The First Month

The first month can be tough.

Before you can celebrate becoming pregnant, you need to wait at least two weeks before taking any tests… and those two weeks are the longest weeks ever!

Some women are luckier than others, because they get pregnancy symptoms right away,especially nausea, so even if they can’t see the plus sign on a test yet, deep down they know that the baby journey has started. 

So what happens after the plus sign shows up? You can take another test, to confirm the results, and luckily these days they sell multiple pregnancy tests in one box, because they know we want to make sure! 

I remember my box had two standard pregnancy tests with the plus and minus signs, and a digital one that actually spelled the word “pregnant” or “not pregnant”. Of course, I aced all three of them!

One thing to remember is that these tests can fail, but they usually fail on the negative side, meaning they might show a non pregnant status when in fact you are pregnant. On the other hand, if you see a positive result, chances are pretty high that you are pregnant.

So what’s next?

For starters, you should go see your OB/GYN doctor, to make sure you really are pregnant, and to get medical guidance for the next 9 months.

Unfortunately, doctors see many patients every day, and sometimes even if they don’t mean to do so, they just can’t spend enough time with you to give you a comprehensive picture of what to expect now that you are pregnant. So it’s really up to you to make sure you ask any questions you might have, and to get all your doubts cleared up.

There is a list long a mile of things you should stop doing now that you are pregnant, but of course a doctor won’t sit down for two hours with you to go over this whole list. If you ask I am sure he will tell you, but if you don’t, many times you’re on your own.

I just wish they had a “first-time mom” package that they would give you on that very first visit. And maybe some doctors have it, unfortunately mine didn’t, so I had to do a lot of researching on my own.

Later on, a lot of these “pregnancy guides” will find their way to you (from your health insurance, from a pregnancy magazine, from a relative…), but I believe it’s important to get your hands on this information as soon as possible, when it counts the most.

The first trimester is, in fact, the more critical time, when the baby first starts forming and when he/she is more susceptible to what you do and to what you eat.

So if you are not supposed to drink any alcohol when pregnant, you want to find out as soon as you find out you’re pregnant. Not on your third month, after you’ve already indulged in many glasses of wine.

So before you even continue reading this, read your new rules.

Be sure to take prenatal vitamins, and if they make you sick (it can happen) just tell your doctor to give you another prescription for something different. It happened to me. The first vitamins they prescribed me made me dizzy, and so I stopped taking them (not smart). But then I asked my doctor for different ones and she gave me chewable vitamins that actually worked much better and didn’t make me feel sick at all (they tasted chalky but I was able to deal with the chalkiness better than with the dizziness).

The medical exams this month are going to be probably just the one OB visit to confirm the pregnancy.

If you have a chronic illness and you need to take regular medicines for it, like diabetes for example, you will need to discuss with your doctor (and later on with a genetic counselor) the effect of the medicines on the developing fetus, and to weigh the pros and cons of continuing taking the medicines against stopping them.

One last thing you should do is get a good pregnancy book. You are going to go through so many changes and you will have a million different questions every other week.

Some books are better than others, so do your research before you buy, maybe stop by the library and check a couple of them out before buying.

I personally went with a classic: What To Expect When You’re Expecting

If you only buy one book, this should be it.

It covers everything you need to know now that you are pregnant, and it breaks it down month by month, and then even further week by week.

It describes the various changes your body will go through and the associated symptoms. And throughout the book, you will find these very informative Q&A sessions.

I also wanted to read The Complete Organic Pregnancy.

Not that going completely organic is something I wanted to do, but I wanted to be aware of these organic suggestions, and see if there was I way I could incorporate a few of them. And I did.

For example, when painting the walls of the nursery, we used VOC free paint, as suggested by The Complete Organic Pregnancy book.

I already knew that breathing regular paint fumes was not healthy for anybody, and especially not for pregnant women, but I didn’t know that there was a safer alternative. And thanks to this book I learned about VOC free paint.