My Pregnancy Journey – Breaking Stereotypes the Third Time Around!

All my pregnancies have been wonderful, mind you, and I wouldn’t exchange them for anybody else’s, no matter how glamorous they might claim theirs to be. Be it the first super special pregnancy or the second one with the anxious ‘big sister to be’ counting days on the calendar with us. But it was the third time around when I really found my element, so to say.

As much as we love to indulge pregnant women in India, the pregnancy itself is not without a lot of pressure from the families and the society in general. A pregnant woman is supposed to act (and not act, mostly) in certain ways. Superstitions, over-anxiousness (that stems out of concern for you, no doubt) and over-interference, may I add, makes you wonder if your pregnancy could have been different – in a positive way?

Well, it really can be different and it took me a while to get there. Before I planned my third baby, we signed an unwritten pact – me and my husband – that this time, it was going to be about what we were most comfortable with. We decided to do away with a lot of things that simply struck as ‘not right’ and do our own thing. After all, we were not first time parents and had quite some pregnancy and parenting experience to help us decide what worked best for us.

This made me feel comfortable instantly and I began to anticipate my pregnancy. Very soon, I got pregnant and true to what we had decided, broke quite a few stereotypes. On reading about a blogging cue, I thought this would be a great chance to let you in on some of them! I’m writing about my wonderful journey of pregnancy for the #YummyMummy blogging activity at BlogAdda in association with Marico Bio Oil.

Eating for Two? Not really!

Now, my gynecologist is a family friend and almost like a mother to me. I doubt she would give me the wrong advice. This time I made up mind to follow her advice to the T and she was very clear about this – A pregnant woman does not need to eat for two people! I used her tips and diet plans to eat really healthy and did away with the ‘A pregnant woman should eat what she craves for’ entirely. Further reading on the subject enlightened me that eating junk during my pregnancy would affect my baby badly while eating healthy would help raise a healthy baby.

Shopping for the Baby

Not that I needed to shop much for the baby – I pretty much had everything from my past two childbirths. But there were some things I knew from experience that I should have on hand. I did away with the superstition that shopping for the baby beforehand brings bad luck and went ahead and shopped for the necessities. That said, I understand the implications of this superstition. It is only to protect the mother from heartbreak should something untoward happen. It is something like ‘counting your chickens before they hatch’, but I believe this is carried too far. So, coolly and calmly, I used my discretion and was well prepared.

A Normal Everyday Life

My 2 kids were enough to keep my life normal (or whatever passes for normal in my family) but I made a conscious effort to not let the pregnancy thing go to my head too much. Instead of sleeping around (not that it was much of a choice) and resting all day, I was up and about doing regular chores, driving around and taking light exercise everyday. This made sure my body was active and flexible throughout the pregnancy. I reminded myself everyday that I was pregnant, not sick!

A Babymoon!

Yay! Whoever said traveling isn’t good during pregnancy. If you are healthy and take necessary precautions, you will love taking a babymoon. I certainly enjoyed mine. Together with kids on board, we drove to a wildlife sanctuary, stayed in luxury during the night and roughed it up a bit in jungle safaris during the day time. We had a blast, the kids had a blast and the baby was kicking away wildly too!

Letting the Siblings Choose a Name

What good is it to become a big sister and a big brother if you do not get any authorities, right? Instead of deciding it between ourselves or being polite and letting the elders in the family have a say, we let the kids join in the fun. Our kids had full control of what they wanted to name the baby. We did help them with options but only using their directives.

Buying New Clothes

Of course, I dug up my maternity jeans, but I did not go back to making do with whatever I have on hand, only because the new size would last a short while. I decided I wanted to look and feel good during my pregnancy and gifted myself brand new clothes and lost no opportunity to dress up! They also lasted through the ‘home from the hospital’ time when you have plenty of visitors and yes, they did earn me quite a few compliments on how I ‘”did not” look like someone who was just back after a C-section. I was on cloud nine as you can well imagine :). And not just me, I ordered new clothes for the kids too – the ones they would wear to the hospital to visit their new baby brother or sister. I prepared sets for each day that I would be away from them so they found it easier to dress up and also make them look forward to wearing their new clothes and possibly lessen the pinch of Momma being away from them.

Entertaining

Planning and throwing parties is something I really, truly enjoy! In fact, it is a joke in my family but I don’t mind. I get a kick out of it. Therefore, instead of using my pregnancy as an excuse to lie low, I enlisted some help and threw fabulous birthday parties and family dinners! Don’t ask me how it helped, but it works like magic for me. You might find some other passions to indulge in, perhaps?

Pampering

It is always nice to feel pampered during pregnancy, be it your first or your third time. As much as my doting husband pampered me, I decided to play a more active part. At my age and after two kids, I understand my responsibilities towards myself. I understand how important it is to make time for myself and routine skincare and such. Not only did I make salon and spa visits more regular than those during my earlier pregnancies but I made sure that my days at the hospital were going to be very different than the previous times. No more swollen eyed, hassled and tired mommy photos with my baby. A few days before the date of my planned C-Section, I started going to the salon for a short time everyday since I couldn’t afford to spend an entire day in there. In small batches, I took care of my hair colour, a skin radiance facial, a full body wax (yup! no doctor was going to see any bushes, I decided ;)), manicure and pedicure. It made me feel so, so good landing up at the hospital with my nails shaped and painted and legs all smoothed up that it made the childbirth so much more easy. Really, I am not kidding. You won’t believe how many things stress you out when you are supposed to be thinking of your delivery. Taking care of a few of them beforehand make you relax and feel super confident. I am actually surprised (and somewhat emabarrased!) I did not do this during every pregnancy… but then my kids have a habit of popping out earlier than expected!

Gifts for the Older Kids

This is not really something new, but I thought I will share it with you all the same because I think it has worked very well for us. Every time I have had a baby, we make sure to gift the older sibling something from us and the baby. From ‘I am the Big Sister’ t-shirts to ‘I am a Big Brother’ books, the gifts commemorate the special event happening in your children’s lives! Some new toys don’t hurt either. After all, you are going to be spending much more time looking after the baby for the next couple of years and it will only help if the elder ones feel good about it. The gifts do help make up for some of your absence although not entirely. And of course, it is another reason to go shopping!

There! I challenged myself and kept myself so much more active and happy with these new rituals that I added to my pregnancy. Of course, there were the usual challenges of pregnancy but these little things made my third pregnancy so wonderful and comfortable that I have beautiful memories of it as do my children.

P.S. My dear friends think that planning a third baby was a feat in itself.. Lol! Well, I beg to differ. I would love to do it again had my dear gynaec not given me a red signal due to my C-sections.