Baby on the Brain

Ahh life. It's been a crazy ride the past year around here, but I couldn't be happier to announce that we are expecting baby K in mid September. A lot of my house projects have been put on hold due to feeling tired and sick for a long time, but I'm finally feeling better and have lots of plans up my sleeve for the house, including the nursery.

Right now, it's hard for me to focus on anything other than baby related stuff, so I figured I might as well do a brain dump of some of the things I've been liking lately. 

First up is my reading list. Of course I've been reading What to Expect, which is the obvious choice, but I've also found a couple other lesser known books that I actually like better.

My mom got me The Day-by-Day Pregnancy Book, which has a page for each day of your pregnancy showing how big the baby is, and what sort of things it's developing during that time, like the ability to hear, taste, or how much it weighs.

The other two are ones I bought from Amazon based on reviews and I like them both for different reasons. The Mother of All Pregnancy Books is more similar to What to Expect as far as content, but I really like the way it is presented. It's very easy to read, and has a lot of pre-pregnancy tips and information for people who are still in the thinking about it stage.

Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy has a lot of color photos and illustrations, along with the usual text. It's nice if you just have a few minutes at a time to read, or have a hard time digesting pages and pages of text at once.

As far as books for after the baby comes, I haven't read very many yet, but there are two that I really like and plan to put into practice when the time comes. 

 The Happiest Baby on the Block has tips on how to calm a fussy baby and help it start sleeping through the night from a very early age. The basic fundamental points can probably be found with a google search, so reading the entire book isn't completely necessary. 

Bringing Up Bebe is about an American/English family living in France and the different views of the French on raising children. There are some very good points on how to help children appreciate a wide variety of foods, manners, and sleeping habits. Being a picky eater myself (and wishing I wasn't), I really hope my kids won't have to go through the same thing.

The last two things aren't books, but other pregnancy related items I've been using. 

 Belli Elasticity Belly Oil is for stretch mark prevention. So far, so good with that. My tummy kind of blew up overnight it seemed, so I'm really hoping I won't get bad stretch marks. The other item I've purchased is a BeBand from Target, which is a belly band to help me cover up my un-buttoned pants. My hope is that I can get away with wearing my regular work pants for as long as possible, so the belly band is really helpful with the pairs I can't hold together with a rubber band.

So those are all my tips so far. I'm currently almost 18 weeks along, so I'm sure more things will pop up as I go along. Next up will be our Anatomy scan at 20 weeks. We're so excited to find out if we're having pink or blue!