Parenting

Modern Pregnancy Monitoring Solutions: 4 Advantages of Using A Smart Pregnancy Tracker

Pregnancy
Photo by John Looy on Unsplash

Pregnancy has always gone along with procreation, and there is something mystical about the whole process, the creation of a human life where once there was nothing: genesis, so to speak. It is a natural and beautiful thing, but there are parts of it that can be uncomfortable and inconvenient for the woman, which is why it is so nice that advancements in technology have made things a little easier. Foremost among these innovations is the smart pregnancy tracker. There are different ones on the market, and it would behoove the modern woman to consider getting one, like those offered at bloomlife.com. Here are four reasons you should consider monitoring your pregnancy with a smart tracker.

They Will Warn You of Sudden Changes with the Fetus

The primary purpose of most pregnancy trackers is to monitor how the fetus is doing in the mother’s belly. As such, for the expectant mother who is wearing one, if the child is in distress, the tracker will alert her before she might be aware that anything is amiss. These trackers can let the mother know if what she is experiencing is only something ordinary like gas, or whether it is, in fact, the onset of early labor.

Your Partner Can Be an Intimate Part of the Process

With a smart pregnancy tracker, your partner can have an insight into what you are experiencing like never before. It’s true that they won’t be able to feel the mother’s contractions, for better or worse, but they will be able to quantify what is taking place. This is a way to create an additional emotional attachment to the woman who is carrying the child that you will both be rearing together.

You Are Less Likely to Go to The Hospital Prematurely

If you’re in the third trimester and you are getting close to the due date, then false labor can easily occur. This is where you are experiencing a bodily sensation that mimics the feeling of labor but is not the actual event. Through the use of a smart pregnancy tracker, you will be much more likely to identify when the main event is about to occur. That can save you multiple unnecessary trips to and from the hospital maternity ward.

When the Time Comes, You Can Precisely Track Contractions

A critical part of the birthing process is the tracking of contractions so that the mother knows when to push. This reveals how quickly the child is coming. With a smart pregnancy tracker, there is no guesswork. The tracker monitors uterine activity in real-time so that the frequency and the duration are there for all to see. This is useful for the birthing mother, her partner, and the medical team who are taking care of her.

Medical technology and prenatal care have progressed to the point where giving birth is so much more likely to produce a happy result in the form of both a healthy child and mother. The smart pregnancy tracker is another innovative tool that a mother can use to ensure that both the pregnancy and the birth go smoothly.

Maternity Matters

Ways To Help You Deal with a Traumatic Birth

If you’re a regular reader, you’re probably aware of the fact that I started blogging after having a traumatic birth with Sausage, and wanted a place to express myself. I was in the midst of PND and PTSD and having a way to just chatter away about all the things in my head provided really good therapy for me. I was thinking today about ways that you can help yourself after having a traumatic birth, and I thought I’d share some of them with you today.

Find an Outlet

For me, it was writing, but for other people it might be exercise, dancing, singing, painting – anything that helps you to take a break from horrible thoughts and gives you a way to pour yourself into something else. I’m a bit of a bottler when it comes to talking about my feelings, but I find it comes much easier to me when I write.

Hold Someone Accountable

For us, it was really important to get some justice for what happened to Sausage, because we know it was due to negligence on the part of the hospital, so seeking compensation seemed like a logical step. Companies like Your Legal Friend can help you to seek compensation for brain injuries and it will usually never cost you a penny, regardless of whether you win or lose.

Find People who ‘Get It’

I was really lucky to find, through blogging, a whole load of people who had been through similar things and so could relate to how I was feeling. My friend Susanne and I even set up a blog called ‘Maternity Matters’ together, so that we could write about all things related to maternity issues in the hope of helping people like ourselves.

Get Some Professional Help

There is absolutely no shame in admitting that you need some help, whether that’s talking therapy or medication, and I highly recommend going to your GP to see if there’s anything they can offer. Often, trauma can stay with us for a long time if we don’t do something to work past it, and the last thing you want is it rearing its ugly head when you least expect it.

Have a Debrief

Most hospitals offer the opportunity to have a meeting with your midwife or consultant, who can go over your notes with you and explain exactly what went wrong and why, and I wish this was something I’d done. Having a professional explain things to you might just give you some clarity on the situation and give you a clue as to what you want to do next.

 

Baby · Birth · C-Section · Parenting · Pregnancy

Post C-Section Tips

 Post C-Section TipsThe date of my planned c-section is looming fast and I’m already aware of (and very happy about) the fact that this will be a totally different experience to last time. For a start, I’m more than 5 years older and totally not taking for granted what five years worth of ageing can do – I feel very different as an almost 30 year old than I did as a just-turned-24 year old, and I’m aware that this could make the healing process a little different. There’s also the fact that this will be my second c-section and that could well affect my healing time and recovery afterwards.

The biggest difference, though, will be the birth itself and subsequent days. Sausage was in NICU for the first week of her life and I had been sent home, so for those 7 days I was waking, showering, going to the hospital, sitting next to our baby and then going home to do it all again in the afternoon. I must have walked miles of corridor in that first week – a far cry from the ‘as much bed rest and sleep as you can manage’ advice that’s given to most new mothers. Having said that, I actually healed and recovered from my operation pretty quickly and I wonder if my ‘carrying on regardless’ kind of helped?

Anyway, instead of going into the second c-section feeling mystified, I thought I’d ask some of my blogging pals what their best tips were for post c-section recovery, and here’s what they had to say:

Jenny from Mum of One: “Take it slowly. It is easy to forget but it is major abdominal surgery and it will take a good while to recover. Enjoy cuddles in bed with your baby as much as possible those first few weeks.”

Laura from Tired Mummy of Two: “Pillow on your belly for the first time you put a seat belt on!”

Vanessa from HPMCQ: “Do not sneeze!”

Nikki from Stressy Mummy: “Get as much help as you can for the first couple of weeks and don’t lift anything heavier than a kettle”

Stacey from Five’s a Fellowship: “Don’t even thinking about having a bath – take a shower for the first week or so otherwise you’ll find yourself unable to get back out of the tub!”

Kelly from Domestic Goddesque: “Very big pants!”

Cat from Cat’s Yellow Days: “Take it easy but do make sure you still try to keep moving even if it’s just up and down the hall to get a cup of tea. Not getting any exercise at all can leave you feeling even weaker in the long run.”

Rebecca from Here Come the Girls: “Ignore everyone’s requests to show you the scar! On a serious note; write down a list of all the times you have taken pain killers as you’ll forget and you don’t want to do that.”

Jenny from Cheetahs in my Shoes: “If you have SPD and a C-Section it can be worth asking for a walking frame to get you moving again to stop you twisting too much when you mobilise again. It’s not glamorous but can really help”

Sarah from Boo, Roo and Tigger Too: “If you do not have a changing unit downstairs then change babies nappy on a changing mat on the sofa, to save you having to get down to the floor and bend over too far”

Anna from The Imagination Tree: “I’d say take peppermint oil to ease the wind pain as it’s excruciating after a c-s! Wear mega pants up to your belly button- buy granny knickers from primarni rather than the expensive ones made for the purpose. Walk around sooner than you feel able to and it will increase your recovery time massively. Keep all vital baby equipment at standing level. Wear your hubby’s trackie-bots or a nighty as everything hurts around the waist. Phone a doctor the very second there’s redness or swelling in your scar (eesh!) Try not to get mastitis at the same time- you’ll sob and ask for someone to kill you ;-)”

As for me, my own tip would be to invest in a v-pillow or even just a spare, regular pillow to put under your tummy if you sleep on your side; having a bit of extra support while you’re healing can really help with your comfort levels in the first couple of weeks after surgery.

Thanks to all of my lovely friends who’ve contributed their wisdom. If you have any other tips for me, please leave a comment below – knowledge is power and I need all the help I can get!

Personal

The Safe Inside My Head.

Something must have changed in me lately, as I feel much more able to think and write about Sausage’s birth and I’m hoping that’s a positive step. But I must admit, there is something which scares me about the whole process and that’s remembering things which have been firmly buried inside my head. I think that’s a huge part of my reluctance to go to a counsellor, I know there is so much I don’t remember which means that if it were to be unlocked, I might be traumatised all over again.

Something I only touched on minimally when I wrote my birth story was the fact that there is a huge chunk of my labour that I don’t remember. I have small flashes of moments during that time, but so much is still missing. Around three hours, in total. Once my waters broke, I think at around 6pm as my dinner had just been put in front of me, I remember my contractions starting and being very painful. I remember a flash of me pressing myself against a wall as I got it into my head that this would relieve the pain. The next thing I remember is huffing the gas and air and wondering why it wasn’t working. Now I’m having an epidural and laying on my side. Next, I’m laying on my back and they’re doing an examination of the tops of Sausage’s head. Then, I’m in theatre with someone spraying something cold on my stomach and I’m screaming for a general anaesthetic. Then, I’m coming round to the sound of thunder, totally unaware of what’s going on or where my baby is. And I’m not even sure how accurate the parts I do remember are, as Husband has told things a bit differently, and he was a lot more aware of what was going on at the time.

Sausage was born at 9.17pm, so out of a three-hour labour, I remember snapshots which amount to about ten minutes. And the rest of it is all locked inside my head, in a little compartment. And I must admit, I’m terrified that one day the locks on those compartments will simultaneously fail and a whole world of shit will fall out onto me. It’s a very difficult feeling, on the one hand I am genuinely scared of what I might remember one day, on the other I really resent my brain for keeping it all from me, like there are secrets being kept. But I wouldn’t even know where to start with trying to remember, don’t know if I would even want to and even if I did, I couldn’t guarantee that it would all trickle out at a nice slow pace, giving me time to process it all. As I said, world of shit falling on me.

It’s a terrible analogy, but I really do get that part in Inception with the safe that they’re trying to crack, inside the blokes head.

So where do I go from here? I’m at something of a stalemate. People have suggested that I ask to go over my labour notes, but I just don’t know how much good that would do me. I suspect it could be more damaging than healing, and not to sound like a dick, but due to a lifetime of health anxiety I have a slightly more in-depth view of what certain medical terms mean than a lot of layman, so while they might think they’re baffling me with terminology, I could be horrifying aware of things I didn’t know before. I don’t know, I think I’m trying to talk myself out of it. Not to mention the fact that if they allowed Dr. Shithead into the room, the eminent consultant who almost ruined my life, I couldn’t trust myself to not beat her to a bloody pulp with the nearest bottle of oxygen or fire extinguisher. Anger, much?

I’m stuck, basically. Not wanting to remember, but hating my brain for not letting me remember.

And not having a clue where that leaves me…