There is everything under the sun available for your baby. Being a first time parent, it’s easy to fall into the trap of: I’ll buy everything I see so I can be 100% prepared.

Guess what – your newborn only needs 3 things initially:

1. To be fed
2. To be clean
3. To be loved

So if you work off that premise, my recommendation on the things you should buy for yourself and baby:

• Breast pads (if you choose to breast feed) to catch leaking nipples
• Onesies with inbuilt ‘mittens’ for the feet and hands – easy for changing late at night when you’re sleep deprived and they can’t scratch themselves aka don’t bother with little pants or socks unless you can be bothered
• Swaddles – can use as burp cloths, wrap your baby in etc – and you don’t need super expensive ones – Kmart and Target is more than fine
• Pram – we bought ours secondhand because my husband wanted a more expensive one – Bugaboo, but I didn’t want to shell out thousands of dollars
• Car seat: we didn’t bother getting a capsule and a car seat. The capsule you use up to 6 months and it’s easy in that you can take your baby from the car into home and not have to wake them up. But spending all that money for usage of 6 months, no thanks. We ended up buying an Infasecure convertible car seat with no capsule so they can use this until they’re about 8 years old
• Cot
• Nappies and baby wipes (duh)
• Change mat – we didn’t get a change table and just change our baby in the cot at home using a plastic change mat and have a separate change mat for when we’re out and about
• Breast pump: this is optional, but might come in handy if you have issues breastfeeding and depending how you want to feed your baby (read below re breastfeeding)
• Baby bath tub: we got one from a family friend, but you can use the sink initially and shower when they’re older if you like

The best thing: you can get these if you have a baby shower instead of buying yourself – but honestly, don’t go overboard and buy everything you see at Baby Bunting – you will either not use it or you will use everything and stress yourself out

Ultimately as long as you are there, your baby will be fine – don’t have to have expensive things and an awesome looking nursery to welcome your baby into the world – they won’t even remember or appreciate it anyway. 

Pregnancy

Finding out

The pregnancy test showed a positive reading. Now what??! Even though the test was positive, I had heard about false positives so I was still a bit freaked that maybe the test was wrong. So I went to a doctor the next day who did another test (and it was positive). However, this guy didn’t seem to know what he was talking about so I went to a different doctor just to make doubly sure I was pregnant. They did a pregnancy test and it was positive so yea I was pregnant!

I told my family and my in laws straight away. You’re meant to wait until after the first trimester as it’s the riskiest so you don’t want to lose the baby (unfortunately it does happen quite frequently) and then have to tell these people you’re no longer pregnant.

I think tell whoever you want, but know that if something happened *touch wood*, you will need to tell these people.

Gong off track, I didn’t do one of those surprise your partner/families with a massive gesture. I what’s apped my partner when I found out and we went over and shared the news face to face with our families (so pretty stock standard).

Lessons learned:

• Go to a doctor and get a blood test or another test done just to make sure you are pregnant
• Do what you want to do in terms of sharing the news with others

First trimester

I’m pretty lucky because I didn’t have morning sickness. However, I did feel overall quite nauseous and tired. I also didn’t want to eat really ‘meaty’ smelling meat like lamb. The only time I vomited was after eating broccoli at a breakfast buffet in China (read below) – I rushed into the bathroom and vomited out so much – that was my only morning sickness experience.

FYI I started taking Elevit (took it throughout the whole pregnancy and even now postpartum as I’m breastfeeding) and even found that nauseating because the pill itself is so big.

We did do a 6 week scan to ‘date the pregnancy’ because we weren’t sure how many weeks I was. They initially try to locate the fetus by putting the gel over your tummy, but the fetus is way too small so it was an internal exam where they stick the ultrasound stick up your vagina (with lubricant). It doesn’t go all the way in and it doesn’t hurt but does initially feel a bit uncomfortable.

At that time all we saw was a circle and we found out that we were right in that I was approx. 6 weeks pregnant. The confusing/funny thing about dating pregnancies is that you count from when you have your first period as to how many weeks you are. So even though in July I wasn’t actually pregnant, the way they date it includes that time. This probably reads very confusing so I’ll leave it here and you’ll understand what I mean if it happens to you.

We also went overseas to China whilst I was in my first trimester. I was a bit anxious because first trimester is the riskiest and so I didn’t take my airsickness medication (because when you’re pregnant, you do freak out in terms of what can I put into my body and what can’t I).

Public vs private

So we had to choose a hospital. We were living in Eltham at the time and the closest was Mercy Hospital in Heidelberg. I had no clue so I chose this place.

I hadn’t included pregnancy services in my health insurance and having had a close friend who went through the public system to have her first baby, I chose to go public.

Now I have no clue what it’s like to utilise the private health care when pregnant so I can’t make much comment.

But from my experience, public is excellent and we are very fortunate to have such high quality health care available to us ‘for free’. I only went through the Mercy and later on heard very good things about them. For example, even if you go private, if your baby has a complication, they will get sent to the Mercy who appears to have the experience and resources to assist.

My thoughts of the Mercy: excellent hospital and highly recommend. For my future babies, I am definitely going back there and using public.

So yea don’t stress about should I go private or public because the base i.e. public heath care is great so choosing private just comes down to a matter of personal choice.

Another thing: don’t need to see the same doctor throughout. For me, I was pretty chilled and chose to see whichever midwife was available for my hospital appointments. I saw a doctor once who needed to give the green light in terms of not having a complicated pregnancy. Once that was done, each hospital appointment was with a different midwife.

Harmony test

In terms of checking for Down Syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities, my understanding is there are 2 options:

1. Harmony test – a blood test you do around 12 weeks which is more accurate in terms of how likely your baby has Down syndrome + you will know the exact gender of your bub. Downside: it’s around $400-$500
2. Blood test to check for likelihood of Down syndrome. You don’t find out the gender and it’s obviously not 100% accurate, but it’s ‘free’

I was going to find out whether my baby was a boy or a girl eventually so I chose option 2 (and saved myself some money). However, I know of others who did option 1 and you get more certainty so the choice is yours. I think if you have private health insurance which covers pregnancy, you could probably get some or all of the money back anyway.

I was quite freaked out about whether my baby had Down Syndrome and what I would do if that happened. Fortunately, my baby tested very unlikely to have Down Syndrome, but you can’t help thinking ‘what if’ etc.

Overall, lessons learned over first trimester:

• I didn’t really feel or look ‘pregnant’ apart from feeling a bit ‘full/tight’ in my pelvic area
• Everyone will have an opinion on what you can and can’t do – just listen to your body and yourself and do what you feel comfortable doing
• It’s so easy to freak out because the first trimester is the riskiest in terms of miscarriage, finding out about Down syndrome etc. Try to just control what you can control and be aware that things can and do go wrong, but the less stress and more faith you have in not trying to control the outcome, the better. Regardless of what happens, feel blessed you are pregnant and try to focus on the positives rather than overthink and dwell on the stuff that could (and most likely won’t) go wrong
• Choose a hospital close to you and with a good reputation (sometimes you may need to sacrifice one over the other). Location matters because if you’re in labour and heading to the hospital, each second feels like an eternity. Reputation also matters though because you are trusting these people to take care of you and your baby throughout the baby journey

Second trimester

After the first trimester, the nausea subsided and I felt more like ‘myself’. Wasn’t as fatigued as well.

From memory, my belly started popping out a bit at this time. Throughout your whole pregnancy, trust your body. It knows what it’s doing and you will have a million small changes happening inside and out to help grow your baby and prepare your body for the arrival of your new bub.

To be honest, the second trimester is a bit of a blur because it was the more ‘stable’ period of the overall pregnancy experience. Would recommend you just relax as much as possible physically and mentally – trust that your body knows exactly what to do, listen to your body and enjoy this time.

You will also start to go to hospital appointments. I chose to see only midwives because I was fortunate to not have a complication requiring a doctor to see me.

Midwives who I encountered were awesome – they’re super knowledgeable and I could ask them anything.

At each hospital appointment:

• Checked my blood pressure
• Asked how I was going and if I had any questions
• Measured my belly with a tape measure. Supposedly the length from top of belly to tip of pubic bone coincides with how many weeks you are. So for example at 20 weeks you should be 20 cm give or take 2 cm
• I had a student midwife follow me around – she was awesome as it was someone who knew a bit more than me about babies and who shared in my experience along the way (plus she gets work experience points and will become a better midwife down the track)

Food wise: I tried to be not too anal and ate generally anything apart from soft cheeses, alcohol, raw seafood, deli meats unless cooked and foods with unpasteurised egg e.g. some mayos

At around the 18-20 week mark, we had our last ultrasound and found out the gender. I asked the radiographer to check twice as I wanted to be more than sure – we found out we were having a boy :). To be honest I had no preference just wanted bub to be healthy and well. But for some reason, call it intuition, I already knew it was a boy

• Ask whatever question you want, don’t be shy
• Love your body because you are going through something which is so natural and beautiful and it’s one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences

Third trimester

Ok so this is where it gets interesting – last and final stretch before you meet your baby. I started freaking out about birth at this time. Before then you feel like you have all the time in the world before baby arrives. But once third and final trimester hits, I got scared/anxious/worried about how the hell labour was going to be. It’s because you have no clue what to expect, how it’ll feel and how it will all go down for you. My advice: everyone is different in terms of their birthing story – there is no right way and all you can do is prepare yourself as best as you can in terms of being calm, listening to the doctors/midwives and preparing your body physically i.e. do your pelvic floor exercises and get some exercise in – keeping your body active and strong will help the labour. How else did people back then do it without any drugs? Nowadays, we sit down too much and our body is not used to ‘opening’ or super strenuous activity so the more physically fit and mentally well we keep ourselves, the easier the labour process will be (well that’s what I think anyway)

Parental/birthing classes

Up to you and your partner. I didn’t take a birthing class, but I did enrol myself and my partner into a parental seminar class held by the hospital. We paid around $80 and chose the 2 half day seminars. It was a bunch of parents to be in a room with a midwife who talked about the labour process and drugs available, being pregnant and the afterwards i.e. how to cope, breastfeeding etc.

I thought it was helpful as I had very little idea so it provided some insight into what to expect.

Rockmelon scare

We ate out at a Lebanese restaurant one night. The next night, I ate rockmelon and after approx. 2-3 days, vomited A LOT at work. My partner got food poisoning from the Lebanese food. There was a news story about a NSW rockmelon grower who had sold rockmelon with listeria (this is bacteria which we don’t want to pass to our babies – hence why I avoided soft cheeses, cold seafood etc). I was quite sick and had a fever and lay in bed for a day – was worried as it was either food poisoning OR listeria.

I got really paranoid and so late at night we drove to the hospital and spoke to a midwife. Because I went through the public system, we would have had to wait hours for a doctor to come take a blood test for listeria. The midwife told us she’d relayed my symptoms to the doctor and the doctor had said if I really had listeria, I would have been more violently ill (but I was generally ok then). So we decided to go home rather than wait for the doctor.

Lo and behold, it turned out to just be delayed food poisoning but if you’re ever worried, call the midwives and just go to the hospital. Listen to your body – sometimes something small can mean something bad. Not saying every little niggle should be investigated because you need to have a balance. But where it’s something more serious and you’re not sure, just speak up J

Gestational diabetes

I was slim, ate healthily and exercised prior to pregnancy.

At 28 weeks you do a Glucose Tolerance Test (GTT) to see if you have gestational diabetes i.e. diabetes in pregnancy. It’s a 2 hour test with 3 blood tests involved.

You fast from approx. 10pm the night before and go into hospital. They take a blood test and then you down (do it quickly and knock it back) a sweet glucose drink (tastes like flat lemonade). An hour later you then get another blood test and an hour after that another one. This tracks how your body is breaking down and using up sugar.

Word of warning: try not to vomit and just relax and stay still. If you vomit you have to redo the test.

I later received a letter in the mail saying I had gestational diabetes and was like WTF. I thought it only happened to overweight women who ate junk food all day everyday. I was definitely angry and in ‘denial’. Hospital had booked me in for an education session so went along to learn more.

Turns out it’s very much hormonal based. When you’re pregnant, your body requires approx. 2 times more insulin to be produced to help break down and absorb the sugars in your blood. It can be developed if you have a family member who has diabetes (my dad does) or if you’re Asian (racist much haha – probably because we eat a lot of rice etc).

So at the education session, it was me and a bunch of pregnant women sitting in the room feeling ‘guilty’ and like we’d done something wrong. We had a diabetes educator show us how to use and test our blood glucose levels. The cool thing is you get a free testing machine whereby you use a pen-like device withan inbuilt needle – you prick yourself (doesn’t really hurt and you get used to it) and put the blood on a strip which is inserted into a little device which then measures your blood sugar levels.

We were then given a booklet to record our blood sugar – you have to test 4 times a day, once when you wake up and 3 times after your main meals (2 hours after). If you go over a certain benchmark reading, you have to call the diabetes educator who may then put you on insulin. We also were given some info on what food to eat during this time and encouraged to exercise.

This was all so much to take in and I felt sorry for myself. But long story short, although I did go over a couple times and had to call the educators, overall I learned a lot about how little carbohydrates we actually need to eat, types of low and high GI carbs (like did you know brown rice is still higher GI then basmati rice), the fact that there is barely anything that is diabetes friendly in food courts and restaurants and it helped curb my weight gain i.e. I lost weight during this time and had more energy compared to if I didn’t have to watch my food intake.

So all in all it was a blessing in disguise J

PUPP rash

This was so unexpected.

At around 30 weeks, I got these clusters of red super itchy bumps. It was so itchy I felt like getting a knife and cutting the bumps out. It was along the sides of my thighs, a bit on my tummy and around the knees and ankles (gross). I thought maybe it was bed bug bites, but my husband was fine.

I went to a local GP who prescribed me a steroid cream, but that didn’t really help. All I could do was itch and nothing seemed to help. That GP had no clue and I didn’t want to use the cream for too long as it could affect the baby. It wasn’t until my husband googled and researched that we discovered it was PUPP rash.

This is supposedly a pregnancy rash which only goes away after birth and there is no treatment (OMG). Supposedly to be more common if you have a boy because of the different hormones compared to you?

Anyway I was like how the hell am I going to survive the rest of the pregnancy when everyday I am in itchiness agony?

Went back to google and saw some women in a forum talking about pine tar soap and how that is a more natural way to resolve the itchiness. I went to Chemist Warehouse and found this wash called Pinetarsol (meant to also be used for bad skin conditions to help manage itchiness). This was a god send and helped relieve the itchiness. Thank goodness for this stuff. My advice, please try not to scratch because you will be left with scars like me which will take ages to go away (and to date, there are still some left). Interestingly enough, the itchiness stopped a couple weeks prior to labour.

Bit on exercise

EVERYONE has a different opinion on this. Some people say don’t move, others say do what you were doing prior. What did I do and what I believe:

If you were already quite fit prior to being pregnant, continue what you were doing and listen to your body. I was quite fit and would do HIIT at home (on good old Youtube) so initially in my first trimester I did HIIT, but then it got too intense so I switched to walks and easier cardio and eventually pregnancy yoga.

I highly recommend you stay active before pregnancy and during to help strengthen your body and prepare for labour. You can’t control how your labour will be like, but one way you can best prepare yourself and your body is to keep active. Having a strong body will help in having a smoother pregnancy and labou e.g. strong glutes alleviates any lower back pain down the track when your belly is huge.

I personally found my ideal was doing my pelvic floor exercises and pregnancy yoga daily, which helped with maintaining my required blood sugar levels as well as spiritually, physically and mentally preparing myself for the labour.

I have heard from other people who had babies that doing things like pilates really helps so yea stay active 

Will do a blog dedicated to overall weight gain/loss later on.

Trying for a baby

Coming from a Chinese background and with society in general, I felt the pressure to find a partner, get married and have my first baby all by the age of 30 (because after 30, it gets harder and after 35, don’t even think about it).

That being said, my family is very supportive and no one made these decisions for me, but you definitely feel like society places an expectation on you to hit certain milestones by certain ages.

Anyway, I definitely started feeling ‘clucky’ and wanting to have a baby when I was around 28/29 years old.

I had gotten married to my partner when we were 29 and in November that year, we decided to stop using contraception and try for a baby.

Now my libido for the last few years was quite low. Coupled with the fact that my partner and I have been together for quite a few years, we both didn’t feel the need to have sex frequently – to be honest, it was probably once a month at most. For us personally, we were just very comfortable to do other things like cuddle etc.

So this posed a bit of an issue because even though we started trying to have a baby, we only did it once a month max. So obviously the chances of falling pregnant were lower than if we did it everyday – that being said, I had this ‘expectation’ that I would fall pregnant straight away. I mean in the movies/news, once you stop using contraception you would right? WRONG. For me it didn’t happen until 9-10 months later. And even though I knew we weren’t trying like you should, I was still disappointed when I didn’t feel pregnant or tested negative.

Around 4 months after we started trying, I downloaded one of those apps to track your fertility – supposedly we women only have approx. 2 days each month where we are most fertile. Er excuse me but what if I’m not in the mood then what?

Call me strange/spiritual, but in the back of my mind, I wanted to have a big 30^th birthday before falling pregnant. My birthday is in July and funnily enough in July:

• I had a big 30^th with lots of alcohol consumed
• My mum had a dream that month that I was pregnant
• I went to the dentist for a check up and clean and he said my gums were bleeding and asked if I was pregnant

I didn’t fall pregnant in July, but I did the month after in August and from the most vanilla sex (not like the romantic/ intense way that I thought). Now coincidence or not, I truly believe it was all meant to be post 30^th birthday.

So what did I learn from this?

• Have a rough idea of when you are most fertile and time your sex to around then (unless you have a super high libido)
• Just relax as much as you can because stress does not help the overall process (including work/life stress)
• Trust that it will happen in the right time
• Don’t spend so much money on pregnancy tests (east to say, hard to do)
• Don’t expect yourself to fall pregnant in the most romantic way. For me, it was pretty vanilla and I didn’t even orgasm that time. However, I did keep my legs up to help the sperm travel to the egg afterwards haha