In case you missed it, I’m pregnant! In fact, I’m very pregnant, 36 weeks and 4 days to be exact. My baby boy’s due date is February 26th. As we’re approaching the big day I’ve been reflecting more and more on the early days of finding out I was pregnant, how I began to prepare for one of life’s biggest changes, dealing with morning sickness and other first trimester growing pains.

This is the first of a small series of blog posts I plan to share about my pregnancy journey, and I’ll start by talking about the books I’ve skimmed, how I approached treating morning sickness, and some pregnancy related products I’ve used since the first trimester!

Nausea help:

Things no one tells you morning sickness; it is far from exclusive to the mornings. In fact, I spent entire days between the bed and the bathroom. Overall, it was way more intense than I thought it would be! Not to mention you’re in the very early days of pregnancy and usually haven’t announced to people yet, which means you’re trying to keep your sickness hush hush or make up false excuses for it (spent the summer telling people I had a stomach bug).

You’ll read the same advice just about everywhere, but Iron, B6, and Unisom are over the counter options that are going to help you kick the worst of first trimester morning sickness.

There are a few things to note about Unisom, first be sure to get it with the active ingredient Doxylamine because, as my local pharmacist noted, there are different types. Second, it will make you drowsy. However, if you’re having consistent morning sickness you’ll be able to build a bit of a tolerance to the drowsiness associated.

I definitely struggled with this next piece of advice, but I’ll still give it here: try to eat something before the worst of the nausea comes on. More than once I think my morning sickness could have been avoided if I got something in my stomach sooner. It was difficult at times when I was already feeling queasy and nothing sounded appealing, but having an empty stomach proved to not necessarily be a better alternative. You’d be surprised to find that eating can actually help to settle an upset stomach (at least I was! My logic was an empty stomach meant nothing could come back up … not quite the case).

Another thing I’ll note on morning sickness, if you feel that what you’re experiencing is outside of the norm, advocate for yourself to your doctor! I tried to express that my morning sickness was bad, but was told that it’s just common in early pregnancy. However, once my morning sickness spilled over into the second trimester, I was prescribed Zofran, which GREATLY helped my nausea symptoms. I just wish I would have been more persistent sooner, so remember you know yourself and your body better than anyone. Also be aware that some people do suffer from HG, or hyperemesis gravidarum, basically an extreme form of morning sickness that requires additional medical attention and support (note: I did not suffer from this personally).

Pregnancy products:

When it comes to preparing to your baby, there are SO many things you’ll be told you need for yourself, your baby, labor, prenatal and postpartum care. Maybe once baby is here I’ll write a blog post about what things I found essential and which items I could have skipped on, but for now I’ll share the prenatal products I was happy to have early on!

A quick note: as an Amazon associate I may earn commission on qualifying purchases from the links in this post!

This should almost go without saying, but I wanted to throw it in here: start taking a prenatal vitamin ASAP! It is so important to make sure you’re supporting baby’s healthy growth with a proper multivitamin (what’s less important is which prenatal vitamin you take, truthfully I just took a generic brand). One perk of the prenatal vitamins? You might just see an improvement in your hair and nail growth!

Next I’d say you should get yourself a pregnancy pillow! I first started announcing my pregnancy around my birthday and was gifted one early on as a bday gift. I was surprised how early on I couldn’t find a comfortable sleeping position and so I started using my maternity pillow at around 15 weeks. I’m pretty sure this is the pillow I was gifted, it’s been an amazing addition to my nighttime routine!

Before I took a test, one of the reasons I thought I might be pregnant was because of how tender my breasts and sensitive my nipples were. It was truly painful! That being said, the next must have on my prenatal list is nipple butter! I use Earth Mama nipple butter, which I’ll sometimes put in the fridge before using for an extra cooling effect. I also imagine this is a product I’ll be using for a while, as I think it’ll come in handy during my postpartum and breastfeeding journey.

If stretch marks are a worry, Palmer’s cocoa butter is your new best friend! Even if you’re not that worried about stretch marks Palmer’s is perfect for gentle massages on your belly and bum (or wherever you’re seeing stretch marks appear). Some pregnant people will also use Palmer’s oil in combination with the cocoa butter for extra moisturizing.

My last recommendation are compression socks! Luckily I haven’t experienced much swelling during my pregnancy and I still recommend them! I originally picked up a pair before doing some traveling by plane as they’re supposed to help reduce the chance of blood clots when sitting for a long time and taking into consideration the changes in altitude you experience on a flight. They really made the trip more comfortable and were essential when my partner and I flew all the way from Florida to Hawaii for our babymoon (more on that in another blog post)!

Books:

There is such a wealth of information out there about pregnancy and childbirth, especially with the endless resources on the internet and social media. I think it’s really important to be aware and be in control of the content you’re consuming, there is a such thing as too much information! Every pregnancy ad birth is different, so try to avoid going down a rabbit-hole of horror stories and things that can go wrong.

That being said, the couple of books I’ll recommend below seem to be staples when it comes to reading about childbirth. I had multiple moms and my doula recommend the following, all of which I skimmed and admittedly have not read cover to cover.

1. What to Expect When You’re Expecting (also check out the What to Expect app for tracking your pregnancy and daily tips!)
2. Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth
3. HypnoBirthing: the Mongan Method (this sounds out there, but you’ll learn about the importance of breathing techniques through labor!)

That’s all for this pregnancy post, hopefully this has been helpful for any mamas-to-be who are in the early days of their journey! Stay tuned for more of my perspective on pregnancy. Feel free to leave questions in the comments or tell me what other types of posts on pregnancy you’d like to see!