Here is a current picture of me (photo by Jim Cruise). I'm now 32 weeks pregnant.
This week has been full of baby preparation activities. On Monday I went with my mom to two baby stores (Natural Resources and Babies R Us) to research and price baby items and I made a list of things that I want to get before the baby arrives.
On Tuesday Bob and I went on a tour of the Labor & Delivery department at St. Luke's Hospital. After the tour, we sat in a conference room with 3 other couples and one of the hospital pediatricians talked to us about caring for newborns. That was very useful, and it was generous of the pediatrician who volunteers to give these talks. Bob appreciated what he had to say.
On Wednesday we went to the first session of our 6 week Childbirth Education course. It was awesome! We like the teacher very much. She seems very intelligent, well-informed and responsive to the needs of the class members. There were 5 other couples in the class and they all seemed like great people. The teacher is also a birth doula and post-partum doula, and I think Bob and I will hire her to be our postpartum doula and visit us after the baby is here. She is also a lactation counsler and she teaches brestfeeding classes, so she will be a good resource for any breastfeeding questions. She also teaches newborn care classes. I'm excited to have found someone that we both like and feel comfortable with! We will have an official interview with her at our place in a couple weeks.
About a month ago I was feeling very moody. I was feeling sorry for myself and sometimes crying for hours with no reason that I could think of besides pregnancy hormones. I told some friends that I felt like I was mourning my pre-pregnant self. It started to worry me how negative I felt, so I did some research on the internet. I googled "pregnancy depression" and I found an article that mentioned a relationship between Omega-3 and mood. Pregnant and breastfeeding women need more Omega-3, and there was a study done that proved if a mother took fish oil pills while pregnant and breastfeeding, the children would be more intelligent than those whose mothers took olive oil pills. The claim that it could help mood for moms with postpartum depression convinced me to try it. Bob takes fish oil every day for allergies, so we had some at home. The very next day I noticed an improvement! That was about 2 weeks ago now, and I've been taking fish oil pills daily and I haven't felt any depression ever since. So maybe my diet was lacking omega 3 and it was affecting my mood. I'm so relieved to be feeling better!
1 comment:
Just wanted to say how exciting reading your blogs are. You are my first friend locally to have a baby, and I had missed out on the transition with my friends back East. Although I've seen you in person on a few occasions during this time, reading what you are going through makes me appreciate more what you and my other friends went through during pregnancy. :-)
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