This is the month your stomach starts to change. The uterus is still small and well down inside the cradle of your pelvis, so you and others can't yet tell externally that you're pregnant. But you are very likely to be gaining weight — predominantly in your waist and thighs. This is the storing of fat for the added needs of your baby-to-be. The unexpected weight gain, especially in combination with the tiredness and vaguely ill feeling that some women experience, plus the fear that this kind of added weight will continue to accumulate in all the wrong places, understandably gets some women depressed. They feel — and think they look — unappealing. If you are sailing through this month and experiencing none of the above, wonderful. But if you have that dumpy feeling, be kind to yourself and as patient as you can manage to be with the situation. The baby's needs will consume the extra weight, and the stage when your pregnancy begins to show will be bringing energy with it. Baby's actual size (by month's end) This Month For Your Baby This is another amazing month, a transition to promisingly human form. Near the beginning of this month, as our photo of the five-and-a-half week embryo shows, your baby doesn't have anything like the proportion and detail of a really developed baby, but she or he is visibly human. Every day counts tremendously. Sometime around the first day of this month the arm buds divide into hand, arm and shoulder areas. Two days later, there are finger outlines on the hand area, and the pigment in the eyes suddenly forms. In these two days, the brain has grown one-quarter larger and within two weeks it will have the whole complex structure of the final brain in miniature. All forty pairs of the muscle blocks that are due to become muscle tissue are present by about the thirty-sixth day. Three days or so after, the internal hearing mechanism of the ear is almost complete. And on it goes. A swelling on the face becomes a recognizable nose. Ridges around the eyes become eyelids. The buds for what will be a child's twenty milk teeth appear in the gum ridges. By the end of the month your baby is barely an inch long, but he or she is surprisingly well along on the way to completion. Fingers and toes have oversized touch pads at their tips, but are otherwise complete. The head, large in proportion, has in early form all the features of a newborn baby's. Sexual features, not yet visible, are well on their way internally. And in the last third of the month, the steady appearance of bone cells marks the change from an embryo (a "teeming within" of cells) to a fetus — a "young one". This just-barely beginning change in the body, from cartilage (like that at the tip of your nose) to bone, will go on for many, many years after birth. But the major change has happened. Your baby is now a tiny person. Morning Sickness For those who experience it, there's no more powerful testimony to the big change in your body-life than the appearance of the nausea known as morning sickness. For some women, it is something felt only in the morning; the physical routine of their day produces rhythms and feelings that tend to damp down the feeling of nausea. But most people who get it can only wish it were a morning-only event. The only certain thing to say about it (like many other things in life) is, "This, too, shall pass." Sometimes, nutritional factors are partially responsible, and taking Vitamin B6 and/or brewer's yeast may help. Also, the old-time recommendation of eating a few soda crackers immediately upon awakening, before you get up, is worth trying. But for most people, time (and the stabilization of your body to its new state) is the only real remedy. By the end of the third month or sooner, you probably will be past it. (Let's hope.) "I was so nauseated that everyday things like my husband frying an egg would be totally revolting. (I had to get as far away as I could in the house, or go outside when it was egg time.) And it felt so incongruous to me that pregnancy, while supposed to make me feel joyful or something, made me feel so terrible." . . . And Mood Swings Whether because of nausea or other factors due to the tremendous shifts in your body, don't be surprised if you have outlandish thoughts related to heavy moods. People can and do think in tremendously depressed ways because of moods generated by hormonal changes, so do what you can to relax and let the thoughts come and go. Knowing that there is a physical basis for unexpected feelings and thoughts may help you to see them with more understanding and not take them so much to heart. Special Note To A Father-To-Be When your mate is in the throes of nausea, not only food, but you may be distasteful to her at any given moment. When she's nauseated, the most familiar and well-loved parts of her life may just seem a part of the whole revolting blur. So don't take it personally. That doesn't mean you're suppose to pretend it's easy when your wife decides that your favorite foods are too disgusting to consider, or that you should get no closer than the next room. Just do your best to take it lightly and deal with it in good humor. Do whatever you can to help her. Make her laugh. Movement If you have already been doing any form of enjoyable movement as exercise, you know how enlivening it can be. So don't let pregnancy stop you. Besides staying as limber and agile as possible while your belly grows, your body will welcome the jolt of well-being and the cleansing metabolism that movement can provide. If you haven't been doing much physically before pregnancy, now is a great time to start, bit by bit. Everything you do now will help keep you from getting bogged down by the added mass to come. If you're not an addict of gyms, we're not suggesting that you overcome your aversion and chain yourself to the Stairmaster, but some form of movement — dancing, swimming, running, tennis, bicycling, taking long walks, gardening — will have the right quality and pace for you and can become a source of enjoyment and stimulation that you look forward to. Check with whomever you are seeing for pre-natal care to make sure that what you want to do makes sense for you. "Every pregnancy and birth is as different as the women themselves. Don't feel as though your mental attitude, health, and body will react just like your pregnant girlfriends, co-workers, sisters or even your own mother's pregnancy. Enjoy your own individuality — you have up to now — and take it one step at a time so as to not be overwhelmed." Rest If you listen to your body during pregnancy, you'll make time to rest without further urging from us or anyone else. But if you've been such a "do'er" that stopping is just not a part of your pattern, then you might as well start thinking of rest as something to do, something to actively carve out time for. Not only do you need to build a reservoir of good energy through rest, but you need the slowdown to get in touch with yourself (and, as time goes on, with your baby). You may find it renewing to rest in different places around (and out of) the house. Lie down in the middle of the living room rug once in awhile. Stretch out on some grass or on a friend's sofa. The changing locations can help keep you out of the same old routine (and its effect on your mind and moods). And taking your rest in the nearest place at hand rather than putting it off can leave you feeling a lot more refreshed, with a sense of "at-homeness" in your own body that will help when it's time to give birth. It's important not to confuse television watching with true rest. Your body may not be moving much, but the demands on the emotions made by TV, and the over-input to your mind, keep your psyche — which needs to be restored along with your body — from really resting. "First and foremost, stay healthy. Take care of yourself..." Water Is Nourishing Replenishing the fluids of your body is an important part of pregnancy. In addition to what's flowing from you to your baby through the umbilical cord, there's a flow of waste products from your baby to you, and a separate replenishing of the waters in which he or she floats within you. (More than one-third of the fluid in the amniotic sac is replaced every hour.) It's good, important, really necessary for your and your baby's best health to drink a lot of water — six to eight big glasses — a day. Good water, the best you can find. Juices can be a way to do this, but the heavy concentration of sugar in the ones containing cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrups can fuel your emotions and promote mood swings. And the carbon dioxide bubbles in sparkling water and sodas can make you feel tired. So, good, cool, fresh water is the thing most of the time, with natural juices for lifts here and there. Bottled spring water is usually a winner, of course, and if there is delivery of good bottled water in your area, preferably spring water rather than "treated" water from municipal water supplies, it's almost certainly worth going after. Drinking lots of good water will make you feel noticeably better. And you'll be ready for the drinking routine that nursing will call for. If You're The First. . . ...among friends and family to be giving real thought to the way a baby ought to be born, you may need help finding people in your area to help you make and carry out a decision about pre-natal and birth care. If the town you live in is large enough, a good place to go for support from mothers who have already gone through the process of choice is the local chapter of La Leche League, the breastfeeding support organization. You also can probably make some connections through a local food co-op, chiropractor, holistic-health practitioner, church, or mothers' group. Another way to get in touch with people with deep interests in good birth is through NAPSAC (the National Association of Parents and Professionals for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth), which publishes a directory with detailed listings for every area of the U.S. and Canada. Their directory costs $5.95 postpaid, and is available directly from: NAPSAC, Route 1, Box 646, Marble Hill, Missouri 63764. Getting Some Good Nourishment (Part One) Note: If nausea is the dominating factor in your body-life right now, you may want to put off reading this until it isn't. Or read it with the knowledge that the revulsion you may feel to all but particular foods will pass. The need to eat well in pregnancy is also a great opportunity to help your body get back to (or further heighten) its sense of its real needs. Our bodies' innate ability to know what they need can be sparked or renewed by this time of new demands above and beyond the usual. One way to help this happen is to pay attention to how your body feels after eating a particular food or foods. You will soon be able to make a distinction between feeling just full (or revved up) and feeling really nourished. As you keep that distinction in mind while considering what to eat at a particular moment, your body's natural discernment will increasingly take over. And you will find that not only is there no conflict between enjoyment and what's good for you, but that a whole new kind of enjoyment comes out of really satisfying your body's (and baby's) needs. Now to get down to specifics: Without a doubt, the best, most enjoyable and vitalizing foods in all categories are whole foods — unrefined, and as unprocessed as feasible. Lots of salads and raw fruits and vegetables; grains and whole grain bread, crackers and cereals; real butter (all margarines, even "health-food" brands, have hydrogenated oils, which aren't good for you); milk, cheese and yogurt; nuts (or seeds) and nut-butters; steamed or stir-fried vegetables; beans; corn and whole-wheat tortillas; whole-grain spaghetti, noodles and other pastas; eggs; and if it's your leaning, fish and poultry. Every step you move toward eating lots of dark greens such as spinach, chard, kale, and broccoli, will do you and your body good. (More on greens in Part Two.) Stay away, if you can manage it, from refined sugars and flours. Not only are they devitalized foods, but the speed with which their carbohydrates enter your bloodstream tends to put you on an up-and-down mood elevator -- a rush of energy and adrenaline one moment, a big let-down not long after. The same goes for caffeine (as mentioned last month) whether in coffee, tea, colas, or chocolate. Go as lightly as you can on these. (See Snacks and Cravings in the Fifth Month for alternatives.) How about protein? Well, it's important indeed. A good amount of protein should be a consistent part of a pregnancy diet. If you're not a meat eater, there are many excellent vegetarian sources — beans (combined with grains for maximum benefit), dairy products, nuts, nut butters, eggs. Some of the healthiest babies we've seen, many of them eight- and nine-pounders at birth, have been born to moms who relied on these. Rather than being something to worry about, good eating of the foods we've been mentioning can be one of the ways to enjoy your pregnancy. If you start with good basics you can be as creative as you'd like. Soups, casseroles, Mexican-style dishes, Chinese-style stir-frying, rice and wheat pilafs — all these and a lot more are avenues for wholesome eating. So are very simple things like a baked potato and a salad. For a fast food, try a quesadilla (a corn or whole-wheat tortilla slightly moistened and heated in the frying pan with cheese melted in it) or just enjoy some raw carrot or celery with peanut butter or almond butter. With all of the above foods, we suggest you go organic as much as you can. Organically grown foods are so widespread these days — for good reason — that they are increasingly easy to find. They generally have far greater content of important trace minerals, taste better, are free of pesticide and herbicide residues, and are the best way to avoid the questionable nature of genetically-altered foods, whose openness to question includes the fact that some of their alterations have been made to allow the application of greater amounts of herbicidal agents. Pregnancy is not a time to diet. As long as mood swings, or some basic dissatisfaction in your life, don't lead you to gorge on high-calorie foods as "compensation" for your feelings, pregnancy isn't going to leave you fat or out of shape. Eat well, with the knowledge that real nourishment and real enjoyment go together. Working It Through — Stressed Relationships in Pregnancy Somewhere along the line during pregnancy, many couple relationships undergo major stress, sometimes with bonds threatening to break. The trigger may be the big adjustment to the news of the coming baby, the real commitment it signifies, or the change in our feelings about sexuality. Many women begin to feel and act very differently as their body functions shift. If a relationship hasn't been all that satisfying beforehand, the pregnancy may bring out more intense sensitivity and dissatisfactions. The variations are almost infinite, and there's no easy advice to fit all situations. But since having a baby requires a commitment to sustaining and supporting life rather than just gliding through it, the core of a real relationship is sticking with it, sometimes even when it's rough, until there's a clear sign not to. Often rough waters are necessary routes to coming closer together. Don't ignore a clear sign, but don't assume that moods are final. Willingness to express ourselves in constructive ways, as well as listening non-defensively to each other, can bring us to new levels of sharing. Any effort you put in during a tough spot in pregnancy will help you develop psychological muscles for dealing with some of the inevitable stresses of parenthood. There's also this simple fact (which can come home to you when you see your newborn baby): No matter how difficult our personalities are acting toward each other, our real beings are alike and equally beautiful; it's our psychological condition that sometimes makes it hard. So rather than giving up and hoping for the mythical "somebody new" who will have all of the virtues and none of the faults of our present partner, it may pay us to be clear with each other about our needs and not skimp on fulfilling them for each other — in the spirit of the love that your baby is embodying. It almost always helps to be patient with yourself and each other. If you can get objective, that's great. If not, you'll still live through it. In a couple of days it will probably look very different to you. "Think about all the things in your life — what is most important and least important — with your and your baby's health and emotional well-being at the top. Drop things that are too stressful in your life — just for now, at least. You don't need them clouding the picture." Tobacco, Alcohol and Caffeine The more research that's published on the effects of these three substances during pregnancy, the more obvious it becomes that they are worth keeping at an absolute minimum during this special time in your life, and your baby's. It's now known, for instance, that the baby's important "practice breathing" (of the amniotic fluids in the womb) comes to a dead stop whenever the mother smokes tobacco. And there are so many other indications of everything from reduced size and birth weight to severe retardation and deformation from an expectant mother's extensive use of these substances that it makes sense to cut down on them as much as you can as early as you can. If you are really reliant on any of these three to deal with stress in your life, we don't want to add guilt to your difficulties. (In pregnancy as well as at other times, a good attitude may make up for some less-than-perfect treatment.) Second Month Year Of Birth Contents | First Month | Third Month Intro From The Beginning Home Page All contents copyright © 1991 by Crystal Press. Used by permission of authors. Neither text nor illustrations may be reproduced in any form, in print or on the Intenet, without permission in writing from the authors, John Milder and Candie Snow, who may be e-mailed at taimilder@yahoo.com. You may also contact us at that address to purchase copies of Year of Birth.