Fetal Development

Should You Keep a Weekly Pregnancy Calendar?

By Natural Pregnancy ⋅  Email ⋅  Print ⋅

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the Natural Pregnancy RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Motherhood is an exciting journey. There is so much to learn during this journey and at the same time there is so much to enjoy as well. A weekly pregnancy calendar can help you to understand the growth of your fetus in a better way. If you maintain a weekly calendar you are able to record the important dates - when the morning sickness arrived (or hopefully did not), the changes in your body and breasts, when you started feeling weary, when the baby started kicking, when your tentative due date is, etc. In fact, instead of being anxious you can start enjoying every sign of pregnancy if you maintain a pregnancy journal.

There are many sites, which offer a free weekly pregnancy calendar, which help you chart the growth of your baby, week by week. They also guide you about the nutritious food you should eat at every juncture of your pregnancy. They often offer prenatal fitness instructions and tips as well. One site on the internet, Pregnancy.org, has divided pregnancy into trimesters. It guides you through all the important aspects of pregnancy. According to a Chinese calendar you can even predict the gender of your baby, if you calculate the date of delivery according to the calculation given there, using your age and the date of conception.

A pregnancy journal can also be a revelation for the father of the baby. It entails all the physical symptoms experienced by the mother, during the nine months of pregnancy as well as records the week-by-week growth of the baby. A pregnancy calendar is a chronological record of the growth of the fetus into a baby, therefore a pregnancy calendar helps in the calculation of the due date of the baby. Usually, the calculation starts from the last period of the mother and extends for the next forty weeks.

During the critical last weeks of the pregnancy when everybody is on tenterhooks with anxiety, if you are unsure of the delivery date, you may fall prey to a condition known as ‘false labor’, wherein, you experience false pains in the body and abdomen similar to when you actually deliver. These contractions can easily be mistaken for labor pains and a carefully maintained pregnancy calendar may help you distinguish between real and false labor.

Keeping a pregnancy journal is not only fun but it can help you remember those fleeting magical moments of pregnancy forever. Try to remember to record what you are thinking and feeling and not just the time and date of the memorable moments. Your pregnancy journal can be something that you share with loved ones and even your child someday.

You may choose to keep your pregnancy journal as an online blog or diary. Many services offer free blogs (like Blogger) and they are very easy to set up. That way you can keep digital photos of your changing body and make it easy to share with anyone who is interested, no matter how far away they live.

One last benefit of a pregnancy journa is that it may come in handy if you are in need of medical care. While I advocate taking control of your pregnancy and even doing your own prenatal care, there are situations where some women will need to seek professional medical care and in that case they will most certainly be interested in your medical history. You can record your own blood pressure, weight and blood sugar levels right in your pregnancy journal. For instructions on how to do your own prenatal care, please visit Unhindered Living.com

Author: Alien Sheng

About the author:
Alien writes for Early pregnancy signs & makeup tips & medicinal herbs

Image Source: http://flickr.com/photos/ke-ta/484850435/

Tags for this post