Pregnancy purchases

Ordered my first maternity clothes last night!  Mostly because I need a sleeping bra.  Da boobies, dey're hurtin!  And even though it's early, my stomach is starting to show signs that it's going to round out over the next couple of weeks and I don't want to be caught off guard.

I didn't go nuts though, as much as I like shopping.  But it was a flat price for shipping so it made sense to get a few things rather than just the bra.  So I got me a pair of maternity jeans with the stretchy panel in front, a belly band so I can wear my regular jeans as long as possible and just hide that they're unzipped, the bra that will be both a sleeping and a nursing bra, some underwear (cuz I swear the washing machine is eating them), and a whole set of jammies with a top and pants and are designed for nursing.  I always love new jammies!

I'm kind of hoping that being a plus size girl who has never wanted any clothing to lay against her stomach, most of my clothes will work just fine as maternity stuff.

Once I was convinced that I was actually pregnant, it was time to buy some books!  There are just all sorts of things to know and learn.

But I tend to be a worrier by nature.  Scratch that, a panicker.  And most books have reviews about how alarmist they are and how the book would raise peoples blood pressure with worry.  As long as I'm going to panic naturally, I kind of figured that I didn't really need a book to make it worse.

I'm also a very slow reader.  I didn't want to buy 20 books if I'm still going to be trying to get through 19 of them when the kids go to kindergarten.  And I really don't want to read about week 12 when I'm in week 16 and find out I did something horribly wrong when it's too late to do anything about it.

Besides, there's so much info online that for the time being, my doctors and google can probably guide me along.  I might get more books later, I might not.  We'll see how it goes.

But I figured that it wouldn't hurt knowing what foods I should be adding and what foods I should be avoiding.  That seemed like pretty innocuous information that I could actually use.

So I got -

The 100 Healthiest Foods to Eat During Pregnancy: The Surprising Unbiased Truth about Foods You Should be Eating During Pregnancy but Probably Aren't

I liked this one.  It's easy to flip through with basic information.  It's formatted in such a way that even if you spin the pages like a flip book, you're still going to get some info.  Very good to have for general reference.

Expect the Best: Your Guide to Healthy Eating Before, During, and After Pregnancy (American Dietetic Association)

Seems to have some good info but I haven't invested a lot of time in reading it.  To be honest, I don't really remember what I thought of it.  I likely started reading it and then set it aside and forgot it.  I blame my attention span and not the book itself.

And because it seemed fairly safe and somewhat helpful, I also got

40 Weeks +: The Essential Pregnancy Organizer (The Essential Organizers)

Again, it's light weight info but it has some useful stuff in it.  You write in your own pregnancy calendar and I've made notes about when I saw the first lines on the test, first doctors appointment and stuff.  And I'm glad I did that because as I'm graduating from the fertility clinic and moving on to a regular doctor, I had to fill in all of that information in my medical history and I would have gotten the dates wrong if I didn't have this to refer to.

This has a questionnaire for several pregnancy professionals (midwives, your OB,etc) so you know what to ask them when you are deciding on who to hire.  It also has questions that you should look into with your health insurance.

The front of the book allows you to fill in various contact information so it's all at the fingertips.  There are various places to fill in certain information like weight gain charts and stuff.

And there's a variety of little checklists that help you organize your thoughts. Lists of nursery basic necessities versus what's nice to have, what to pack for the delivery, that kind of thing.

And the info extends a little bit into having the baby home with you such as a weeks worth of poo charts (with an idea of what to expect each of those days).  Did you know that baby poo on the first day is black and tarry?  I didn't know that.  But apparently that's what I can expect.

Well, I'm clueless about this whole thing so it gives me a variety of starting points to do more research that I might not otherwise have known about.  Glancing through this was also the first time I'd ever heard of a doula so I figured I should probably do some googling to see if I wanted one.  Not sure I would have ever heard of a doula otherwise.

It seems like a good workbook during the pregnancy and will kind of serve as a scrapbook after the fact once I tuck it away. 


Am I jumping the gun with some of these purchases?  Maybe.  Figured I might as well get a few things before the financial panic truly sets in and I can't justify spending a few dollars here and there.