The Mom Crowd

Danelle “Barbi” Ice is a problogger and the founder/editor of HomemakerBarbi.com, an online Home & How-To magazine with free resources specializing in homemaking, parenting, frugal living, and family life.  If you liked this article, visit Homemaker Barbi!

Pregnancy is an exciting time of change and anticipation, and many of us expecting mamas start reading every pregnancy book, magazine and website available!  New moms want advice, knowledge, and the security of others’ experiences to know that what we’re feeling is normal, even if this isn’t your first baby.

There are plenty of things you may wonder about at some time during the 9 months, however, that you won’t read about in books. We’re giving it to you straight:  6 truths about pregnancy and motherhood that nobody tells you.

1.  You do not have to (and probably won’t) lose your baby weight immediately.  We’ve all heard the cliché: It took you 9 months to gain the weight, and you can’t lose it overnight.  This saying is a cliché because although we may not like it, these words are true!  It is not good to jump into hardcore exercise right after birth, especially if you did not maintain a high level of physical exertion during your pregnancy.  Take it easy and start slowly.

With the changes your body had just gone through in the birthing process, your top health priorities are rest, recovery, and adjustment.  Your blood volume will decrease, your organs will shift back into place, your body will learn how to be non-pregnant again. Be patient with your body and focus on your health and wellness, not your size and weight.

2.  Even celebrities cannot lose their pregnancy weight overnight.  Of course we see them on the magazine covers 6 weeks after birth looking Oscar-fabulous, but remember that their lifestyles (most times) do not mirror ours!  Our favorite stars might have nannies to help out, personal chefs to cook for them, and personal trainers to come exercise with them daily.  Even with this help, they still have to work hard at exercise and wait for their body to make its natural transitions at its own pace.

3.  Not every mother gets post partum depression (PPD).  Some women do, some women don’t, and not all of your pregnancies will be the same.  If you need help dealing with your feelings, talk to your doctor immediately.  However, if you don’t get PPD, just count your lucky stars! Always be understanding that other moms may be going through post-pregnancy feelings you didn’t, and that’s okay too.

4.  Not every mother enjoys pregnancy.  For some women, pregnancy is an incredibly taxing physical experience.  Some moms have excessive headaches or prominent morning sickness.  Pregnancy is hard work and a very difficult transition for your body and mind to make.  If you don’t enjoy being pregnant due to these or other circumstances, don’t feel guilty.  It’s okay if you don’t feel happy and glowing every day.  Just focus on the good aspects, do the best you can, and take care of your body and your baby!

5.  Sometimes it’s better to keep your baby name choices private.  When you and your partner have chosen names that you love and are ready to pass on to your children for their entire lives, it can be very disheartening to hear comments to the contrary.  It is not unheard of for friends, family members, or even complete strangers to ask if you’ve chosen names and then tell you why those names are bad!  It may defy common-sense, but I was told the name I chose for my son was weird, ugly, icky, old, hard to spell, bizarre, and that “I should come up with something better”.  And if that isn’t bad enough, it’s my husband’s middle name!  Sometimes, relatives and in-laws can even argue about which family names should be used.

Since name choices are personal and something you should be able to feel good about (without receiving any inappropriate or insensitive comments), it’s okay to keep these private between you and your spouse and children.  How do you politely decline to answer when someone asks if you’ve decided on names yet? Simply say, “We haven’t decided for sure yet. We still have plenty of time.”

6.  It’s okay to tell everyone you’re pregnant as soon as you find out!  Finding out that you’re expecting is exciting.  After all, that news changes your life forever and tells you that you’re about to experience an exciting 9 months as you and your spouse wait to meet the fruits of your love.  Talk about anticipation!  While some OB/GYNs and pregnancy books advise not to share the news until you’re out of the first trimester (due to the higher risk of miscarriage in the early months), you should do what feels right to you.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for the sequel, 6 MORE Truths about Pregnancy and Motherhood that Nobody Tells You!

Did you clean and organize a lot more than usual while you were waiting for your little one to come? According to Pregnancy Weekly nesting is  “an uncontrollable urge to clean one’s house brought on by a desire to prepare a nest for the new baby, to tie up loose ends of old projects and to organize your world.” I like this definition because it is not limited to just cleaning the house.

With my first baby the closest I came to nesting was labeling everything on my desk at work as I prepared to pass off my workload and washing some onesies. With my second I have had incredible urges to have projects tied up, The Mom Crowd taken care of (thanks Dawn!), the house scrubbed, and all necessary baby items cleaned and ready to go.

Mamashealth.com says that while doing household chores is normal, “when a woman is nesting, she will probably carry out the tasks more meticulously and persistently than usual.” Yesterday I cleaned and shined the toaster oven inside and out. Something I would never normally do! My husband helped me clean and I gave him clear instructions on how the toilets should be cleaned and how the playroom should be picked up. Thankfully he puts up with me and cleaned accordingly.

I have heard my friends say that they have tried to rearrange huge pieces of furniture by themselves and hyper-cleaned the house when they were pregnant. I am curious, have you done anything crazy while nesting? I would love to hear your nesting stories in the comments!

- photo courtesy of zippaparazzo!

I have mentioned before that I am currently in the process of picking baby names for my second little one coming in 4 weeks. We didn’t find out the gender so we have to pick out a boy and a girl name. It is one of the most exciting and difficult parts of having children. That is a lot of a pressure on a parent! Luckily I have a stack of baby name books to help me in the process. I like going to my library and checking out almost every baby name book they have. Here is a review of the stack currently sitting on my desk.

• “Cool Names for Babies” by Pamela Redmond Satran & Linda Rosenkrantz

‘Cool Names’ is a book of lists broken down into four different categories: Mainstream Names, Famous Names, Old Names, and Creative Names.  There is a February 2008 edition with a turquoise cover and an August 2003 edition with a red cover. Both are great sources if you are trying to find a name that is a little off the grid. Some of the lists are titled, “Old Lady Cool,” “Neo-Yuppie Cool Names,” and “Foreign Word Names.” Some of the names are completely off the wall, but it is a fun short book to look through.

• “50,000+ Baby Names! The Baby Name Bible” by Pamela Redmond Satran & Linda Rosenkrantz

’50,000+ Baby Names!’ is a great companion book to the authors’ other book ‘Cool Names’ because you can find a name in ‘Cool Names’ and then look up the definition of the name in the this book. It is also a good baby name book just to read through. I like that it puts a gray box and star next to up-and-coming names. It also has an arrow facing up or down next to names to indicate the trend in popularity. In addition to the definition of the name it also gives an opinion about the name and how it is interpreted in our current culture.

• “A World of Baby Names” by Teresa Norman

We found our first child’s name, Annabelle, in this book. It was sitting in our doctor’s office and my husband was reading through the Spanish section during a visit and found ‘Anabel.’ We decided to go with the most traditional spelling, but I like how this book is broken down into the origin of the name and gives a whole definition of a name. ‘A World of Baby Names’ is comprehensive and has a lot of names from foreign countries.

• “Puffy, Xena, Quentin, Uma : And 10,000 Other Names for Your New Millennium Baby” by Joal Ryan

I picked this one up from the library, because it looked interesting. It is not very comprehensive at all. Each chapter titled by a letter begins with advice in a section called ‘Crib Notes’ which contains comments on famous names, ‘Pocket Ts,’ ‘Trendy Suspenders,’ and ‘Think long, think hard.’ Unfortunately this advice is out of date ten years after being published. It also doesn’t seem to give full definitions of the names. Overall this book is okay, but I wouldn’t use it as my sole source of baby name information.

• “20,001 Names for Baby” by Carol Mcd. Wallace

I found this book in my coat closet left by the previous owners of my house. They knew that we were buying a 4 bedroom to fill it up with kids. They themselves had four children and moved out because the house became too small for them. It seems that I live in a fertile house! ’20,001’ was published in 1999 and is a no-fuss, easy to read baby name book. It has all the mainstream and common names and is great for a quick resource to look up a definition rather quickly.

It seems that I am obsessed with baby name books. I also like looking through them at Barnes and Nobles. I brought them all with me to the hospital when I gave birth to my first one, so we could pick a middle name. I am determined to have a first and middle name chosen before we go into labor this time!

Choosing a name for your baby can be the one of the most fun and hardest tasks when you are expecting.  As little girls we pick out our children’s names after we dream about our wedding.  Even on my honeymoon in Italy I was constantly picking up Italian names and storing them for future use.

Sometimes we even get upset if a friend uses the name that you have dreamt about your whole life. Remember when Charlotte on Sex in the City went to a baby shower and found out that her friend was going to use her unique, made up name, Shayla?

Some families have naming traditions. My husband is a junior and we will never have a “Third” or “III.” My husband and father-in-law’s accounts are constantly getting confused at the library, car insurance company, and our church. Even with nicknames, for our family having a junior is way too complicated.

My second child is due in about 8 weeks! I have checked out almost every baby name book the library has. At night I pour over these books while adding names to my list.

I have some pretty strict criteria for my child’s name:

1. It has to be easily pronounced in English and Spanish, so both sides of the family can say the name. I really liked the name Andres and when I mentioned it to my Anglo-momma she announced that she would just call him Andy. This of course made me strike it off my list immediately, since I didn’t want an Andy. For our Spanish speakers I have to be careful with J names and names with a double L.

2. I want a name that means something nice.  At least not some horrible meaning like “serpent” or “dimwitted.” I actually like the name Soledad for a girl but the meaning of the name is “to be in solitude”, so that name is off the list.

3. I don’t want the name to be too popular in the United States. When I was born the name Amanda was second in popularity, so there was always two or three Amanda’s in my class. In fact, the other Amanda in my class always hated me, because we had the same name. She became the Mandy, while I stayed just Amanda. I am constantly checking the Social Security Baby Names list. My first baby’s name was 236 in popularity when I named her. Now that name has climbed to 206 in popularity.

4. The girl’s name needs to be feminine and the boy’s name masculine. I know gender-neutral names are incredibly popular and some are beautiful. I just don’t prefer them. When I worked in Human Resources I had to input people into the system and I would have to check off the male or female box with only their name to go off of. I always fretted over getting this wrong. I also didn’t like second-guessing if I should address an applicant through email as “Mr.” or “Ms.” For me; it is all about eliminating confusion.

5. We also take into consideration what their nickname would be and if the name can be fun of very easily. I love checking Baby NamesWorld to find out this information, because they survey people who have that name.

For our second little one we currently only have four names on our list: two boy and two girl names. We have to select a boy and girl name since we didn’t find out the gender. I am currently tired of stressing over this and I am happy with those four. We have only let the names we have picked slip to a limited few and the others will have to wait to be surprised!

How about you? Do you have any strict criteria? Do you care about what other people think about your names? Do you tell what name you picked out before the baby is born? Do you get suggestions from other people? Was it an easy process for you?

Pregnancy Lesson #236  – If you are hugely pregnant and you have to pee, don’t hold it. It is physically impossible to hold it, so don’t even try.

You never know when you will be holding your pee, doing just one more thing before the going to the restroom and your husband comes along and makes you laugh. Its starts off innocently with just a drop and you think, “It’s okay, it’s just a drop.” But you are still laughing and it keeps going. Then you are laughing because you are actually peeing and you see your husband realize that you are in fact wetting your pants.

Mortified you just stand there. Luckily you are happy that you are standing on the tile in the kitchen. You look down and realize that your favorite flip-flops are getting wet so you widen your stance a bit so they don’t get even more wet than they already are. You chant to yourself, “Pee is sterile. It can be washed. It can be washed.”

After it is all said and done your husband valiantly cleans the pee in the kitchen and watches the toddler. All while you shower and put your favorite jeans and flip-flops in the washer.

When you get over the shock of what just happened you are just thankful that it didn’t happen outside of your home, that no one else was in the house and it happened on the tile. You vow to never hold your pee again.

Um, yeah, this all happened to me this evening right before dinner! hahaa