium from the start, in the hope that it may prevent the leg cramps altogether.

Recommended pregnancy books.

Before trying for a baby I decided to get a book about pregnancy to find out what I was actually getting myself in for.

I bought Birth: Conceiving, Nurturing and Giving Birth to your Baby by Catherine Price and Sandra Robinson and found it to be a gem. It is written by two Australian mid-wives, so it has relevant Australian information. It is packed full of knowledge on conception, pregnancy, birth and newborns. There are also pros and cons on topics, which aide in decision making. I constantly devoured this book during pregnancy.

Another book I recommend is Up the Duff by Kaz Cooke. It is also written by an Australian and has lots of useful, relevant information, but it is written in a humorous way (which is something very much needed on occasion).

How to create that pregnancy glow.

When I was pregnant I found that people thought it was OK to comment on my appearance, even telling me when they thought I looked awful.

Thanks.. really appreciated. Of course every pregnant woman likes to have a running commentary about her expanding body.

Anyway, my face went blotchy whilst I was pregnant. I guess thanks to those lovely pregnancy hormones.

And people kept pointing that out to me. "Your face is blotchy" they'd say. Yes I know. But thank you SO much for pointing that out to me because I wasn't self conscious enough about it.

Funny enough their comments did get to me and I began to feel like a bit of an ugly freak. Now I think it's time to mention that I don't wear make up. I think wearing make up maybe makes me look a little nicer but I just can't be bothered putting it on every morning. If it's a choice between catching a few extra z's and putting on make up to look a little nicer - I choose the sleep!

I do however moisturise every morning. So I decided to buy a tinted moisturiser. Yep.. it made me look a little nicer. But I couldn't have guessed what would happen as soon as I started using it. Suddenly, according to every one, I had that pregnancy glow!

By the way what is a pregnancy glow - I have never seen anyone glowing while they are pregnant! I also have no idea what people were seeing in me. All I could see was a blotchy face covered in tint.

So there's my secret to creating that pregnant glow - whatever the heck that means.

An exercise in pain management.

Here's a little exercise given to me by a physiotherapist whilst I was pregnant to help me think about my pain management strategies:

1. Hold your arms out straight at the sides of your body.
   
2. Bend your knees.
3. Hold for five minutes.
   

During the exercise I really wanted to massage my legs or grip something or move or groan or all of the above. So touch, movement and vocalising are part of my pain management techniques.

Unfortunately I can't say whether or not using these pain management strategies would have been enough to get me through labour, as I ended up having a caesarean. But I thought it was a useful exercise in starting to think about what sort of pain management techniques might work.

The search for reasonably priced maternity clothes.

In my opinion maternity clothes are far too expensive for what they really are - a temporary wardrobe! I discovered that some of the baby clothing stores (such as Pumpkin Patch & JK Kids) stock maternity clothes - the best time to shop there is during their sales.

I also bought a lot of clothes on online auction sites. Of course there is ebay but there are alternatives to ebay (search for "online auctions"). In fact I purchased three of my favourite items from an auction site (Oztion) at a fantastic price because no one else was bidding.

One particularly useful buy was a belly band, which I could use to cover my growing belly and still wear normal tops. I also found buying a few pairs of men's socks was great for my expanding feet.

Morning Sickness.

So you are pregnant and you feel like you have a hideous hangover or a bad case of food poisoning. You feel like you are on the verge of throwing up all the time. Maybe you are actually throwing up or, if you are like me, you never actually vomit, so there is never any relief.

Yep I'm afraid that's normal morning sickness and there ain't much you can do about it. Before I was pregnant I thought (from good old TV and movies of course) that morning sickness was where you just vomit occasionally. I didn't realise I would feel terribly ill ALL THE TIME. The only relief I had was when sleeping and unconscious.

So what can you do about it. Well nothing really. But here are a few things that helped me a bit:

1. Always carrying around snack foods such as peanuts and dried apricots. Somehow I felt worse when I was hungry, even though I didn't want to eat a thing! So keeping snacks on hand to nibble on when required always helped ease things a bit.


2. Vitamin B6 apparently helps. I did take this regularly and I think maybe it eased things by like 1%.


3. Ginger. I took regular ginger tablets, which again helped by about 1%.


4. Keeping food by the bed for when you wake during the night hungry and sick.


5. Having a supportive partner who can bring you food in bed first thing in the morning. Yes I did actually feel worse in the morning and needed to eat before I could manage to crawl out of bed. Toast with butter or vegemite worked well here.

There are also medications you can take (talk to your doctor) but none of them helped me at all.

The thing to remember, which is what I struggled with most, is that it does go away eventually. It was an extremely tough three months for me though. I just couldn't function as normal and couldn't eat properly. I had to give up pretty much everything during that time. I would somehow drag myself to work and then lie on the couch or in bed when at home. Eventually I was able to eat again and then food tasted exceptional. I guess it would to anyone who had a diet of dried apricots, peanuts and toast for three months!

I think it's also important to note that from my research I found that it doesn't matter if you are not eating well during those first few months. Babies have their own supply of nutrients during that time.

If you are reading this and are currently suffering from morning sickness then my heart goes out to you. Feel free to share your tips on how to ease morning sickness.

Introduction.

I am a mum to a currently 8 month old gorgeous girl (Em) and decided to start a Blog as a means of documenting the things I have learnt during pregnancy and motherhood. I guess if I go back for a second round of pregnancy, I can read back over my mistakes and the things I've learnt from them and try not to make the same ones again.

Since becoming pregnant and having my beautiful daughter I noticed that people don't talk about the truth of pregnancy, birth and raising a child - until you are there yourself. So my plan is to be truthful and hopefully helpful.

Happy reading. xx