Plannign a baby
ajdii
Posts: 28 Member
Hello everyone.
I am new in this group and not pregnant yet. But my boyfriend and I are planning to have a baby soon. Actually from June on we won't use a protection any more. So here comes my question. Do you have any suggestions about what I should do before getting pregnant? How long did it take you to become pregnant? Thank you for all the answers ladys
I am new in this group and not pregnant yet. But my boyfriend and I are planning to have a baby soon. Actually from June on we won't use a protection any more. So here comes my question. Do you have any suggestions about what I should do before getting pregnant? How long did it take you to become pregnant? Thank you for all the answers ladys
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I'm pretty sure there is a TTC forum on here too. I always found having people going through the same thing as me fun to commiserate with.
To answer questions! This is my 3rd pregnancy. For each child it took 3 months of not using protection. My second I got pregnant while breastfeeding and only had 1 period, my third got pregnant while breastfeeding and had no period inbetween. Some people it's the first cycle, some it's years. I would just say have fun with it! My sister in laws did tell me they recommended not using anything hormonal for the three months before ttc (so condoms) to make sure it was all out of their systems, but I doubt that's necessary, just a preference and they felt it helped them conceive faster and one said it caused her to have less miscarriages (there's a lot of miscarriages on that side of the family). I don't know that there's any real evidence behind that, just what they told me.
Before getting pregnant I went and had an exam (pap smear and because I told her I wanted to have kids soon for some reason she did a very brief rectal exam, I was NOT expecting that! and I don't think that's routine! 4 years later I'm still confused about that) and asked the doc if there was anything I needed. She did some blood tests to test for routine things. Turns out I was no longer immune to Rubella so I got an MMR booster. And after this I did have to put TTC on hold for a month.
I took prenatal vitamins for I think 6 months before we started ttc (though that was probably overkill). I know they recommend having it ahead of time though if you're a planner I would start popping one soon just for kicks.
That's all I can think of! I took the first month pretty easy, then got a little crazier the second month, the third month I was doing ovulation tests and temping and all kinds of fun stuff.0 -
^^ Very informative, thank you!
I've haven't found the TTC group, might search for it again.
I'm also going to start trying for baby #1 sometimes this summer. Sent your a FR, hope it's ok
I started taking folic acid (1mg daily, as suggested by my doctor) and I'm stopping supplements (protein powder, BCAA) as soon as I run out (probably next month, I'm not sure it's needed, but I just want to make sure). I'm already taking a multi but once I finish the bottle I currently have, I'll switch to a pre-natal.0 -
That was really informative thank you so much for being so honest and for teaching me some things that I didn't know 0
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I'm nearly 38 weeks with my 3rd now.
I have to admit I didn't really do anything different before TTC, although each time I have TTC I have been really fit and healthy.
We decided to try for a baby after our honeymoon in 2008. We got back at the end of August and I took my last pill, which I'd been on for about 8 years. I got pregnant the first month trying. I'd been on a real health and fitness kick to look good for my wedding, and even on honeymoon had been healthy, eaten well and done lots of swimming and stuff.
I put on weight in pregnancy, despite exercising, and then after I had my son I went back to exercising quite quickly and lost he weight. We started TTC the month he turned 1, and i got pregnant the 3rd month trying.
I put on a lot more weight this time, and after my daughter was born, I lost loads did ended up thinner and healthier than ever before. I also discovered MFP!
Last year we decided to TTC number 3. I got pregnant first month, but then had a very early miscarriage at 5 weeks. After that I got pregnant the 2nd month trying.
I take folic acid once I find out I'm pregnant.
I did have a smear test to check all was ok before TTC.
I think just being healthy, eating well and exercising helps.0 -
Great advice from the above posters.
I started taking folic acid as soon as I went off birth control as it's really not expensive (I think my bottle of 90 pills was about 4$) and it got me in the habit of taking it daily.
I read everything I could get my hands on which is just part of my personality, I like to know what to expect so that I don't freak out when all of a sudden I get weird cramps or I can't put a shirt on because my breasts hurt so bad.
We prepared ourselves that it could take months or years to get pregnant, what we DIDN'T prepare ourselves for was that I got pregnant right away. Like, 2 weeks after I got off the pill I was pregnant. So that was a bit of shock.
Also, if you are on hormone based contraceptive, be prepared for what it will do to your body. It might suck. A lot. You might break out like crazy, I've never had problem skin anywhere but my face when I was a teen, until I went off birth control. I had it on my back, my face, and even in my hair line/scalp.
ETA: This is my first and I was on the pill for 14years0 -
I went in for a pap smear and a check up and discussed with my ObGyn that I was going to start trying and asked his advice for anything he thought I needed to do.
Prenatal vitamins (which I was already taking.) If I were you I would start taking them now.
Healthy food options; this is a good boost to health and along with taking the vitamins it gives your baby a good healthy start.
Exercise; he asked what I was doing and suggested I just continue with what I was doing. But, he said it is best to be active during your pregnancy, just a walk a day is great and why not get in the routine of doing that now, it will be harder to start a routine once you are pregnant.
Brace yourself; this is how he worded this advice exactly. He knew what had happened with my previous pregnancy with my daughter and he was certain I was going to be very ill with MS again and probably have some of the same complications. He told me to brace myself for it, prepare for it but hope it doesn't happen.
Evaluate where you are working and if you really plan to continue during pregnancy or after baby, plan ahead; my doctor wasn't thrilled about the job I had and was concerned about me doing it while pregnant and it is a very physically demanding job. My husband was concerned too and I ignored them both. 11 weeks pregnant, I got hurt and I haven't worked since. I wish I would have considered their advice more, thought it through more and probably left the job on better terms.
Finances and Insurance; before getting pregnant, find out exactly what your health insurance companies polices are on maternity and what their maternity coverage is. I had my own surprises with our insurance company when, in order to cover maternity, I had to sign a paper saying they had every right to know about results of every test and every complication, including access to previous birth information and miscarriages. Have some money set aside before conceiving, you may get lucky and not need it, but it is best that you have some financial backup just in case. For me, it was for things like anti nausea medication and all new medications for other conditions because the ones I was on weren't safe for pregnancy.
Find an ObGyn ahead of time; ask about their billing policies or anything else that is of concern to you. I love my ObGyn and have gone to the same guy always but was upset to find out with this pregnancy that their prices and billing procedures had changed. We had to pay for the birth and everything ahead of time, cash, even though we have insurance, and it won't be reported to our insurance company until after birth. So even though we are thousands of dollars out of pocket already, our insurance company thinks we have paid that yet. So, my daughter's physical and husband's appts are all cash still right now too. Ridiculous considering we have paid way over our deductible already.
Know your cycle; it is up to you if you want to get ovulation kits or take your temperature or nothing at all. I personally did nothing, I know my body well enough to just know the rhythm of my cycle and when I ovulate.
Stop taking hormonal birth control; I have heard many stories on this one. I have no scientific evidence, just hearsay from family and friends but conception seems to come easier after a few months off of it. I have no experience here as I have never taken birth control.
My story: after visiting with a doctor and given the go ahead and receiving the clean results from pap smear we decided to start trying. I had just started my TOM and knew I ovulated around day 14. My husband was working out of town and was only home on Sundays at the time. Looking at the calendar, Day 13 landed on Sunday. We didn't do anything leading up to that weekend (not sure on scientific evidence behind this but felt we probably had better chances if he had built up a little while). So, when that weekend came around we tried twice while he was home. The next weekend he ended up not coming home so he was gone two weeks in a row. Coming home on a Sunday two weeks after we had attempted he came home to a positive test. My doctor keeps trying to tell me he thinks I am further along than I think I am but, as you can tell by our method of trying to conceive - we know Exactly what day that happened on. I Know how far along I am
I have friends that have been trying for years (one of them only 2 years, another 11 years). One of them was actually mad at me when I conceived first try. Everyone is different.
My last bit of advice is, don't get your hopes up too high. It can be really devastating when it doesn't happen month after month after month if you are allowing yourself to get all excited before it happens.
Sorry about the novel.0 -
Wow, never considered the cost/insurance thing. I'm English, we have the NHS, we don't pay for anything. Well, we pay tax obviously, but any treatment is free at the point of service. In pregnancy we even get free prescriptions and free dental treatment, and get that until a year after our baby's due date.0
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Can't even begin to express how jealous I am of that.
My daughter's pregnancy and birth total was over $200,000. (This is from various hospitalizations and complications during pregnancy and a very expensive Csection.) Thank heavens for insurance or I would still be paying that. I only paid about $10,000.
This baby will probably end up costing us about $10,000 too. We will have to see. We are almost at $4,000 already and still have 10 more weeks til delivery.0 -
That's so scary. We're so lucky here.0
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^I always forget about this too. I'm in Canada and the only thing we will need to pay out of pocket is a circumcision if it's a boy which is 450$0
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Insurance is a great idea to look into. And other possibilities (maybe you want to change your plan?). I pay a flat copay of $150 for the entire pregnancy and birth. This year it went up to $175 - due after the baby. All ultrasounds are covered luckily - as I see they charge my insurance $1,000 just for the 20 week one. I know other plans I would have had to pay more or less (the one that would require less out of pocket would cost significantly more a month). I saw the hospital statement and for my daughter's birth in a hospital where I was only there like 36 hours total with a normal vaginal birth (I did have an epidural) with stitches afterwards and a baby that required no special care it was something like $20,000. Circumcision was pretty expensive too and out of pocket as it's elective. (I can't recall how much because we didn't do it.)
Those are also good things to argue about /discuss with SO if you want. Circumcision, cosleeping, and fun things like names. I didn't realize just how opinionated my husband would be about certain things. Circumcision I left entirely up to him as I don't have a penis. Somethings you wont know until you are actually pregnant (will you want testing done? With my first two pregnancies it was something around $1,000 for the blood test and 12 week ultrasound so we skipped it, this pregnancy it was covered, so we did it, but then I had anxiety over waiting for the results) and some you wont know until you actually have a baby in your arms (cosleeping - maybe it seems like a great idea but your baby makes so much friggen noise you can't sleep with them in the room! or it makes BFing so much easier and you'll get more sleep).
It's such an exciting time and there's nothing like it.0 -
Just got off the phone with the insurance company. Looks like we are going to be over $10,000 with this baby for sure.0
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What to do before getting pregnant? Honestly, as long as you're eating somewhat healthy, not using any drugs or abusing alcohol, and don't have a type-A personality, I say just go for it and enjoy the journey.
It took my husband and I a looong time to get pregnant (we had fertility issues and ultimately did IVF). We didn't check out insurance coverage (aside from the IVF) and it cost us a whopping $1000 start to finish for the pregnancy and C-section birth. We didn't plan financially other than setting up a college fund. We didn't discuss who would sleep where or when. We just rolled with it. We are both pretty healthy, don't use drugs, and don't abuse alcohol so we didn't make any lifestyle changes. I did take prenatals, but that was about it.
When I was about 5 months pregnant we converted a spare bedroom into a nursery, started accepting hand-me-downs from friends, and picked out the few things we actually bought (we don't do baby showers). We scheduled a few weekends away by ourselves and also with friends, we went to sporting events and stayed up until 2 AM because we could sleep until noon. We had to have a scheduled C-section (long story) and the night before she was born we turned off the phones, went to our favorite restaurant and split a bottle of wine, came home and slept a good 8 hours before waking up and heading to the hospital. I never really nested or obsessed about anything, just enjoyed it as it came. We didn't even "publically announce" our pregnancy until 32 weeks. We were excited, but enjoyed living a relatively normal life as long as we could get away with it.
Funny thing is, we're both HUGE planners. I used to be an accountant, my husband is a Project Manager...we're both super detail oriented and crazy about the little stuff. But with this, we just rolled with it. We're a bit older for first time parents (35 and 37). She's 4 months old tomorrow and thriving. Have fun & best wishes!0 -
I have 9 children. Before having our first hubby and I used BC. I was exercising a lot (I was a dance minor in college at the time) but not eating great all the time. My baby was born early with some complications. Since then I kept exercising and ate better, stopped smoking, stopped drinking (except for the occasional glass of wine). My subsequent pregnancies have been better. I found the easiest labour/births were the pregnancies where I exercised throughout and ate less processed foods. It took us almost 5 years to get pregnant the second time. We were told we had secondary infertility and would most likely not have any more children. We decided not to do fertility treatments but to let God be in control (didn't realize He had such a sense of humor). This last one was my best. I didn't gain a ton of weight, a month post partum I am almost back to prepreggo weight, labour was fast, everything went great. I really liked that this time around I saw a midwife instead of a doctor. I didn't do any thing other than normal blood tests and one U/S. I did homeopathic treatments and gave birth at home in a birthing pool. It was much more relaxed. Stress during pregnancy can really mess with your system so the more you can relax the better. Best of luck.0
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How exciting! I would recommend starting a prenatal vitamin and reading the great book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. I found this immensely helpful in understanding the ins and outs of fertility. I started tracking my basal body temperature (waking temperature) and monitoring my cervical fluid, so I could get a sense of exactly how long my cycles were, when my most fertile window was, and when I ovulated.
I know this isn't typical, but we got pregnant the first month that we *really* tried. I also recommend the app Glow to help with tracking fertility signs. It's a supportive community of people who are trying to conceive, so if you have questions as you go through the process, there are a lot of knowledgeable people you can communicate with.
Good luck to you!0 -
I had my IUD taken out and started taking a prenatal vitamin. I also bought some ovulation and pregnancy test strips. The cheapo ones you get from amazon, but they seemed to work. We didn't try try. I had a general idea of when I ovulated from the tests, but preplanned ovulation based sex seemed ultra not sexy, so we just went with it. It took 3 months for the first and 4 months for this pregnancy.
If you can get some money saved up. You never know if you'll be out of work. A woman at my work was out for nearly half her pregnancy.
If you're not already doing so I'd start whatever sort of exercise you would like to continue with long term. The general advice for pregnancy is that you can continue with what you were doing beforehand. Most people say when they exercise and eat healthier their pregnancies work out better, but with my daughter I walked quite a bit and ate fairly healthy, and still had complications where I was on bedrest for the last two months.0 -
Thanks to all of you lovely ladys I really enjoyed reading your stories and it gave me a lot of valuable information 0
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This might have been mentioned already, but get life insurance and make sure a will is in order first. My son is 14 months and we are just now working on our will. I waited until I was pregnant to get life insurance and was denied based on weight. Just two very random but important things to consider.0
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This might have been mentioned already, but get life insurance and make sure a will is in order first. My son is 14 months and we are just now working on our will. I waited until I was pregnant to get life insurance and was denied based on weight. Just two very random but important things to consider.
I love that you said this. I have 2 already under 3 years old and I meant to do this a while ago and still haven't.
Crap. Will add this to my list of things to do this summer while husband is on paternity leave I guess! Well, at least the will. According to my husband since I'm out of work it's not like he'd miss my income if I died - but the cost of daycare would definitely be a hit to his financial stability. Thank you for bringing this up! 0 -
I had been on several types of BC for almost nine years before we decided to try to conceive. I literally stopped my last pack of BC pills at the end of June and got pregnant on the 4th of July! I figured that it would take a few months but that obviously was not the case. I had a miscarriage (baby stopped growing at week 8 and I found out at week 12) and then a D&C in September. The doc told us to wait to have one or two normal menstrual cycles before TTC again. We waited to have one complete cycle and started TTC in November... we found out on 10 December that we were preggo and I am now due 14 August. Getting pregnant was the easy part for us!
Definitely track your body fluids and go off of what that tells you... just google it for info
Good luck!0 -
Wanted to add another little tidbit - for those of you that are close especially.
Check to see if your insurance has a policy on how soon they have to have proof of baby.
My insurance company says that - no exceptions - they must receive the birth certificate and SS card within 30 days of birth.
My best friend, after having her baby waited until leaving the hospital (6 days after birth) to file for SS card and BC. She ended up barely making the deadline and getting these turned into insurance right on day 30.
If not turned in on time, you risk losing some payment benefits (depending on your insurance's policy.) Best be sending off those forms ASAP and getting them to insurance quick as you get them.0 -
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I'm pretty sure there is a TTC forum on here too. I always found having people going through the same thing as me fun to commiserate with.
To answer questions! This is my 3rd pregnancy. For each child it took 3 months of not using protection. My second I got pregnant while breastfeeding and only had 1 period, my third got pregnant while breastfeeding and had no period inbetween. Some people it's the first cycle, some it's years. I would just say have fun with it! My sister in laws did tell me they recommended not using anything hormonal for the three months before ttc (so condoms) to make sure it was all out of their systems, but I doubt that's necessary, just a preference and they felt it helped them conceive faster and one said it caused her to have less miscarriages (there's a lot of miscarriages on that side of the family). I don't know that there's any real evidence behind that, just what they told me.
Before getting pregnant I went and had an exam (pap smear and because I told her I wanted to have kids soon for some reason she did a very brief rectal exam, I was NOT expecting that! and I don't think that's routine! 4 years later I'm still confused about that) and asked the doc if there was anything I needed. She did some blood tests to test for routine things. Turns out I was no longer immune to Rubella so I got an MMR booster. And after this I did have to put TTC on hold for a month.
I took prenatal vitamins for I think 6 months before we started ttc (though that was probably overkill). I know they recommend having it ahead of time though if you're a planner I would start popping one soon just for kicks.
That's all I can think of! I took the first month pretty easy, then got a little crazier the second month, the third month I was doing ovulation tests and temping and all kinds of fun stuff.
You're right about there being a TTC group but it looks very inactive. This seems to be the only one with a good amount of members and recent posts. I'm in the same boat as OP, but wanted a more active group to join. 0 -
^^ Very informative, thank you!
I've haven't found the TTC group, might search for it again.
I'm also going to start trying for baby #1 sometimes this summer. Sent your a FR, hope it's ok
I started taking folic acid (1mg daily, as suggested by my doctor) and I'm stopping supplements (protein powder, BCAA) as soon as I run out (probably next month, I'm not sure it's needed, but I just want to make sure). I'm already taking a multi but once I finish the bottle I currently have, I'll switch to a pre-natal.
Adding you as well because I'm going to start TTC this month. Is there a reason for stopping protein powder? I understand supplements in general, and will avoid them, however I haven't seen anything on whey protein powder, where it's just derived from milk and doesn't have anything else in it. Is this something I should be cutting out? I'm vegetarian and I usually have protein shakes whenever I'm a bit short on my daily protein goal. 0 -
^^ Very informative, thank you!
I've haven't found the TTC group, might search for it again.
I'm also going to start trying for baby #1 sometimes this summer. Sent your a FR, hope it's ok
I started taking folic acid (1mg daily, as suggested by my doctor) and I'm stopping supplements (protein powder, BCAA) as soon as I run out (probably next month, I'm not sure it's needed, but I just want to make sure). I'm already taking a multi but once I finish the bottle I currently have, I'll switch to a pre-natal.
Adding you as well because I'm going to start TTC this month. Is there a reason for stopping protein powder? I understand supplements in general, and will avoid them, however I haven't seen anything on whey protein powder, where it's just derived from milk and doesn't have anything else in it. Is this something I should be cutting out? I'm vegetarian and I usually have protein shakes whenever I'm a bit short on my daily protein goal.
Protein powders often are high in heavy metals. You should check with your doctor to make sure though. I would look for as natural a protein powder as possible if you are going to use it. I try to be as organic and all-natural as possible when pregnant/breast feeding. Check out this article http://www.wellsphere.com/raw-food-article/green-pregnant-mom-protein-shake-protein-during-pregnancy/9471070
