Welcome to Gaia! ::

Congratulations!

Some things to know: ALWAYS keep appointments with your doctors; if you start craving things like chalk (Pica) GO TO YOUR DOCTOR! It can mean you are having mineral deficiency problems and can be harmful to your body if you don't get those balanced out. Always take a prenatal vitamin (prescription ones are best) and take note if you have ANY unusual cramping beyond the normal Braxton-Hicks contractions that tend to show up around the 2nd-3rd month. Also note that you may not know how far along you are just from when your last period was--some women bleed a little during the first months of pregnancy...it can fool you.

On the lighter side: you can get nifty little monitors at the baby store and hear the sweet little "whoosh-whoosh" noise of your baby anytime you want. It's really comforting.

id call your obgyn just to get checked out i had that before i was preggers with eric and about a week later i had a horrid miscarrage im not saying you will but id get checked out if i were you...sorry hon

Dear god I hope that's not what this is, I can't call my midwife till Monday but I just talked to manda and she said I should go to casualty if this continues ... I think that's what I will do.


It was like period pains but further back and lower down ... I had to breath really deeply to try and make the pain subside, I have been reading on the internet about cramping and I think it may have been nothing and that I am just getting myself all stressed about nothing ... then again, I am gonna go to casualty if they start up again.

congratulations hon *huge hugz for you* how wonderful and exciting.....the mood swing is hard to deal with hon, i swear i was psycho while i was preggie.....i used to cry ALL the time......and then i was angry a lot.....and then happy.....it's tough......and then i was TIRED all the time.....but it is definately worth it xp

Hello and congrats, have you found out if it is twins yet? I ask because with my first two pregnancies I didn't have any morning sickness or cramping at all. But with the last one I was sick as a dog from day one, so sick I was bedridden and lost track of some days the first two weeks. Then every few weeks like clockwork I had cramps so bad I thought I was going to loose them right up to the day they came. They turned out to be triplets. Do you have any bleeding? I did with my cramping, but after five months the Dr lazer sealed my cervix to help keep from loosing them.

You should talk to your Dr. and stress that there is a family history of multiples and ask for an ultrasound to find out for sure. If it is then you will most likely have the cramps every few weeks and could go into labor early. I fully believe that if I wasn't trained in Lamaz so I could control my contractions I would have misscarried and even had them too early. With the self hypnosis techniques I learned I was able to keep the labor subdued and went until 6 weeks premature.

Congrats, relax, take it easy, breath, talk to them, listen to the baby(ies) and your body. Don't be preasured to do things, housework, errands, work. If you feel weak sleep, if you feel hungry eat, if you feel like being alone be alone, if you want friends or family around that you can trust to keep the vibes mellow call on them. Don't be afraid to put those off though that would make you feel stressed, no matter if you hurt someones feelings that love you dearly, appologiers and forgivness can be made after the baby(ies) here.

It takes a lot more nutrients to make one baby and double to make two. I took two prenatal vitamins and I drank two glasses of instant breakfast every day on top of five full course meals to keep up with what my body was asking for. One vitamin and one glass of breakfast drink plus three good meals a day should do well for twins. Don't fret a few extra pounds, they will come off easily especilly it being your first.

Salt is a key to retaining water, if your not holding enough water add some salt, if your holding too much cut back. I stray way from iodized salts now days in favor of sea salt, don't know if there is a reason to use iodized, sea salt taste better and I am a supporter of organics instead of processed foods with additives. Pupaya (sp?), you know the big green fruit with a soft dark pink meat? It is good to get a lot of, it helps with the skins elastocity and prevents streatch marks. I still get it from the bulk section of the grocery store where you can buy it in candied chuncks. Hope it keeps me from getting too many wrinkles as I get older now. wink

Hi all! I am fairly new here and congratulate you on your pregnancy!!! However I wanted to say regarding this post that if you are pregnant absolutely DO NOT STOP using iodized salt... iodized salt is one of the only ways to get iodine which is essential for maintaining mental health among many other things. In countries where iodine is not available there are horrible diseases that are caused by this deficiency, which is why in the US they have fortified table salt with this nutrient. If you do not get it in pregnancy a deficiency can cause miscarriage and stillbirth along with retardation and problems with the development of the fetus. You can learn more at http://www.tulane.edu/~icec/aboutidd.htm I'm all for being healthy and organic, but to stop getting iodine is just plain dangerous! Good Luck to all of you!

Table Salt vs. Sea Salt - I thought I would get some more information on it and in taking a good look at the subject on line I find that the reason they started putting Iodine in table salt was because those who live inland in many countries lacked iodine in their diets. But those who lived closer to the ocean weren't as lacking because iodine is found in the soil nearer the sea and so it is in the foods that are eaten. A number of sites say the best way to get the iodine one needs is to eat more fish. Or to use unprocessed sea salt because it has not had the natural Iodine along with 81 other natural chemical elements that we need to stay healthy processed out of it like processed table salt.

To Quote: http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/salt.htm
"Salt Intake is Vital To Maintain or Recover Optimum Health
When organic, unrefined salt is lacking in your diet, weakness and sickness follow. Refined Salt: White Poison The problem with salt is not the salt itself but the condition of the salt we eat! Our regular table salt no longer has anything in common with the original crystal salt. Salt now a day is mainly sodium chloride and not salt. With the advent of industrial development, our natural salt was "chemically cleaned" and reduced only to sodium and chloride. Major producing companies dry their salt in huge kilns with temperatures reaching 1200 degrees F, changing he salt's chemical structure, which in turn adversely affects the human body. The common table salt we use for cooking has only 2 or 3 chemical elements. The seawater has 84 chemical elements. For our body to be healthy we need all those elements. When we use the common salt, we are in deficit of 81 elements which means we are somehow contributing to becoming weaker, imbalanced and more susceptible to diseases. Use the seawater salt."

and quote: Ask A Scientist©
"Iodine is available in seafood, and goiter (or goître)
used to be found particularly in montaineous regions
and areas far from salt water."

I started using sea salt last year and our health all around in our family improved greatly. We especially notice we have hardly even had the sniffles little on colds and flues in the last year now where before we were always coming down with one or the other around here and in the Dr's offices. You mention mental health, my kids are more stable and happier and their grades are up since switching to sea salt. I have been a lot happier emotionally with less depression, which my Dr's believe may be connected to the sea salt and the nutrients in it. Before they had prescribed numerous antidepressants but none of which really worked. They then tried Lithium salt to relieve the depression feeling maybe I had a form of salt deficiency. The lithium proved to work but after a year I started to have bad side effects so was taken off it. I didn't start to connect sea salt to our health issues until recently. I started using sea salt as a whim because I had it on some popcorn at a friend’s house and really liked the taste a lot better. The sea salt seems to be working where everything else failed though and after reading these reports I believe I will stay with the unprocessed sea salt now.

When I worked in Alaska one year in the fishing industry I knew that I felt healthier than I had ever been for some reason. I use to think they were fishy smelling, but the Fishermen always said that eating more fish would make me smarter; maybe they have something there after all.