30 Weeks 4 Days...and my must-haves

I have officially seemed to make it to the home stretch of my pregnancy. Yay!

I am sure when I am 38 weeks I will look back and this post and think, "yah, right...if you only knew." But, right now I'm going to go ahead and bask in my over 30 week glory. If you hate when I tell you how far I am in weeks and not months and don't enjoy doing the math in your head I am just a little bit under 8 months.

So, I have about 9.5 weeks left and I am still feeling pretty good. Yes, I'm exhausted and large but I don't really think those are things to complain about. I knew those things were going to happen before I got on the baby-making train. Not that I don't sometimes complain to the hubs...he is special and gets to hear all of my whining about how giant and sleepy I am.

Sooo...what has made my pregnancy so wonderful? How did I get so lucky? Hmm...it's a mystery to me folks, sorry. However, I do hope that this continues all the way through birth (but I'm not planning on that part being much of a picnic). Since I'm also new at this whole pregnancy thing, I can't say I'm any kind of expert. BUT I will tell you a few things that have helped me along the way.

1. Get an exercise ball and learn how to use it while pregnant. I had a little bit of a lower joint issue very early in pregnancy and was sent to a physical therapist for a few weeks to fix the issue. The problem was apparently caused by my ligaments loosening due to pregnancy. While there, I used a large exercise ball and the therapist showed me some things I could do on it all the way through my pregnancy to keep muscles active and strong. I will tell you that I was really good about this in my first and second trimester and have been lacking a little lately. But I do feel like this helped keep me feeling strong and healthy with very little effort. SOOooo now I have my own.

Ta dah! Big Green Exercise Ball = Nicole's Wonderful Pregnancy

2. Ok, the next one I don't have a picture for but do yourself a favor if you are thinking about getting pregnant and get some acne face wash. Sounds gross right? Well, too bad. My skin has always been relatively good and lately it has pretty much sucked. So I talked to my OB and was able to find some good things to keep it under wraps (for the most part...I'm still kind of disgusting, but the level is minimal). From what I understand, I'm not the only preggo that has had this sort of thing happen.

3. People keep asking me how I avoided morning sickness in my first trimester. Well, I honestly don't really know how I did that for sure. However, my OB had told me a while before we even thought about getting preggo that I should start popping some multi-vitamins with folic acid in them about 3 months before trying. So I did. In fact, I started popping these suckers almost every day about 4 months prior. I think it may have helped how I feel and I know it was definitely a good thing for baby. On a side note, at about 8 weeks pregnant I was no longer able to keep these down (even with food) so now I'm a proud Flintstones Vitamin popper. Don't worry, my doctor approved them.

4. Finally, I think I was probably in the best shape of my life before we decided to jump on the baby bandwagon. I had just trained and finished a half marathon, which is something I had never done before so for me that was an accomplishment (for you that might be a weak show of physical work, but for me it was big). I was also eating a balanced diet and actively trying to fulfill my fruits, veggies, grains, etc. So, that may have also contributed to the fact that I felt pretty decent all the way through the first trimester.

So, there you have it. This is just stuff that worked for me and made me feel good but it could be totally worthless to someone else. If you have any other suggestions for me and anyone else reading who is looking into the world of baby land, let it rip below.

After all, part of the reason I started this whole blog was to get advice from other people and share my experiences. Hope this didn't bore you to tears!