Preggie Pals
Five Tips to Prevent Pregnancy Brain

Please be advised, this transcription was performed from a company independent of New Mommy Media, LLC. As such, translation was required which may alter the accuracy of the transcription.

[00:00:00]

[Theme Music]

Jennifer Schere: It happens to most moms and moms to be: little belts of forgetfulness that cloud our brains. We call it “pregnancy brain” or “momnesia”. It starts in pregnancy and continues even after you’ve given birth. So is pregnancy brain real? What’s happening within the body to make us feel this way? And what are five great tips to help us overcome this obstacle and stay sharp-minded? I’m Dr. Jennifer Schere, a clinical psychologist specializing in women’s issues and this is Preggie Pals.

[Theme Music/Intro]

Sunny Gault: Welcome to Preggie Pals, broadcasting from the Birth Education Center of San Diego! Preggie Pals is your weekly online on-the-go support group for expecting parents and those hoping to become pregnant. I am your host, Sunny Gault. Have you joined our Preggy Pals Club? Our members get all of our archived episodes, bonus content after each new show, plus special giveaways and discounts. You also receive a free subscription to Pregnancy Magazine. Visit our website PreggiePals.com for more information. And we have less than two weeks until the Your Natural Baby Fair here in San Diego. We are broadcasting live from this event, so if you don’t live in the area you can watch it online, but if you do live in Southern California you can purchase your tickets online at YourNaturalBabyFair.com. Use our promo code “MOMMEDIA” for 15% off. So, I am joined by a couple of other mommas here in the studio. Let’s go round and introduce ourselves. I’m Sunny. I am 35 years old – I am really impressed that I actually just remembered my age – and obviously I produce the show. I’ve got two little boys at home – Sayer, who is two-and-a-half years old, more like three, coming up on three not long from now, and I also have an eleven-month at home, as, well, both boys. Go ahead, Wendy.

Wendy Garrido: My name is Wendy Garrido. I am 30 years old and I work with women to help them prepare emotionally and spiritually for pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. I have my own eleven-month-old baby girl named Shanti. She was born at home, which was a beautiful, sweet homebirth, followed by an emergency trip to the hospital for a retained placenta.

Sunny Gault: Oh! Did it ruin the moment or was everything still good?

Wendy Garrido: It was… it kind of set us off by 24 hours. Twenty-four hours later we came home and picked up where I thought we would be the day before.

Sunny Gault: But you had a good… at least the first part, the actual delivering of the baby was a good experience?

Wendy Garrido: Yeah, and she had a peaceful experience. The trip to the hospital was all mine, so that was ok.

Sunny Gault: Ok. And our expert is Jennifer Schere. Hello!

Jennifer Schere: Hello!

Sunny Gault: Tell us about your little ones at home.

Jennifer Schere: I have two boys – seven years old and two years old.

Sunny Gault: Ah, nice. Ok, so we’re in the boys club and Wendy is in the girls club.

[Theme Music]

[Featured segment: 2013 Your Natural Baby Fair]

Sunny Gault: Ok. Before we start today’s episode Amy Saloner is joining us here in the studio. Amy is the co-founder of the Natural Baby Pros. She’s also the director of Your Natural Baby Fair, which is coming up here in San Diego at the end of the month. It’s creeping up here really fast, isn’t it?

Amy Saloner: It’s coming pretty quickly.

Sunny Gault: So we’re really excited about this event. We have been involved for the last few years and this year New Mommy Media, which is the parent company of Preggie Pals, will have a booth at the fair, but in addition to that, we know many of our listeners aren’t located here in San Diego. We know you want to come to the fair but you just don’t have the opportunity. So, we are helping you out. We are going to be broadcasting live from the fair and we are going to be talking to so many of the great speakers and the presenters you would have a chance to listen to if you were actually at the fair. So it’s a really great opportunity, we’re super excited about it. But for, Amy, people that are listening… maybe they’ve never heard of the Your Natural Baby Fair before. I know you started this, so tell us a little bit about what the fair is and why you started it.

Amy Saloner: Sunny, this was just a combination of experience and conversations with many women who I met along the way in my journey as a parent, who really would say to me often, “Oh, I just wish I knew that before I had my child. I wish I knew that.” And I would just kept thinking, “Well… why not? Why wasn’t there a place for people to go to find the support, the education? So it was really just a vision of mine to bring together many practitioners of all different kinds who have wonderful things to share about supporting families from fertility, pregnancy, birth, and baby care. And bringing them all together in a really fun and dynamic way. And the fair was born. It was really just a way to have really prominent speakers – last year we had Ina May Gaskin and this year we’re excited to have Dr. Sears, the author of The Vaccine Book, and many others actually coming to speak and… just many, many speakers all day long, demonstrations on things like baby wearing and baby sign language and cloth diapering, tummy time. So… booths of all kind of products and services and it’s not your usual trade show kind of fair, there’s really more about the support: the practitioners and resources that make life easier for families in their journey.

[00:06:22]

Sunny Gault: Let’s talk about the beneficiary, because each time you do the fair there is a beneficiary, and this year it’s really important, we’re getting the word out about vitamin D and the deficiency that so many women have. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Amy Saloner: Right. So, GrassrootsHealth has a project called “Protect our Children NOW” and it’s really a study and an educational platform to really educate about what’s happening for our moms and babies when we are deficient in vitamin D and to really drive home the point that the more that we understand what vitamin D levels are and the more take control of our bodies in that way and our health, then we actually will bring forth easier labor, safer labor and healthier babies along the way.

Sunny Gault: And this ties into the online auction, right?

Amy Saloner: It does. So, because Natural Baby Pros is a global entity we don’t want to leave anybody out. So we have taken our auction live virtually. So you can find the link for the auction itself right on the YourNaturalBabyFair.com homepage. There’s a button there that says “Join us in supporting GrassrootsHealth” and right from there it takes you to the auction page and you can cruise all the fabulous auctions that are there and learn a little bit more actually about GrassrootsHealth and the “Protect our Children NOW” campaign.

Sunny Gault: So, if you are local to San Diego or you are going to be in the area we have a special promo code to give out to all of our listeners and that is “MOMMEDIA”, and that is for 15% off if you purchase the tickets online through YourNaturalBabyFair.com. So be sure to go and get your tickets right away. You certainly wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to be at this event. Of course, that is if you’re local; if you’re not local, please check out YourNaturalBabyFair.com on April 27th, the day of the fair. We’re going to start broadcasting at 8:30 in the morning. We’ll be broadcasting all day long up until 4 p.m. and, like I said, you’ll be able to see so many of the great things that are happening at the fair. Not quite like being at the fair, but again, if you’re not in the area it’s the next best thing and we’re so happy to bring it to you. Amy, thank you so much for being here in the studio with us today and thank you for putting on this fair and for helping families just like us.

Amy Saloner: Thank you.

[Theme Music]

Sunny Gault: Today on Preggy Pals we’re talking about “pregnancy brain”. Are we really more forgetful when we’re pregnant and is there anything happening medically to support that or really are we just going crazy? Psychologist
Jennifer Schere is a regular expert on our show. She is here to help us make sense of the issue. Welcome back, Jennifer!

Jennifer Schere: Hello!

Sunny Gault: Ok, so what is “pregnancy brain”? Would you say “pregnancy brain”, “momnesia”… are there any other terms that you’ve heard about?

Jennifer Schere: That covers it.

Sunny Gault: …”mommy brain”…

Jennifer Schere: Well, “brain fog” – mine was really foggy.

Sunny Gault: Yeah, so all these terms. We’re talking about the same thing here… Jennifer, what is it?

Jennifer Schere: Well, the experience of feeling like cognitively you are not as sharp, lots of short-term memory lapses and forgetfulness.

Sunny Gault: What prompts it? Do we know what’s happening within the body? Could there be multiple things?

Jennifer Schere: Yes. Definitely a combination. One, for sure, as we all know, can underestimate the surge of hormones during pregnancy: 15 to 40 times more estrogen and progesterone in the brain. That is clearly a load.

Sunny Gault: Yes, we actually just released an episode about pregnancy hormones, so as we’re talking about this, ladies, if something strikes a chord and you want to know more about these hormones: a couple of episodes ago. So go ahead, continue.

[00:10:09]

Jennifer Schere: Ok. So we’ve got the surging hormones with the combination of sleep deprivation and stress that goes along with it, but I think a huge piece that we have to give more attention to is the shifting of priorities. So: memory is so much based on what we’re focusing our attention on. And during pregnancy a woman’s mind is absorbed and preoccupied with this changing role. So a lot of times it’s not necessarily that your cognition is not as good as before, but you are focusing it on different concerns.

Sunny Gault: Ok, so case and point: my husband calls me from work and says (because I work from home), he says, “Hey, let’s make pizza tonight! Can you get the dough out of the refrigerator and kind of get it ready so we can cook it when I get home?” But it’s got to get out of the refrigerator, it’s got to rise, it’s got to do all this stuff. “Sure, honey.” So I hang up the phone and if I don’t do it right then – and this has happened, I meant to do it in a couple of minutes and then my kid calls me away and this happens and that happens and suddenly my husband is home and wondering why the dough is still in the refrigerator. So I can’t remember stuff like that, but if you ask me like any song from Sesame Street – boom! I am on it. So I guess my frustration is that I am not remembering the things I want to remember. It’s like… I know there’s stuff up in my brain, you know, and I don’t necessarily think my brain has shrunk – I know… if you google this online people are like, “Oh, shrinking brain!” and all this kind of stuff. So I don’t really buy into that whole thing, but there’s a lot more information that I am having to reach for and filter through I guess.

Jennifer Schere: Yes, absolutely. But, you are absorbed in issues related to mothering and caretaking and children. So there’s like a tape running 24/7 even when you’re sleeping about these issues. So there’s just not as much room to recall or access… you know… the dough in the refrigerator. It’s just not as important. There is research that shows that the brain slightly and temporarily shrinks towards the end of pregnancy, but the research strongly shows that a few months after giving birth the brain grows. So the areas of the brain where you see increased activity are the areas that relate to the specific skillsets we need for caretaking. So, for example, the pre-frontal cortex, the hypothalamus, the amygdala – those are the three main areas that are positively impacted by giving birth. And those are the areas that are involved in motivation – say the motivation to get up and be driven 15 times a night to take care of the baby; reward behavior and emotional regulation – we then feel good every time we do engage in these behaviors, we feel happy, we feel empowered and good about ourselves; and then specifically time management, foresight and planning – these are things that we need in terms of anticipating child’s needs, creatively finding new ways constantly to meet them and doing it in a timely manner, all the efficiency and planning. And I do believe there’s research that shows that women who have given birth and have children that their memory increases.

Sunny Gault: So, the brain shrinks towards the end of pregnancy and then it gets bigger. But does it get bigger than what it started from?

Jennifer Schere: It goes back to the size it was. However, the thought about it is that when it shrinks temporarily, and not significantly, it’s doing that in order to prime itself to reshape.

Sunny Gault: So when it reshapes there are certain areas that have expanded, but the brain overall – is it about the same size?

Jennifer Schere: You’re talking about the difference between structure or the neuron connectivity, so there’s a whole bunch of things. But in terms of the mom stuff I think what’s most relevant is to know… Well actually it goes in two directions. We know about plasticity and that our brains are always creating new connections from our direct experience and repeated experience about certain activities that we really focus on. So that’s one. So you can have moms and even dads or parents who haven’t given birth who are caretaking and if they are engaging in these behaviors consistently and with focused attention, likely you’re going to start seeing those areas of their brain have increased activities as well. So people who have mastered certain domains or skills – you can see that; you see that happening all through life. But the other thing is that there is the research that shows that the process of giving birth from the inside does show larger areas of activity in those parts of the brain.

[00:15:14]

Sunny Gault: Interesting, ok.

Wendy Garrido: It makes sense to me that my brain is in a whole different mode. Having just had one baby it’s kind of like before one baby and after one baby. I don’t have multiple kids yet, but I would never even have thought of going three or six or nine months without getting a complete, uninterrupted night of sleep and being ok. I mean, something has to go on in our brain to make that possible. And then when you mention dads I realize my husband had sort of his own version of pregnancy brain, which was actually sleep deprivation I think. But we really noticed in about three months, I would say, that… Normally he knows; like, if he gave me the keys he remembers giving me the keys… and he would just forget things and then he would not be able… like… he would be on his phone and he couldn’t switch gears to hear me. I would have to like say his name ten times and practically hit him to get him to pay attention. And I was getting really upset about it and then I realized that he might not have the stuff going on in his brain to make it as easy for him to be sleepless for three months as it was for me.

Jennifer Schere: And then we talk about the hormones, like the oxytocin. That’s a natural chemical that is helping us. And that’s what helps us mirror the infant’s facial expressions and really enhances our empathy. So when we’re talking about moms we have this instinctual fierce reaction to our own baby’s cries and dads don’t quite get it. The mom is like, “Did you hear him? That’s the third cry! Do something!”

Sunny Gault: Wait, you’ve been in my house! It makes sense now.

Jennifer Schere: We are in different bodies. But again, going back to experience: if you have a dad who is tuned in and repeats these behaviors with attention and foresight and all that, likely you’re going to start getting more responses that are more similar. But again, we’ve got a head start.

Sunny Gault: We do, that’s true. I wish we could somehow compartmentalize our brains, like we do on our computer, and be like “Ok, folder for this, folder for that, draw from this first, Sesame Street – not a priority”. I wish we could somehow do that. Wendy, what’s your experience with this?

Wendy Garrido: Well I liked what Jennifer said about the change in priorities because for me it happened when I was nine months pregnant and suddenly I woke up and I could not get my brain to function. At the time I was helping a guy edit and write his book and it really required this middle level thinking to be able to track and put things in order and put together. And I would sit down and just literally couldn’t do it. And now that I have some context on it I think there’s this tendency to want to push through and say “well we should be able to do the same things that we can do even though we’re pregnant”. But it was somehow giving myself permission to take it easy those last two weeks before I gave birth. It was needed. And I probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise if I hadn’t felt like I got knocked over the head and into this foggy mist where I couldn’t do anything otherwise.

Sunny Gault: Now that was when you were pregnant. Have you noticed a change since your baby being born?

Wendy Garrido: It was really just that temporary phase I think for me. It hasn’t…

Jennifer Schere: Wait ‘till there’s more…

Sunny Gault: I had it with one too, so… I don’t know what’s impacting us throughout pregnancy, but I feel like it rears its ugly head again with the more kids you pile on your plate. So for people that are listening - maybe they haven’t had this experience yet; maybe they’re early in their pregnancies – what does pregnancy brain feel like? What did it feel like for you Jennifer?

Jennifer Schere: It felt like a thought; I’d have a thought and it would disintegrate in midair. So from the time I would have the idea to the time I would step up, take three feet forward to execute it, it was gone.

Sunny Gault: What about you Wendy? What did it feel like?

Wendy Garrido: I felt powerless. I wanted to be able to just do the things that I normally do. And it wasn’t like my senses were cut off partway through, but it was like I couldn’t even get my brain to shift into a gear. It was stuck in first gear and I wanted to be in fifth gear, going 50 miles an hour, but it just wouldn’t go.

Sunny Gault: Well at so many times, especially as new parents, we need to be going 50 miles an hour if not faster to be able to keep up with what’s happening in our life; and it is frustrating. For me, every day I have a list of stuff that I want to get done. And so many times I find myself walking into a room and I’m like “What? What was I doing in here?” Just countless times of starting something and then just being like, “I know this was important. Why was this important?” And trying to retrace my steps I find myself wasting a lot of time.

[00:20:10]

Wendy Garrido: When I was going through it and I was just needing something to help me out we came across sunflower lecithin. I guess that has choline in it. I started taking it and it totally cleared it up for me.

Sunny Gault: Really? How quickly did that happen?

Wendy Garrido: Really fast, the same day. There’s obviously kind of different variations of this and I’m only speaking from my own experience, but it was dramatically different.

Jennifer Schere: There’s also value and merit to this pregnancy brain issue, which is that… We all know that becoming a mom is the fastest, sharpest learning curve there is. And if our brain weren’t kind of “stopping” us and “grabbing” us by the neck and saying “Stop editing the book! Stop putting your mental energies there!” I don’t know that we would really be able to do the preparatory work emotionally and internally and cognitively to really be able to meet the needs of a baby.

Sunny Gault: That’s interesting. So it’s kind of protecting us from ourselves a little bit. I feel like we’re supposed to be supermoms all the time and maybe you’re right; maybe this is the way our bodies are saying, “Would you just cool it? This is a mom overload; I’m creating a kid here. Can you lay off a little bit?”

Wendy Garrido: I’ve been reading a lot lately about the cycles of our body. Like we have our monthly cycles; we are not made to be doing the exact same thing every day with the same level of intensity. I’ve been thinking about it in terms of seasons, like you can’t get to spring if there isn’t a winter. And somehow we think that we could just be summer all the time and get through it without seeing the value of that down time to sort of give us more energy so we can keep going.

Sunny Gault: Right, good point. Ok, so can pregnancy brain be prevented? When we come back Jennifer is going to give us five tips to help keep us on track. We’ll be right back!

[Theme Music]

[00:21:54]

Sunny Gault: Welcome back! Today we are learning about “pregnancy brain” and psychologist Jennifer Schere has five tips to help us prevent it. You’re going to save all of us with these tips, right Jennifer? I’m really looking forward to implementing these in my daily life. So let’s start with the first one. What’s the first tip you have for us?

Jennifer Schere: First of all I wouldn’t say these are strategies to prevent it. They are strategies to work with it.

Sunny Gault: Ok. But if we start these in advance maybe we could prevent some of the things that happen, don’t you think?

Jennifer Schere: Hmm this would be a good experiment, Sunny. The first thing that comes to my mind is get things out of your mind onto the paper. You want to make it as concrete as possible, so writing everything down, creating master checklists that you can refer to.

Sunny Gault: Ok. So: I have a checklist on a daily basis. I think I do a fairly good job. I need checklists in general in order to get through my day. It keeps me focused. It’s not like everything is assigned a time, I’m not on a set schedule like that. But if I can say that sometime before this day ends if I can get these four things accomplished, that’s important to me; to feel that I’ve accomplished something during the day. So I’ve implemented this a little bit. But obviously I miss some stuff, like the pizza. What do you think, Wendy?

Wendy Garrido: It didn’t make it to the checklist.

Sunny Gault: It didn’t! Because I said to myself, “I’m going to do it right now.” And you know that a month later when my husband called me and said “Can you put the pizza blabla…” I went and did it right then because I knew, because I learned. But anyways. Go ahead, Wendy.

Wendy Garrido: I use the one on Gmail. Gmail has a little tasks button that I use; it goes along with my calendar.

Sunny Gault: Ok. I have something similar with Apple Mail. Apple Mail does something similar to that.

Wendy Garrido: Yes, it just helps me keep priorities.

Sunny Gault: Right.

Wendy Garrido: To be honest I’m not sure that it was helpful at all during my pregnancy brain period though. That was tough.

Sunny Gault: Do you actually keep lists, Jennifer?

Jennifer Schere: I do. But going on to another strategy: I keep lists and what I’ve learned was that keeping a list wasn’t necessarily “the gold”. It was that I had to keep my lists in the same spot every single time. Because otherwise I would have ten lists that I was repeating. So now I have specific places where I keep my master lists. And I have specific times in the day when I refer back to them. So the idea is that we create checklists and also that we respect our organizational systems. So whether it’s a checklist or whether it’s an important object like keys, phone, wallet, it’s important that we always create a home for it. It always goes back to its home and like you said, Sunny, it goes there immediately. There can’t be any delay or it won’t get there.

Sunny Gault: It’s all about staying organized. Are you guys, generally speaking, organized people? Wendy, what do you think?

Wendy Garrido: Different domains of my life: my files on my computer system – totally organized; my closet – totally not. I’m a Virgo. I don’t know what people say; I’m supposed to be organized, but it totally depends on what the domain is.

Sunny Gault: Ok, so what are we on? Number three.

Jennifer Schere: Breaking down big objects into small steps with realistic time frames.

Sunny Gault: “Realistic” would be the key, the operative word there. Because sometimes I think I’m just not realistic. But, I also believe in the concept of shooting higher; so that you don’t end up mediocre; you’re still above what you thought you could do.

Jennifer Schere: Sunny, you could achieve that. But there’s a lot of people where that’s a set-up. It’s a set-up for failure, for feeling bad about yourself.

Sunny Gault: Oh, I’m not saying that doesn’t stop me. But I still think it helps me. It’s more like a “does it help more than it hurts” kind of thing. I think it does a little bit of both, but it still puts me, I think, in a better place than where I would have been.

Jennifer Schere: I think that’s also part of the transition that you were talking about, from girl to mother, that I literally had to relearn how much time it takes me to get out of the house. And as someone who has always been on time – I would know that if I get up at this time I can leave at this time – obviously with a new baby I couldn’t do that. I kept miscalculating it. But I think that the whole “pregnancy brain” part is like “Hello, there are going to be some changes coming up here and things that used to work for you are not going to keep working for you; so get ready to make some changes!”

Sunny Gault: Ok. What’s next, Jennifer?

Jennifer Schere: To focus on the essentials; trying to get as much sleep as you can; trying to get as much exercise as possible, and again, healthy eating. Sleep clearly impacts memory and cognitive abilities. That’s no mystery. If you’ve had a few days you have to find a way to be able to ask for help to be able to get your hours. You just need to log hours of sleep. That’s the necessity. The exercise, in terms of getting the endorphins, and that’s part of using our body to get all the good stuff going, motivates us, it totally impacts mood and memory as well; it’s all connected. And then the healthy eating; you want to be balanced. You want to make sure that you are putting in your body the best nutrients you can to keep everything balanced.

Wendy Garrido: That reminds me, when I was looking into how choline was helping my pregnancy brain symptoms, eggs have a lot of choline in them. So I made an effort also to eat more eggs at that point. And blueberries with antioxidants and just paying attention to what can help.

Sunny Gault: I will notice if I’ve had one of those days where I can’t remember anything and I’m really agitated. If I go through this little checklist of sleep, exercise, and food most of the times I’m like 0 for 3. And it’s like “Oh! I didn’t sleep well, and I haven’t exercised today and the only thing I had was coffee this morning! Oh, jeez, and I expect my body to run efficiently.” Ok, so let’s focus on our last tip here. What is it, Jennifer?

Jennifer Schere: Stay away from your own judgments about this “mommy brain” or forgetfulness, because the research shows that after a woman gives birth, memory does increase actually; you actually have enhanced capabilities in memory. But a lot of times women, because we are appraising ourselves so specifically, we tend to think that we are doing a much lousier job than we really are.

Sunny Gault: Ok. So let’s wrap this up here. Let’s go over our five tips again because I know we’ve done a lot of chit-chat about these individual habits. So the first tip was: make master checklists and write everything down. So we can check that off our list. Create organizational systems and stick to them. The third tip: break down big projects into small steps with realistic timeframes. Fourth tip: focus on getting as much sleep, exercise and healthy food as possible. And the fifth tip is: stay away from our own judgments about forgetfulness. So can we accomplish this? Can we make this a priority, ladies, and see if this works?

All: Yes!

Sunny Gault: Yes, we can! Well thanks, Jennifer, for joining us today and for providing this awesome list for us and for all of our listeners. For more information about our expert Jennifer and our panelists you can visit our episode page on our website. This conversation continues for members of our Preggie Pals Club. After the show we’ll read some comments from our Facebook friends about their most memorable cases of pregnancy brain. To learn more about our club visit our website at PreggiePals.com.

[Theme Music]

[00:29:52]

[Featured Segments: Pregnancy Tips for the Clueless Chick]

Sunny Gault: Before we wrap up today’s show here’s Jennifer Durbin with some pregnancy tips for the clueless chick, otherwise known as a mom with pregnancy brain.

Jennifer Durbin: Hi! I’m Jennifer Durbin, the author of “Pregnancy Tips for The Clueless Chick” and a mother of two wonderful boys. I’d love to share with you my tips for pampering with yourself during your pregnancy.
While you’re busy preparing the arrival of your little one and all the craziness that will come with parenthood, don’t forget to take care of yourself and your partner. Having a baby is one of the most wonderful and difficult things in the world and every mother will tell you that a baby instantly becomes your number one priority. But for the sake of the baby and your sanity don’t forget to take care of yourself. Whether you plan to get a prenatal massage, spend a day at the spa with your girlfriends or even take a day off of work to do a whole lot of nothing, it’s important to schedule some time for yourself before things get crazy. You may want to plan a fun pre-baby girl’s night out or a date night where you are not allowed to talk about the baby. Both are fun ways to celebrate you. It’s also fun to step outside of your box if you’re in a funk and wear something super trendy that
you might not normally wear.

If you didn’t exercise during your pregnancy, find a local pre-natal Yoga or Aqua Aerobic class. This is not only a great way to exercise, but also the perfect way to meet other pregnant women.
And finally, my favorite tamper yourself tip: make a list of all the pregnancy don’ts that you’ve been dying to do, like eating sushi or having a glass of wine. Then you can look forward to checking everything off of your list after the baby is born. While you’re planning for some much needed pampering, don’t forget that your partner is on this wild ride with you. While you’re the one with all the aches and pains who cannot tie her own shoes, your partner has been there to listen to all of your woes and be a shoulder for you to cry on when your hormones are raging. Remember that time you spilled grape juice on your brand new top and cried for two hours straight? So look for a special way that you can surprise him with his favorite dinner or a night out with the boys. For more great tips visit TheCluelessChick.com

[Theme Music]

Sunny Gault: That wraps up our show for today. We appreciate you listening to Preggie Pals. Don’t forget to check out our sister show Parent Savers, for parents with newborns, infants and toddlers, and our show The Boob Group, for moms who breastfeed their babies. This is Preggie Pals - your pregnancy, your way.

[Disclaimer]
This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Though information in which areas are related to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, Medical or advisor care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider.

[00:33:02]
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