I am currently 24 weeks pregnant with baby boy number two, and I cannot believe how fast this pregnancy is flying by! Some days I can’t wait for him to be here in my arms, and other days I find myself holding onto the now and being sad about how things are going to change. You know, all the typical pregnancy hormones and feelings leading up to baby number two–up and down constantly! Overall though, I am so pumped to continue my role as being boy mama and am looking forward to watching Enzo step into his role as being big brother.
Since birth is slowly sneaking up on me, I’m starting to make a list of all the things I have to do to mentally prep for birth again. Mental preparation for birth (medicated or unmedicated, honestly!), is SO important–and if you’re an expecting mama, I highly recommend you prioritize it! It can really make all the difference, and not to mention, it’s pretty fascinating to learn about too.
Here’s a list of what I’m doing, and if you have any tips or anything I should add–let me know in the comments below!
Hypnobirthing Refresh
While I was pregnant with my first, we did a six week course through Mind Body Baby called Hypnobirthing. We were both fascinated with what we learned and now looking back, we both believe it played a significant role in giving me (well, us ;)) the birth we dreamed of. Although we would love to do the full course over again, it’s just not realistic for us with having a toddler. However, we both feel like we need a refresher! Instead, we opted
for the private lesson this time. We’ll be doing a one time, three hour private session with our instructor going over everything we learned in the course. I’m not really in the mental zone for birth right now might I add–so I have a feeling after our session I’ll be hyped up and ready to go!
Birth Reads
Another thing I did while I was pregnant with Enzo was read books. What better way to refresh than to re-read books over again? I’ll be reading these books here and possibly adding one or two more if I find some good ones. Got any recommendations? Like I mentioned up above, it helps that this stuff is super interesting to learn/read about.
Affirmations
These play a huge roll in birth for me, and I would love to get even more into it this time. I’m planning on looking up some birth affirmation cards, and seeing if I can do something creative like paint them to get more in the mental space. I did print outs last time and loved it, so I’m excited to do this again!
Physical Care
Something I did while I was pregnant with Enzo was get prenatal massages. Now that I have a toddler to chase around, I’m sticking with that and doing them again this time! My goal was to do one massage per trimester, but scheduling hasn’t quite worked out like that. So I just have 3 on my list, and I will probably add in one more for fourth trimester. I think I’ll thank myself later! 😉
During my first pregnancy, I really had no complaints for the physical side of things. I’m on my feet now though all day everyday, and my back has been killing me. I have my first chiropractor appointment and I am really hoping it helps make things more comfortable!
Hopefully this helps those of you who are looking to do things to prep for birth, and if not, I hope you at least found it interesting. 🙂
XO,
Danielle Alana
