OMG do you realise how much there is to do once you know you’re pregnant, the decisions to be made, books to be read, appointments to attend and how big your list will keep growing if you let it?

Well wishers will overload you with even more advice, physical and hormonal changes, relationship changes and heated discussions with your partner…

Holy shit – life is stressful enough as it is, right?

STOP !

Take a deep breath and BREATHE…

If ever there was a time to start to learn how to be selfish, it’s now. If you have never been good of taking time out for you, you need to start getting some major practice, there is going to be lots you are going to have to face alone or within your relationship; you can only be your best when you take care of YOU!

There will be sleepless nights, morning sickness or more appropriately named ALL-DAY sickness, pains, gas… oh the burps, farts and hiccups, tears, tantrums and plenty of stress, at it’s worst all the things the books DON’T tell you.

OR

You’ll be one of the lucky ones and have the dream pregnancy, glow from start to finish and sail through it all.

There is so much to cover on pregnancy alone, so we are going to tackle pregnancy one step at a time over a series of newsletters.
The first step, is actually finding out if you are pregnant or not?

January I started getting restless, hot flushes and feeling out of sorts. Now I’m not the sort that goes to the GP, she usually jokes about how she only sees me about every 5 years, so it wasn’t until several weeks later I made an appointment. We put it down to recent stress and she gave me a natural hormone we are supposed to produce late at night to help us sleep.

They didn’t make much difference and I started feeling slightly nauseous, but put it down to the lack of sleep.

At the start of February, I started cramping severely, felt incredibly nauseous and couldn’t even get out of bed, then came my period. Heavy, clotty and extremely painful – something I had never experienced before. It turned out, unbeknown to us, I was miscarrying.

The sleepless nights continued, the nausea worsened and my smell sensitivity increased to the point where one night, my partner Shaun was cooking lamb shanks and within 10 seconds I was throwing up in the bathroom.

So on the 11th of March we went to the local pharmacist to look at Pregnancy Tests….

OMG talk about overwhelm, soooo much choice, where on earth do you begin?
All promised great results / accuracy, but there was such a huge difference in price. Some you had to do midstream, others said you could dip it into a cup of urine, yet most of them stated they could be used 6 days BEFORE your missed period.

What The? How did you know you were going to miss your period? More specifically 6 days before hand, for those that didn’t have regular cycles.

There were digital ones that promised to calculate how far along you were, some also had a conception indicator, some promised results in less than 2 minutes and / or any time of day, some made predictions based on HcG levels of less than 25 IU/L, as early as 7 – 10 days after conception (if you knew when that was).

We finally chose a test that contained 2 tests in the box, just in case I screwed it up by dropping it in the toilet bowl or missed the stream.

We were definitely pregnant! The result came up straight away and stayed…

The excitement, tears, fears and stress of what was about to become all started to flood into our lives, as we realised how different our thought patterns were.

Trust me, guys approach the idea of pregnancy VERY differently and this will be one challenge you will need to balance as you face your own ideals, fears and stressors.

So now really is the time to start a new routine of looking after YOU!

Our Top 3 Tips to look after you: Dedicate time to yourself EVERY day!

1. If you don’t already meditate, give it a try – there are some great free resources out there to help you get started
2. Walk in the sunshine, especially over winter – this will help lift your soul. Both the exercise and fresh air will do you wonders
3. If you have a bath, treat yourself to a luxurious candlelit and sensual bath, but please avoid the use of essential oils during pregnancy unless under the guidance of a qualified Aromatherapist.