Anyway

I found a couple of things very use­ful for my second preg­nancy that I did­n’t dis­cov­er for my first — and thought I should blog them in case they’re use­ful to any­body else. I’m sure any read­ers with oth­er ideas will add them — I’ll do anoth­er post in a bit about some early baby­hood stuff that I found useful.

The biggest prob­lems I had with the second preg­nancy were simply due to the size of the belly. I can highly recom­mend doing Pil­ates, or yoga, or find­ing some oth­er way of get­ting some­body to help you fig­ure out how to sit, stand, and walk as the belly grows. I stuck out in front which made the poten­tial for lower back pain (which I had for my first, when I did­n’t do Pil­ates) worse than for those women for whom the weight is more evenly dis­trib­uted. I was in a cof­fee shop in the last couple of weeks and chat­ted to the barista about this; she thought stick­ing out in front and not being notice­ably preg­nant from behind was good until I poin­ted out it makes doing up your shoes dif­fi­cult. You do get some­what adept at twist­ing your legs around so you can get at your feet side­ways — I found a long shoe­horn was very use­ful at this stage. 

A body pil­low was use­ful for sleep­ing as you are meant to sleep only on your side, and the lig­a­ments in your hips start to stretch and hurt, so you need all the sup­port you can get. You can get by with lots of pil­lows, but a body pil­low is easi­er to deal with. I did­n’t both­er with one of those fancy shaped body pil­lows, the basic straight ver­sion did just fine and was a lot less expens­ive. I also found reg­u­lar mas­sages from a registered mas­sage ther­ap­ist (make sure they have preg­nancy pil­lows for sup­port and have exper­i­ence in pren­at­al mas­sage) to be well worth the money — all those muscles that are being stretched and over­loaded in unfa­mil­i­ar ways really enjoyed being put back into place.

And of course you want to get as much done as pos­sible before the baby arrives, while get­ting as much sleep as pos­sible. No mat­ter how tired you are before the baby arrives, and how little energy you have, you will be more tired and have less energy after­wards! Mind you, if you live any­where like Van­couver and need any renov­a­tions done, you won’t have much choice in when things get done. They will get done when the con­tract­or can fit them in, if you can find a con­tract­or to do any­thing. And the rest will get done when you have some energy. Hav­ing a baby is a good les­son in what does­n’t need to be done.