Advice

Here's some unsolicited wisdom for women thinking about trying to conceive in the near or distant future.

1: Get all wisdom teeth removed first!

2: Be at or near a healthy weight when you start, if possible. Losing weight is difficult, impractical, and generally a bad idea when you're pregnant.

3: Make sure you have health insurance that will pay for your maternity visits/delivery, or at least supplement you for it.

4: Have a car that works.

5: This one is key: Establish healthy eating and exercise habits LONG before you get pregnant. People (ahem, me) think that they will change their lifestyle when they get pregnant because they'll be conscious that all their actions affect another human being. This is true to the extent that I now take prenatal vitamins. It is not true to the extent that I exercise for 30 minutes 3-4 times per week. Believe me, if you don't develop the motivation to exercise and the discipline to eat nutritiously BEFORE you're pregnant, the chances are slim to none that any of that will change after you conceive. Because being pregnant = tired (no motivation to move, let alone exercise) and hungry (why eat broccoli when ice cream is so much easier and more delicious?).

This also goes for women with eating disorders/disordered eating. Getting pregnant will not just automatically alter your mindset so that suddenly you don't worry about every calorie you eat or every pound you gain. Bulimic women won't just quit purging and anorexic women won't start eating more because they have a baby inside them who will suffer if they don't. You can say "It's normal and healthy for me to gain weight right now," but that doesn't mean you'll look in the mirror and believe it.

I've been really blessed in my pregnancy to have a great support system to help me overcome the negative thoughts. The second trimester was the hardest in that respect, mostly because I was too big for my normal clothes but not shaped quite right for maternity clothes yet. It also helped to buy some maternity clothes for myself that were tailored to fit me specifically; Kate gave me a ton of maternity stuff, which was awesome, but a lot of it (read: all the pants) was made for someone a foot taller than I am (she shares this rotating wardrobe with her sisters-in-law who are all thin, gorgeous amazons), and there wasn't a lot of things that were "my style." Example: I don't like pink and I don't like neon blue and I don't like collared shirts and I don't like the full panel pants because they are WEIRD!! There were a lot of things that match one or more of those descriptions in this wardrobe.

It's kind of funny, because most of the stuff I really liked that Kate gave me were things that she couldn't and didn't ever wear because they were too small for her chest size. Hah! Oh, and Kate? Those maternity garments you gave me? AWESOME. Well, half awesome. The bottoms are terrible, a zillion times worse than full panel pants, but the tops are WONDERFUL. I love them. They are the only garment tops I have now that don't ride up over my big huge belly.

On a completely separate note, stretch marks SUCK. I've had them before, from when I was in CFC and had to gain a ton of weight back. It freaked me out then (I was like, "I can't have stretch marks! I'm not even pregnant!") and it still sucks now. Blech. Mykle thinks they'll go away after awhile, since I use lotion on them and this Mama Bee's belly balm stuff Dot got me for Christmas (love it!).

On an utterly completely separate note, here is a list of words that are really gross:

Paps (this is in the bible where Mykle and I have been reading, and I almost threw up when I read it)
Smear
Pap smear (seriously? You couldn't call it something else??)
Bag balm (I think they should just call this anti-chafing cream or something. Just because it is used primarily to rub on cows' udders doesn't mean you have to include that in the product name. It's gross.)
Masticate
Ringworm
Pustule
Secrete/secretion
Mucus plug
Sac
Episiotomy (mostly this one just sounds painful. Especially to me, right now.)
Wenis
Penile
Pubic
Bladder (for some reason I don't mind this one when discussing the human organ, but when it's used for other things, like a water bed bladder, it's just nasty!)
The squirts (this one is only gross when it has "the" before it)
Abcess
FRUIT!!!