What not to eat when pregnant

My wife and I are used to checking what we eat more so than most as my wife has an allergy to nuts & seeds, this results in us having a slightly limited diet which normally isn’t a big issue. Add pregnancy to this mix and we are quickly having to modify the diet again to avoid listeria bacteria which isn’t good for our unborn baby.

My wife quickly found her normal lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich off the menu as was her favourite desert of soft serve ice cream. As an interim solution, good old baked beans were put on the menu for her lunches. This only lasted a day as the infamous side effects of eating baked beans played havoc on her digestive system.

After a little research we went shopping and bought a lot of fresh fruit, frozen yogurt, and  tomatoes. Still not entirely happy with the new menu, it will suffice for a week or so whilst she realigns her taste buds.

I found a couple of good websites talking about pregnancy diets and have listed them below.

• http://www.babycenter.com.au/pregnancy/nutrition/foodsafety/notsafetoeatexpert
• http://www.pregnancytoday.com/articles/pregnancy-nutrition-and-recipes/pregnancy-diet-don-ts-1842

Prenatal test results are in!

We went and saw our doctor again this morning to get the results of my wife's prenatal blood test. We’re happy to say that everything showed as expected with various vaccinations and negative infection results. These test were primarily looking for vaccination against the likes of rubella, chickenpox and hepatitis as well as checking for the presence of any sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and syphilis.

The doctor once again asked about where we were thinking of going to have the baby delivered and which obstetrician we would use. My wife simply hasn’t given it much thought so far other than she would prefer a female obstetrician. I might need to ring around a bit and get some more information regarding female obstetricians as our doctor only found one and as I said in a previous post she’s based in the city and delivers baby's on the other side of the city which makes for a bit of a long nervous drive for me when the time comes, especially if it turns out to be peak hour!

I think our next appoint with our doctor will be in 4 weeks time, by then we will be 9 weeks pregnant and should be passed the likelihood of an ectopic pregnancy.

I also asked the doctor this morning about when we should let our family's know the good the news of the upcoming addition to our family. In his opinion there was no need to hold back from telling anyone until the end of the first trimester, he said its no more likely to have major dramas before the 13th week or after 13th week. Every time my wife sits down with her family and has a chat you can see she's struggling to keep the news in. I suspect we wont be able to keep the news to ourselves until the 13th week but this then causes a dilemma for me. if we wait for the 13th week, it just happens that my wife and I are flying to the city where my family lives and I could tell them face to face. If we let the cat out of the bag before then I would feel somewhat compelled to tell my family but it would mean doing it over the phone which isn't as desirable. What to do, what to do…

When to let everyone know you’re pregnant?

Many people might disagree but I think I’m pretty good at keeping information to myself, but  the last week and a bit since we found out that we are pregnant I’ve found it really hard to not say anything.

It’s like everyone already knows and is waiting for us to announce it. Every time someone asks me what I’ve been up to all I can think about is the fact we are pregnant. As we are in contact with my wife’s family almost every second day,  its always on our minds to watch what we say.

After the first trimester is finished at 13 weeks it is generally considered a safe time to let people know as you have got over a lot of the initial dangers. The trouble is that its hard not to talk about this exciting time of our lives, and you dare not tell even one person in case they let the cat out of the bag and find that your big news has become yesterdays big news.

So this got me thinking about the Pros and Cons…

Advantages to Telling Early

• Lots of support early in pregnancy
• Able to share your good news and excitement
• Earlier offers of physical help
• More advice from others about practitioners
• Help with early decisions
• If you miscarry, you will have support from everyone

Disadvantages to Telling Early

• Too much advice
• Good news travels fast, you may not be the first to tell someone
• If you miscarry everyone knew you were pregnant

Advantages to Waiting to Tell

• Time to digest the news
• Make decisions without input of others
• If you miscarry you don't have to retract the pregnancy announcement

Disadvantages to Waiting to Tell

• No help/support from others
• If you miscarry everyone wonders why you are sad, and you have to backtrack your explanation

There seems to be a lot of advantages but there is some big disadvantages, especially if we are unlucky enough to have a miscarriage, although I think that if we are unlucky and have a complication that I think my wife will need the support of her family anyways.

I think if we can keep it quiet for another 7 weeks my wife and I will hold out until after the first round of scans and tests and then let the world know…

Pregnancy book

Last night my wife and I bought the fourth edition of what is really a fantastic series of books. Titled “What to expect when you’re expecting” it details what you need to know, what you should know and what’s help to know at every point of your pregnancy.  My sister in law has the third edition and we had a look at that a while ago and so we just had to buy the latest edition for ourselves. I really highly recommend it!

Confirmation, we are pregnant!

I convinced my wife to take a second pregnancy test last night just to rule out any false positives, and sure enough we had a second positive result.

We were booked in to see our doctor anyways so he also did a test but felt it may be just a little early to show up on his test as we are only 4 weeks pregnant but amazingly enough his test show positive as well confirming our lives were about to change in a big way.

When going through the list of things that were going to need be organised over the next nine months with our doctor, and interesting question arose. Do we want to have a male or female obstetrician? Of course my wife wants a female obstetrician but there’s catch the only female obstetrician is in the city, and for her to deliver the baby we would have to be delivering it in a hospital on the other side of the city. So the question is should we be thinking of the nearest hospital which happens to be a specialised baby hospital or should we be thinking of a female obstetrician. I think it probably will come down to my wife and if she could get over her issue of having a male oncologist.

Life is just beginning…

In more ways that one. After trying to get pregnant for just a couple of months my wife woke me up yesterday to tell me the exciting news. She is pregnant! So not only is a new life beginning in her, but also our lives as parents are just beginning

I thought I would start this blog as not only a journal of my experiences as an expecting parent but also as a way of sharing what I learn with others. So some of you may think that some of my point are kind of common knowledge but they are new to me, and more than likely new to someone reading this.

After finding out the good news yesterday I embarked on a little research and found that we are actually 4 weeks pregnant already as doctors count from the womans last cycle and not when you think you conceived.
Now called me cautious, call me skeptical, or even a party pooper, but I said to my wife that she should wait a few more days and then test again just in case there was any false positives in her test.

From what I’ve read, at the end of this week we’ll be 5 weeks pregnant and the second test should confirm everything, so we’ll book a time with our doctor and really get things rolling.

One of our concerns if that my wife is on Zoloft anti depressants, which shouldn’t effected our unborn baby but one study though not conclusive said it could cause lung defects. Will have to look into that a bit more, as we will need to weigh up the effects of having my wife off of the antidepressants with the slim risk for the baby.

Ok so now you know where we are heading, I’ll see what the next 8 months brings.