Best Parenting World

If you are pregnant, there are things you should know about pregnancy and tanning booths. Tanning beds safety while pregnant has become very questionable. A better choice might be to use the sunless tanning spray booth equipment to keep your golden tan.

Initially it was believed that the use of a tanning bed after the first trimester was okay. During the first trimester the concern was about overheating yourself and the baby. However, in the past few years health officials are taking a harder stance and are encouraging pregnant women to not use the tanning bed at all.

You’re pregnant, feeling a little less attractive than you normally would. Well you shouldn’t! Pregnant women look beautiful with a glow that cannot be achieved any other way.

However, if you are a little down and missing that sun-kissed skin of previous years, the safest tan you can achieve is from a bottle or a booth. The ingredients in self tanners are harmless to you and your baby. So you can get that golden tan without worrying about hurting your baby.

Unless your practitioner gives you specific restrictions or instructions, you should keep active during pregnancy. This may be as simple as walking every day to get your heart rate moving, or it may be a complete fitness program designed to be safe during pregnancy. But you also need to do so safely.

It doesn’t seem possible at the outset of pregnancy, but your skin really will stretch enough to accommodate your baby. Collagen and elastin in the skin guarantee it. It seems that collagen has the tensile strength of steel ? and by the end of the pregnancy, you’ll understand why this is important.

Elastin, just like the name implies, comprises the rubber-like, elastic fibers in the skin. From a scientific perspective, each elastin molecule will uncoil into a more extended conformation when the fiber is stretched and will recoil spontaneously as soon as the stretching force is relaxed. Simply put, you will tend to bounce back when your baby is born.

Stretch marks are a universal fear of almost every newly pregnant woman. Statistics are against you ― some say as many as 90 percent of women get them on their abdomen, breasts, and/or thighs ― but here’s why you shouldn’t be too concerned:

The tendency toward stretch marks is inherited, and you can’t change your genetics.

If you do your best to gain weight gradually; there’s not much more you can do.

Moisturizers may make your skin feel better, but don’t waste too much money on special stretch-mark creams. No topical treatment has been proven to prevent stretch marks.

Labor and childbirth was an amazing, positive experience for me, both times. I am very fortunate, I know. But I do believe that if you prepare yourself through education (reading books, reading websites like this one, taking prenatal classes, etc) and taking good care of yourself while you are pregnant, you will have a far greater chance of a pleasant birth experience.

There are many things you can do to increase your chances of an empowering childbirth experience. These are the things I did:

I coached as my wife was delivering our third child. She was at the final phase of delivery where the last few pushes would result in the birth of our second daughter. As the crown of our daughter’s head protruded slightly from the very end of the birth canal, my wife’s obstetrician yelled, “Stop! Don’t push…”

He quickly positioned a hypodermic needle and injected anesthetic into a section of my wife’s perineal tissue - the skin between the vagina and the anus. Next he grabbed a scalpel and carefully addressed the freshly anesthetized area. The attending nurse and I instinctively wheeled our heads to the side so that our eyes could not see what happened next. “I never watch this part,” she told me, as the doctor quickly performed a simple procedure known as an episiotomy. Our daughter was born minutes later. As mother and daughter were meeting face-to-face for the very first time, the doctor was busy stitching the incision created during the episiotomy.

Accurate dating of pregnancy is one of the most important steps in your prenatal care. Every decision you make and many tests that are run are directly related to or interpreted from where you are in your pregnancy. Using the first day of your last menstrual period as the starting point is the standard convention for dating pregnancies ¯ that’s because it’s a date most women can recall, whereas the actual date of conception is a little harder to pinpoint.

It can be confusing, though. For example, an embryo that is twenty-six days from conception would be about forty days from the first day of the last menstrual period for a woman with twenty-eight-day cycles. Therefore, she could be called "almost six weeks," even though she is only almost four. A "due date" is typically calculated based on 280 days from the first day of your last menstrual period. Actually, the normal gestation of a human fetus is 266 days from conception.

Confused yet? The relevance of menstrual dates is that most books use them to discuss the progress of your pregnancy and further divide it into three trimesters. If you get a book on fetal development, however, it will be using actual dates that start with conception.

Every woman gains weight while she is pregnant. This is the way how it is and always has been. And it is as it is: It is also perfectly normal for a woman wanting to lose weight after a pregnancy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with aspiring to get yourself back into shape right after having giving birth to a baby. In fact - weight loss to a certain degree is certainly encouraged. Overweight just causes different health issues in the mid to long term.

However - it is very important that the woman takes a common sense approach when she is attempting to lose weight after a pregnancy. Keep in mind, the weight will not come off overnight, but it will come off if you “attack” it in the right way.

One of the biggest mistakes made by women is to try on clothes from before pregnancy. It is very important that you don’t try to fit back into your pre-pregnancy clothes right after birth. Accept the fact that you will still be carrying around most of the fat you gained to help keep your baby safe and sound during pregnancy.

By the time my husband and I finally got pregnant the first time, I had done a lot of reading about birth options and we had already decided to have a midwife instead of a doctor. We believe that pregnancy is a healthy state of being, and unless something came up, a midwife was the best way to go for us. Besides, where we live, a midwife can deliver babies at hospitals, so I felt that was the safest way to go. (Although, now, I feel I could have had my babies at home… but that is a whole other article!).

When I was a few weeks pregnant I came across an article on doulas, but I had never heard of a doula so I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. A doula is a woman who supports women through childbirth. “Doula” is an ancient Greek word meaning “servant to women”. A doula provides a woman with continuous emotional support, aides in her physical comfort, and encourages the laboring woman. She also provides praise, reassurance, and explains what is going on during the labor. While some husbands and partners may feel that it’s their job to offer support to the laboring woman, and therefore initially feel that they would not want a doula, after the birth they are very pleased and relieved that they had one. A doula can help husbands and partners by suggesting ways they can help the laboring woman, and doulas actually assist the husband to feel like he is contributing.

When a couple is unable to conceive a child, it is the couple’s problem, and not the "fault" of one partner or the other. Female issues are the most common reasons cited, but some studies suggest that up to 40% of infertility is caused by one or more reasons originating with the male partner.

For men, the problem can only be from one source- the sperm. However, that can involve a variety of difficulties from low sperm count, to poor motility, or abnormal shape/structure of the sperm. In many instances the cause of the sperm difficulties are idiopathic, with no known reason. Some issues may be a result of a past illness, current drug therapy, personal habits such as drinking and smoking, or varicocele veins. Recommendations for improving things like sperm count, include looser clothing around the genitals, eliminating hot baths or hot tubs, giving up alcohol and smoking, and stress reduction.

New mothers sometimes experience "postpartum blues." This is understandable. Pregnancy and birth are very dramatic events for your body ? both physically and emotionally. So, it’s common to feel a little weepy, irritable or moody in the first few days after birth.

If you eat well, supplement your diet with high quality whole food supplements (especially omega-3 oils and B vitamins) and get enough rest, mild cases should pass quickly.

But, if "the blues" continue for more than just a few days, or if you’re feeling really depressed and down, please don’t try to tough it out. Get professional help. Ask your midwife or doctor to connect you with someone who can give you appropriate counseling.

Here are some tips that can help prevent or ease the symptoms of postpartum depression:

1. Ask for help after the birth. Here are some things friends and family could do for you during the first few weeks that might work better than giving the traditional baby shower gifts. They can:

Bring you a complete dinner (hot and ready to serve);
Volunteer to do your laundry;
Take care of your house cleaning;
And/or entertain older children with a day of play.